Ten Best Books of the Past Ten Years

[marycatelli]

Some books got mentioned.  China Mieville came up quite a bit.  Also mentioned House of Leaves, and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.

A lot of talk about the cross genre effects.  Talked about how Harry Potter was a school story.  One panelist thought it was because it was exotic -- to which an audience member pointed out that they were popular in England, where that's known.  One audience member assured us that he had gone to a mundane Hogwarts, just like that.  Much talk about the influence.  One audience member wondered whether Hunger Games and Percy Jackson were rip-offs.  I pointed out that Hunger Games is a dystopian work, and while the parallels between Percy Jackson and Harry Potter are interesting, the divergences aren't all to Harry's favor.

Much confidence that predicting the next ten years would be very difficult.

Comments

[michal wojcik (from livejournal.com)]

I'm hard-pressed to come up with ten. Um...Gentlemen of the Road, certainly. The Privilege of the Sword. The Last Light of the Sun and Ysabel. Oh, and The Road. Erm, that makes five. Hmmmmmmmmmmm. Yes, of course, Pirate Freedom by Gene Wolfe.

That's all I've got. Most of my reading stretches a bit further back, I'm afraid.

I liked Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell but not enough to fall in love with it. I think Mieville is certainly an interesting author, but I'm not sure I'd consider any of his work that I've read so far good enough for a "best" list (I can't help but think if he just let loose with his pulp sensibilities his books would be far better than the unpleasantly word-heavy, and industrially fetishistic, books he actually produces)

[marycatelli]

I would have a murderous time with such a list because I don't remember well even when I read a book, let alone how long that was after it came out.