Best Books of the Decade

'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read. - Mark Twain

Books are often as controversial as the writers that write them. If you're a bookworm like me, every book is an opportunity, every novel, an outlet, a vent, to whisk you away from the rigors of daily life. Take away books, and you take away a large part of the reason I live, truly, and I am not alone in my opinion. While there will always be a debate about the best of books, there are some which make to the list unchallenged. I may not think that Jhumpa Lahiri's 'Interpreter of Maladies' deserved the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, for instance, but I won't argue that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix makes it not just to the best books of the decade, but of all time. Listed below, are my favorite picks. Let the disagreeing begin.

Best Fiction Books

At the beginning of the decade that was, books were printed on paper, kindle was a term used to light a fire, a nook went with a cranny, and Harry Potter, bless his magical soul, was still at Hogwarts. The years that followed brought, what many descried as developments for the greater good. But take away the paper from a book, put it on a screen, no matter how convenient, and to me, and a generation of purists, you take away the half the point and all the pleasure. Where books, and not their unpopular formats, were concerned, we were in for a good haul, with some seriously dazzling creations, and must read books. J.K. Rowling ended her brilliant series in style, and the young adult world suddenly found itself unusually fascinated by vampires, werewolves and all things fantastical. So without further ado, the following is a list of the twenty best books of the decade 2000-2010, listed, to minimize controversy, in random order:

• The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
• Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
• The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffineger
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
• Life of Pi - Yann Martel
• Sea of Poppies - Amitav Ghosh
• Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix - J.K. Rowling
• Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
• The Corrections - Johnathan Franzen
• American Gods - Neil Gaiman
• Remainder - Tom McCarthy
• The Road - Cormac McCarthy
• Gilead - Marilynne Robinson
• White Teeth - Zadie Smith
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society - Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
• A Storm of Swords - George R. R. Martin
• Atonement - Ian McEwan
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Steig Larrson
• The Human Stain - Philip Roth
• A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini

The Harry Potter Series, of which the first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, released in 1997, wouldn't make it eligible to this list. But its date of release notwithstanding, certainly catapults the first into the best books of the last decade, and the six that followed into the next. The genres of young adult fiction and fantasy were also taken by storm with the release of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight Series, and the release of the last few installments of J.K. Rowling's masterpiece which are now acclaimed to be the best fiction books for young adults.

Any reader worth her salt will tell you that the year a book is released makes little difference to how well the story is told. I'd take it a step further and say that book reviews, rewards and accolades do nothing for me if I don't like the book, Pulitzer prize-winning or not. In fact, a look at the world's best-selling books of all time might find you perplexed with the entries on the list; (Jurassic Park, really?) popular does not always equal good in my mind. Whether it's Yann Martel's hair-raising twist in the end - which I seriously did not see coming - or the curiously brilliant tale of the autistic protagonist in Mark Haddon's offering, the description of a book as the BEST book is as personal as it is universal. Whichever way you look at it, it's a good time for book lover's indeed.