Best books of the 2010s

Whilst I have not been reading anywhere near as much in the last half of the decade I was reading quite a lot for the rest of the time and while I haven't been blogging very well for a long time, I did still maintain my Excel spreadsheet which lists all the books I have read. I can't imagine stopping now given that I have actually been maintaining it since 2004!

A quick look at the spreadsheet indicates that in the 2010s I read 34 books that I graded as 5/5 reads.  When I look back now some of those gradings stand up better than others in that I remember reading them and still get warm and fuzzies when I think about those books. Others not so much.

In terms of stand out reads though, there are two books which I read and reread and gave 5/5 grades both times, which is unusual. In both cases, I have read the final linked books in 2019. In the case of The Piper's Son by Melina Marchetta.  I listened to it again this year (for the fourth time) in anticipation of the release of  the next book in the series, The Place on Dalhousie. I guess it isn't a series as such, but it does feature all the same characters at different points in their lives. I also loved On the Jellicoe Road by this author

The other book that I read multiple times and graded as 5/5 each time was Me Before You by Jojo Moyes. I just finished reading the latest/final book in that series, Still Me, just a few days ago while I was on a plane. The other book I loved by this author was The Last Letter from Your Lover

In terms of authors,  there are several who appeared more than once on my list of 5/5 reads. As  I mentioned both of the above authors were there with more than one book but there were also:

Elizabeth Chadwick with Lady of the English and To Defy a King

Sara Donati with Into the Wilderness and The Endless Forest, the first and last books in the Into the Wilderness series.

Susanna Kearsley with The Firebird, The Rose Garden and The Shadowy Horses.

For fun, I thought I would mention that my first 5/5 read for the decade was The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss and the last one was The Flat Share by Beth O'Leary.

In addition to Melina Marchetta, the other Australian authors on the list were John Marsden (Tomorrow When the War Began),  Kimberley Freeman (Lighthouse Bay), Mary-Rose MacColl (In Falling Snow) and Hannah Richell (The Peacock Summer).

I wonder what my first 5/5 read will be this year/decade?