When I saw this idea at The Captive Reader last month, I immediately knew I had to do it too: a recap of my favorite books read each year in the past decade. There are actually only nine titles here, because I find I didn’t start keeping records of what I read until 2011—but since everyone else is treating this year as the time to do best-of-the-decade roundups, I’m going ahead and doing it now.
It was an intriguing exercise, reading back over my top-ten lists for each year—seeing how my tastes have stayed the same and how they’ve changed; seeing which books are still favorites and which ones might not necessarily make my lists if I redid them now. I was almost tempted to list a runner-up for each year as well, but in several cases it would have been extremely difficult to choose just one from two or three titles, so I omitted it altogether.
I’ve reproduced here only what I wrote about each book in the original top-ten posts—the length of the paragraphs does vary wildly, since in the last couple of years I haven’t written full reviews of my top picks and so described them more thoroughly in my blog post! The linked titles go to full reviews where they exist.
2011: The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
What I wrote: “I was impressed by this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of a wealthy, influential family’s gradual decline during the industrialization of America at the turn of the last century, which seems to be a somewhat overlooked classic of American literature.”
2012: The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart
What I wrote: “A Rinehart non-mystery, this beautiful novel about American students living in Vienna just before the Great War kept me up till midnight finishing it.”
2013: Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart
What I wrote: “Easily my favorite read of the year. Gorgeous writing, a stunningly evoked setting, suspense and intrigue and romance…it doesn’t get much better than this.”
2014: Thorofare by Christopher Morley
What I wrote: “A big, rich, rambling, beautiful novel, this wins my award for favorite book of the year. Told mostly from the perspective of an English boy, the nephew of a college professor who teaches in America, it traces his journey to the States and the family’s life in village, city and country on both sides of the Atlantic, exploring with pleasant humor and an incredible eye for detail the curious differences and similarities of English and American culture in the late Victorian/early Edwardian era.”
2015: Greensleeves by Eloise Jarvis McGraw
What I wrote: “If I were pressed to name my single favorite book of the year, this would have to be the one. A teenage girl trying to decide what to do with her life discovers more than she bargained for when she takes on a summer job helping to investigate the legatees of an eccentric will.”
2016: Saturday’s Child by Kathleen Thompson Norris
What I wrote: “I often have a hard time distilling into a review my thoughts on the books that make the most impression on me. That was the case with this, my favorite read of the year. It follows the fortunes of a young woman earning her living in turn-of-the-century San Francisco, her struggles to reconcile poverty and family obligations with dreams of wealth and luxury; and her attempts to find a purpose for her life when it appears that romance and marriage are not in her future.”
2017: Letters to Julia by Meredith Allady
What I wrote: “This is a sequel, and it’s definitely necessary to have read Friendship and Folly by the same author to have a knowledge of the characters; but this one found its way even deeper into my heart than the first book in the series. It’s a hefty epistolary novel set in Regency/Napoleonic-era England, told through four years’ worth of letters from a large and affectionate family and some of their friends to a married daughter living at a distance, dealing with both happy and difficult times in the lives of senders and recipients. I can understand how the style might not be for everyone, but it definitely was for me.”
2018: The Lost Art of Dress: The Women Who Once Made America Stylish by Linda Przybyszewski
What I wrote: “This is my favorite book on fashion I’ve ever read. There was a time in the earlier 20th century when American women were considered some of the best-dressed women in the world, and this book reveals why. It takes a fascinating look at a generation of designers and fashion experts who taught American women how to apply the principles of art, as found in the natural world—harmony, proportion, balance, rhythm, and emphasis—to create and choose beautiful and tasteful clothing that suited them and their lifestyles. And how to do it on a thrifty budget. What’s so neat about this book is that it’s both a fun history lesson yet also practically inspiring, as you come to realize that the principles of art can be applied to choosing tasteful and flattering clothing in any era.”
2019: The Huguenots: Their Settlements, Churches, and Industries in England and Ireland by Samuel Smiles
What I wrote: “I had a basic knowledge of who the Huguenots were and the fact of their persecution; but this book blew me away with the breadth and scope of their saga and its effect on the culture and economy of more than one nation. Smiles’ primary focus is on what the exiled Huguenots brought to England and Ireland in the way of art, trade, industry, learning, et cetera (hint: a lot), but he also grounds it in a comprehensive overview of the zero-tolerance policy pursued by the French Catholic monarchy that drove the Huguenots to flee their homeland. I came away marveling at how Americans are taught so little of what is a big part of our heritage by extension as well; and also with a much clearer understanding of how the Huguenot persecutions contributed to the conditions that led to the French Revolution.”
If you’d like to see my full top-ten lists for each year, you can find links to them all at the bottom of this year’s list.
