20 of the best books of the last decade, according to Boston librarians
The picks from staff at the Boston Public Library were released this week.
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The Boston Public Library released its selections this week for the best books published in the last decade.
In all, the library picked 150 books released in the 2010s, divided into 15 lists of 10 titles.
“All books are important in their own way, of course, but which books can we look back at and say, ‘Five years later I’m still thinking about it’ or ‘that one really spoke to us’?” Veronica, a librarian in the Reader Services Department, wrote in a blog post on the library’s website on Tuesday. “We read books one at a time, considering each on its own merits. The end of a year and the end of a decade is a great time to try and think about the big picture. Plus, it’s a lot of fun!”
The categories for the top books include picture books, self-help guides, and books focused on social justice. Ahead, the selection the librarians made for novels and works of nonfiction (not including memoirs, which were their own category) published in the 2010s.
Novels
- “My Brilliant Friend” by Elena Ferrante (2012)
- “Americanah” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2013)
- “Tenth of December” by George Saunders (2013)
- “A Little Life” by Hanya Yanagihara (2015)
- “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles (2016)
- “The Underground Railroad” by Colson Whitehead (2016)
- “Little Fires Everywhere” by Celeste Ng (2017)
- “Sing, Unburied, Sing” by Jesmyn Ward (2017)
- “An American Marriage” by Tayari Jones (2018)
- “Normal People” by Sally Rooney (2019)
Nonfiction
- “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot (2010)
- “The Warmth of Other Suns” by Isabel Wilkerson (2010)
- “The Sixth Extinction” by Elizabeth Kolbert (2014)
- “Sapiens” by Yuval Harari (2015)
- “Secondhand Time” by Svetlana Aleksievich (2016)
- “Strangers in Their Own Land” by Arlie Russell Hochschild (2016)
- “Dark Money” by Jane Mayer (2016)
- “Dreamland” by Sam Quinones (2016)
- “What the Eyes Don’t See” by Mona Hanna-Attisha (2018)
- “Say Nothing” by Patrick Radden Keefe (2019)
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