I have selected one book from my reading in each of the years of the decade ending this year. The list includes contemporary novels, plays, non-fiction, and classics. I had to make some difficult choices because I often felt more than one book that I read in a given year qualified. I also limited the list to one book for any given author*. If I had not done this both Cormac McCarthy and Thomas Mann would have been represented twice. All of these books are among those I would reread (and in some cases have already done so), but I am looking forward to the new decade with anticipation of meeting new great books by authors both familiar and not.
2010 Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman
2011 The Double Helix by James D. Watson
2012 Walden by Henry David Thoreau
2013 The Coast of Utopia, a trilogy of plays by Tom Stoppard
2014 The Roots of Heaven by Romain Gary
2015 Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
2016 The Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch
2017 Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
2018 The Divine Comedy by Dante
2019 The Periodic Table by Primo Levi
* Some of the books that almost made the list included Richard Flanagan's The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Mc Carthy's Border Trilogy and The Road, Elias Canetti's Auto Da Fe, Mann's Doctor Faustus, and Rabih Alameddine's An Unnecessary Woman.
7 comments:
Well, my favorite - Walden - made your list. :)
Happy New Year!
Nice to see Walden made your list. I've not read Divine Comedy, yet, but it's in my future.
Thank you for sharing! I hope to finish the Commedia at some point -- so far I've only read Inferno.
Ruth,
Thanks for your comment. Walden was not only the best for one year, but it is one of my all-time favorites.
Stephen,
Thanks for your comment. The Commedia is worth the effort. 2018 was my first time through the whole work after several readings of "The Inferno".
I find Thoreau sometimes a little bit naive, but I love his thoughts and Walden was certainly a favourite. The Divine Comedy is amazing .... have you read La Vita Nuova by Dante? I so enjoyed that as well. I was thinking of reading either Death in Venice or Joseph and his Brothers by Mann this year but time may run out. A fun list! Thanks for sharing it!
Cleo,
I have not read La Vita Nuova and will have to put that on my list of books to read. I love Mann and you will probably have more luck squeezing Death in Venice in than trying to manage the rather lengthy Joseph Quartet of novels.
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