Best Books of the Decade

Great Debates
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Forget the published lists; forget trying to rank books from both ends of the century (or millenium) on one list. Let’s stick with a reasonably modest period of time - the 1990s - and let’s have ‘best books’ recommendations from people who love to read, and have found a book or three that seem to stand out above all the other new books they’ve read, this decade.

Feel free to use genres - that is, feel free to say, ‘I thought _____ was one of the best [mystery/sf/fantasy/gothic/whatever]s of the decade’ to get it in here.

I’m going to kick it off with my favorite nonfiction book of the decade, and, IMO, one of the best of all time: The Song of the Dodo by David Quammen.

Not too many nonfiction books are page-turners, but this is one of them. I’m re-reading it for about the fifth time since it came out (in 1996) - I was inspired to pick it up again by the creation/evolution threads I’ve been posting on - and I can’t put it down. It’s that good.

So what’s it about? It’s about evolution and extinction, especially the latter - viewed from the POV of the origins and growth of an obscure field called island biogeography, which Quammen (quite successfully, IMO) argues is the key field for understanding both origins and ends. As he points out, Darwin was an island biogeographer even before he was a Darwinist. But it’s by following the arc of this field’s development that he manages to write a major book about extinction without getting into a gloomfest. And it works!

In a story that takes us from Darwin and Wallace through MacArthur and Wilson to the present, he takes us through many wonderful digressions that turn out to be essential to where he’d going - Komodo dragons, tree-climbing kangaroos, carnivorous parrots, the dodo (of course) and other exotica come up in the tale, because islands are where the oddities naturally develop - he feeds us little bits of the picture of how evolution and ecosystems - and ultimately extinction - work.

I use it as a reference (it’s wonderfully well-researched; the bibliography goes on for 24 pages of fine print), but first and foremost, it’s a really good read - jump in anywhere, read a few pages, and you’ll be swept along. There aren’t too many books for which that’s true, and it almost never happens in nonfiction. The Song of the Dodo is a spectacular exception.

2

Books? What are those?

3

Well, heres my 3 nominees for “Some pretty darn good books of the decade”

Non-fiction:
The Commissar Vanishes - David King
This is a truly amazing book showing in detail the extent of photograph falsification under Stalin. It has before and after pictures showing how Stalin would erase his political enemies not only corporealy, but by erasing them from books and photographs as well.
This is probably the most moving and depressing coffee table book I’ve ever seen.

Return of the Straight Dope - Unca Cece
Of course.

(runner up: The Ants - Holldobler and Wilson; a very well written book descibing just how cool ants really are.)

Fiction:
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
Wonderfully written, funny post-modern tale of our societys need for entertainment, propensity for addiction, and inability to communicate. There are enough good, interesting ideas in this book to last few dozen novels, and they’re tossed out as asides. And the only 1100 page book I’ve read that made me go “I wish this were longer”. Insert your own superlatives here.

4

Another in the nonfiction category: Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. The quality of the prose is more workmanlike than Quammen’s, but this is a book with a major goal: explaining the outlines of history. Why, Diamond asks, did Spain conquer Mexico, rather than the other way around? He may have figured it out, actually. A world history class without this book on the reading list would be doing the students a disservice: right or wrong, he’s got a hell of an idea on the table.

There was only one catch, and it was Catch-22.

5

I’ll throw A Man in Full and Midnight in the Graden of Good and Evil into the fiction pot.

What can I say, I’m a good ol’ boy at heart.

6

Darn you RT, as soon as I saw the subject header on the list I wanted to be the one to nominate that :slight_smile:

The only book I can think of where the blurbs underestimate the contents (and the blurbs are extremely complimentary). A superb synthesis and analysis of many factors which have shaped human history.

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I haven’t read Guns, Germs and Steel yet (its on my shelf, about 3 books down in the reading queue), but I’d like to say that Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee was pretty durn good too.

It’s about how humans, with their tiny genetic distance from chimps, turned out to be so much different (and in many ways, eerily similar)

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I think “Guns, Germs, and Steel” is, perhaps, the greatest work of Social Science written in the 20th Century. Diamond has done for the field of History, what Darwin did for Biology 150 years earlier.

I rarely use the word “greatest” to discribe anything, but looking at the chart on page 87, was like finding the Holy Grail. If there is a unified theory of History, this is it.

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andros - both of those are definitely on my short list of books to get to.

Ursa - If Diamond’s ideas hold up (and I personally expect them to), then GG&S definitely is the nearest thing in the study of history to Origin of Species in biology. And even if they don’t, someone has finally looked at history with a scientist’s eye, looking for the big questions and trying to answer them. Diamond definitely won’t be the last one to do that; either way, he’s started a revolution in the field.

nebuli - sorry to steal GG&S out from under you. :wink: I will add, though, that, IMO, Quammen’s The Song of the Dodo (see the OP) is another book where the book is far better than the (very complimentary) blurbs.

A comparison and contrast, if you will, of what may be the two best science-related books of this decade:

They both set out very big ideas - Diamond in history, and Quammen in evolution and (especially) extincton.

Diamond has a leg up in that the big ideas he’s advancing are his own: GG&S is a statement of an original thesis. Quammen is putting together and making known the work of others - including Diamond, whose work as an evolutionary biologist plays an important role in Quammen’s book. But the ideas in Dodo weren’t very well known even to the scientifically literate portion of the public, so just the act of getting them into play (or trying to; the book didn’t seem to get much of a push from its publishers, and still isn’t very well known) was a major contribution.

Finally, Dodo is far better written than GG&S. This surprised me; I first encountered Diamond in his Discover essays, and he’s a talented writer, in addition to his other remarkable gifts. But I found the prose in GG&S to be more workmanlike than anything else; Diamond has been a better writer elsewhere. But Dodo is, IMO, absolutely enthralling.

So it all depends. As a book, Dodo is definitely superior, IMO. But GG&S is more than just a book; it’s a potentially groundbreaking work.

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I’m not sure how to classify it–psychology, psychiatry, social science, pathology–but An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks is absolutely enthralling and just amazingly well-written.

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andros - I’ve been a big Sacks fan since A Leg To Stand On and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. I’ve read An Anthropologist on Mars, and it’s very good too.

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Let’s tone down this discussion so the unwashed masses can participate, okay?

Best fantasy – George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series.

Best science fiction – Dan Simmons’ Hyperion series.

Best western – Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove series tied with Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy (although calling those “western” is arguable).

Best historical – Restoration by Rose Tremain

Best modern fantasy – Thomas Disch’s Minnesota series, esp. The Sub

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Best SF novel - Earth by David Brin. A wonderfully wild ride!

Best SF short stories - Joe Haldeman’s, in collections such as Dealing In Futures and None So Blind. Haldeman’s got some great novels (The Forever War, Worlds, Worlds Apart) and some so-so ones; but his short stories are consistently excellent.

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Could I say something good about Stephen Baxter? Moonseed and Titan both fell down about three-quarters of the way through, but Voyage is an excellent read for the tech-heads. Anyone who want to read how the space program SHOULD have gone should read Voyage.

Best anthology – The Ascent of Wonder: the Evolution of Hard SF, David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, eds.

And I’ve been a fan of Quammen since I found The Flight of the Iguana manny years ago.

Dr. Fidelius, Charlatan
Associate Curator Anomalous Paleontology, Miskatonic University
“You cannot reason a man out of a position he did not reach through reason.”

And mäni interesting furry animals

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Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet. His best ever.

Wobegon Boy by Garrison Keillor. Very entertaining, true-to-life; except for the character Alida, the love of his life. Women as perfect as Alida simply don’t exist.

Jim Staudt

16

Hmmmmm, seems all you folk are in the minority, don’t ya know? According to very ‘informed’ opinion here, no one reads fiction… :wink:

17

I don’t know about the best books of the decade, but here are a few that have been eye openers for me:

The Other Mother, by Seth Margolis.
The End Of Alice, by A. M. Holmes.
Everyday Sacred, by Sue Bender.
Blue River, by Ethan Canin.
Celestine Prophecy, by James Redfield.

18

Well, obviously, “Platinum Girl” and “Vamp,” by . . . umm, who wrote those again?