I've not seen any of the films. Any good??

Yep - the films (Garp & HNH) actually got me into the books years back. Mind you if I'd read the books first then maybe I'd see it differently.

I would have given Andrew Marr's 'A History of Modern Britain' a place in the list. I agree with points earlier re. Potter v Da Vinci and The Da Vinci Code was the only one of the first three that I guessed. I haven't read Obama's book but I suppose it would be difficult to argue against it's high placing given that it was a part of an epoch making series of events and I've no excuse for for not thinking of it and even less excuse for not having read it yet.

Not that impressed myself given that she is Swedish. Mind you her English is better than 99% of our compatriates. As well as her Spanish, German etc etc. Unfortunately due to her marrying an Englishman, there's only one language in which we can communicate.

Thanks Spencer for the information that the last of Larsson's trilogy is now available in English. Its already on my list of things to buy when I'm in the UK at the end of the year.

just been looking on Amazon - the 3rd book in the trilogy is £9.49 on there at the mo. Sticking 'dragon tattoo' on the Christmas list

I've read 4!

My Booky Wook
Never Let Me Go
The Amber Spyglass
Freakonomics


Amber spyglass is the only one of those four that should be on there in my opinion. Booky Wook was pointless, not even very funny.

I would add:
'How to be free' - Tom Hodkingson (taking the guardianista world view to its logical conclusion)
'Affluenza' - Oliver James - best critique of consumerism I have ever read
'Libertines: bound together' - definitive rock journalism of the decade.

Not read it yet, but surprised Trescothick's book is not on there - defines three things - rise of sports biography, honesty about mental illness, and celebrities 'emoting' in the public eye - thats decade defining in my book!

I might do the same unc - we can compare notes!

Meanwhile here's The Times list of the 100 "best" books of the decade (as opposed to the ones that "defined" it):

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/ ... ?print=yes

At the risk of starting to sound like Larsson's agent, for him not to be on that list (given that his work is better than the few on the list with which I am familiar) suggests that the compilers are limited by characteristics such as pseudo intellectualism etc.

I think the Times list is more pretentious than the Telegraph list.

Critics seem unable to write about Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky (which they have at Number 5) without calling it a "masterpiece". Well, whatever makes it a masterpiece passed me by I'm afraid - I found it dull and uninteresting, and I didn't even bother finishing it. I guess it's the back story that the journos love - Némirovsky died in Auschwitz, and Suite Française, after lying in an attic for more than half a century, wasn't published until 2004. Ergo, it must be a masterpiece

I've just finished reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, as discussed above and on the previous page. It takes a while to get going, but it's an entertaining enough read and I enjoyed the setting, on a frozen island off the eastern Swedish coast. I'm not quite sure why it's been so phenomenally successful though. As a thriller, it doesn't have the pace of Dan Brown or Simon Kernick or the devilish plotting of Harlen Coben, nor the stylish writing of Raymond Chandler or even Lee Child. Nor could it be described as literary, in the sense that Donna Tartt's The Secret History was, for example. So I don't get it really

Don't read on if you haven't read the book yet ...

Spoiler alert!! What did irritate me about the book, though, was the whiff of misogyny. OK, the basic crimes involved the physical and sexual abuse of young women. Fair enough. But why did Lisbeth Salander have to be physically and sexually abused too, and, more to the point, her oral and anal rape described in such gratuitous detail? It had nothing to do with Martin Vanger's crimes and added nothing to the plot. I can only assume that Larsson actually gets off on describing the sexual abuse of women, and this makes me feel uncomfortable. In the paperback edition I was reading there was an exerpt at the back from the second book, The Girl who Played With Fire. And sure enough, the passage involved a detailed description of a terrified young girl trussed up and about to be raped. I rest my case.
I also thought the sexual content in the book was more the product of a middle-aged writer's fantasies than any convincing delineation of character. Blomqvist is in his later 40s, the same age as the author, and although he has no sexual charisma whatsoever, he not only manages to conduct a never-ending sex-on-demand affair with a married woman (whose husband doesn't mind), he's also seduced by an otherwise celibate headmistress, and a nubile 25-year-old wants to have almost constant sex with him. If these aren't the sexual fantasies of a middle-aged writer who probably stopped having sex some time ago, then I'd be surprised.

I couldn't argue with that list, certainly the handful that I have read do deserve to be in there. It's a bit jarring to see popular non-fiction like Lynne Truss in among fiction like Atonement and Life of Pi, but it's great to see a scattering of graphic novels in there - Jimmy Corrigan, Persepolis and the superb Fun Home - will the noughties go down as the decade when the comic finally achieved mainstream respectability?

Interesting stuff BW - I bought the book for my wife at Xmas - I'll be interested if she comes to the same conclusions as you....

I've just read the Girl with the Dragon tatt as well.

Not sure whether my expectations were too high, but found it a bit disappointing.

I don't mean that it's bad - it's a fairly entertaining thriller, but it did seem to meander for little apparent reason quite a bit in the first 200 pages and then when the 'thriller' stuff arrived it was over very quickly. All start and end with not a lot of middle. Don't get me wrong, I like a good 'slow burner', but the start of this one seemed to 'wander' more than 'build'.

Writing was a bit clunky at times as well, although I suspect that was just the translation. Central characters were a bit dull and the whole Vanger family were a bit comic book for my liking.

reading that back it sounds like i hated it, which isn't true. I just didn't love it.

Will probably read the other 2 at some point, but I'll be borrowing them rather than buying them.