And in Trick Mirror: Reflections On Self-Delusion, her first collection of essays, she sticks to what she knows best. Steve Nathans-Kellyįor more best of the decade book coverage, check out our lists of the best memoirs, best fantasy novels, best horror novels and best Young Adult novels of the 2010s.Jia Tolentino, now a staff writer at the New Yorker, is something of a specialist in sharp writing about millennial self-identity in the age of the internet, having begun her career at snark-blogs The Hairpin and Jezebel. And who better than the author of the uncompromising John Henry Days and The Intuitionist to hold up a fractured funhouse mirror and show us that true face, which looks as ugly outside the novel as in? It’s a fascinating phenomenon when a book with little reverence for historical orthodoxy shines an unflattering light on the present-and that’s precisely what makes The Underground Railroad the best novel of the decade. In recounting the surreal (and sometimes hideously humorous) odyssey of a runaway slave into the gaping maw of white supremacy, Whitehead searches for the “true face of America” only visible through a subway train’s grimy windows. And he presents an Underground Railroad that’s really underground and really a railroad. He makes no mention of black-white cooperation that ends well for black people. There’s an expectation in American history that sacred subjects require certain orthodoxy in how they’re portrayed, but Colson Whitehead ignores that precedent in his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Underground Railroad. Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver (2012) We loved these books, and we believe you will, too.Ĥ0.

This is simply a collection of the books we wept over, laughed with and were inspired by during a tumultuous decade.

And this list is obviously subjective it’s by no means representative of the only “good” novels published during the last 10 years. The Paste staff tends to read fantasy and literary fiction, so you’ll notice the majority of the titles below fit those labels. This list includes 40 novels published in English between 2010 and September 2019, and we’ve limited it to one book per author.

But their most powerful trait is that they offer an escape while still encouraging readers to think critically, weaving entertainment and reflection into one experience.Īs the decade comes to a close, we want to celebrate the novels that impacted us during the last 10 years. From building new worlds to reanimating history, they have the ability to enthrall and challenge us.

Best books to read 2017 19 year olds