In the past 10 years, Elena Ferrante’s quartet of books, the Neapolitan Novels, so captivated readers that many swarmed Naples, Italy, searching for mentioned sites. Colson Whitehead‘s “The Underground Railroad” sparked deep conversations on slavery nationwide. Some books of the past decade will stick with us for years and others will drift out of our memories. As we enter the final days of the decade, Forum reflects on its best and most beloved books. Tell us: what is your favorite book of the 2010s?
Listener Suggestions (Mentioned on Air):
- “Island Of A Thousand Mirrors” by Nayomi Munaweera
- “Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People” by Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald
- “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion” by Jonathan Haidt
- “Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East” by Scott Anderson
- “Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda” by Becky Albertalli
- “Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power” by Rachel Maddow
- “My Struggle” by Karl Ove Knausgaard
- “The Man Who Invented Fiction: How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World” by William Egginton
- “California Coast Trails: A Horseback Adventure from Mexico to Oregon in 1911” by J. Smeaton Chase
- “In Extremis: The Life and Death of the War Correspondent Marie Colvin” by Lindsey Hilsum
- “A Little Life” by Hanya Yanagihara
- “Cutting for Stone” by Abraham Verghese
- “Children of Time” by Adrian Tchaikovsky
- “Unsheltered” by Barbara Kingsolver
- “Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds”
by adrienne maree brown - “There, There” by Tommy Orange
- “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline
- “Salvage the Bones” by Jesmyn Ward
- Remembrance of Earth’s Past Trilogy by Cixin Lu
- “The Soul and the Seed” by Arie Farnam
- “American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic” by Victoria Johnson
- “The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt
Barbara Lane’s Suggestions:
- Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante
- “The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries From a Secret World” by Peter Wohlleben
- “The Overstory” by Richard Powers
- “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” by Ocean Vuong
- “Exit West” by Mohsin Hamid
- “Americanah” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- “Heart Berries” by Terese Marie Mailhot
- “News of the World” by Paulette Jiles
Oscar Villalon’s Suggestions:
- “The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage Of Power” by Robert A. Caro
- “The Sellout” by Paul Beatty
- Outline Trilogy by Rachel Cusk
- “Between The World And Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- “Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic” by Sam Quinones
- “Citizen” by Claudia Rankine
- “Unaccompanied” by Javier Zamora
- “The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail” by Óscar Martínez
- “Monstress: Stories” by Lysley Tenorio
- “Whereas” by Layli Long Soldier
- “When My Brother Was an Aztec” by Natalie Diaz
- “Retablos: Stories From a Life Lived Along the Border” by Octavio Solis
Michael Krasny’s Suggestions:
- “21 Lessons for the 21st Century” by Yuval Noah Harari
- “These Truths: A History of the United States” by Jill Lepore
- “A Visit from the Goon Squad” by Jennifer Egan
- “The Sympathizer” by Viet Thanh Nguyen