Oliver Sacks tended to focus his efforts on sweeping intellectual projects like On the Move (a memoir), The River of Consciousness (a hybrid intellectual history), and Hallucinations (a book-length meditation on, what else, hallucinations). Toward the end of his life, maybe suspecting or sensing that it was coming to a close, Dr. As ever, free to add any of your own favorites that we’ve missed in the comments below. And as you’ll shortly see, we had a hard time choosing just ten-so we’ve also included a list of dissenting opinions, and an even longer list of also-rans. Tears were spilled, feelings were hurt, books were re-read. The following books were chosen after much debate (and several rounds of voting) by the Literary Hub staff. We began with the best debut novels, the best short story collections, the best poetry collections, and the best memoirs of the decade, and we have now reached the fifth list in our series: the best essay collections published in English between 20. We will do this, of course, by means of a variety of lists. So, as is our hallowed duty as a literary and culture website-though with full awareness of the potentially fruitless and endlessly contestable nature of the task-in the coming weeks, we’ll be taking a look at the best and most important (these being not always the same) books of the decade that was.

We’ll take our silver linings where we can. It’s been a difficult, anxiety-provoking, morally compromised decade, but at least it’s been populated by some damn fine literature. Friends, it’s true: the end of the decade approaches.

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