This year, as the final days of December tick down, our attention is not only turned to the end of 2009, but the end of a decade–the first of the new millennium. Shocking, isn’t it? Though it doesn’t seem all that long ago that the world was in a tizzy over Y2K, we’ve come a long way. The publishing industry has evolved and changed in ways that are barely quantifiable, and only continues to change every day. We’ll be feeling the effects of the Kindle, online media, flash fiction, and Twitter on literature for years to come. We lost some literary icons (Kurt Vonnegut, David Foster Wallace, John Updike, Eudora Welty, just to name a few) and created some new ones (Jhumpa Lahiri, Zadie Smith, Jonathan Safran Foer, Michael Chabon). We’ve seen the rise of wizards and vampires and the decline of newspapers. Yes, it’s been quite the decade.

I love lists. I love reading them, I love making them, and I love crossing things off of them. But when it comes to compiling a “Best of the Decade” list, I find I’m a little too daunted by all that’s out there. When the Globe and Mail asked several prominent writers to choose their favorite book of the decade, they came up with some surprising and thoughtful answers, so I’ll leave the lists to them, for now, and turn my attention to 2010 and the new decade to come. It’s gonna be a good one–I can feel it.

*image from Ruffled Blog