maybe not ten...but here goes:

richard powers, the time of our singing

see everything that janey wrote about powers. she's right. powers novels aren't so much about their plots, but about the ideas or concepts that those plots help to elucidate. the stories he tells (normally several connected ones in each novel) get at multiple aspects of these ideas/concepts. in the time of our singing he's examining race in the u.s. and he does so by talking about music and time. for me it struck an emotional chord that no other work of fiction has been able to. powers is also an incredible wordsmith. it is fairly common that i'll read a passage from one of his novels, and then i'll have to re-read it several times before i go on because of how beautifully it's written.

russell hoban, riddley walker

this is a post-apocalyptic tale that takes place in what used to be the u.k., and it describes little bands of human communities that have degenerated to the point that they've almost "lost" language. the story is written from the perspective of one of these humans, and so it's written in a sort of phonetic, made-up language that's hard to make sense of for 30 pages or so, but then gets easier to figure out (though i've read the novel about 5 times and there still are a host of words i can't figure out. there is a glossary at the end, which helps a lot). the premise is that the humans have this vague memory of a nuclear holocaust, but to them it represents a certain divine power that they know they've lost, but yearn to recover. to do so they turn to a certain text unearthed from the ruins of westminster cathedral, which they can't quite decipher because it's written in english. it's an absolutely fantastic story, full of danger, intrigue, and an itinerant band of puppeteers/high priests, but in the end the novel is about language, interpretation and misinterpretation, and the real power that words have.

midnight's children, salman rushdie

i love rushdie's playful writing style and his imaginative and fantastical re-shaping of history. this one tells of the birth of india.

marilynne robinson, gilead

this is a sad and beautiful memoir of an elderly minister near the end of his life, written for his young son to read after he's grown up. the novel explores grace, forgiveness, and happiness, but always in connection with unresolved, brooding sadness. what also makes this novel amazing is robinson's economy of words: she doesn't waste any.

umberto eco, foucault's pendulum

i love this novel for how smart it is, and how dumb it makes me feel. and also for the crazy, wildly entertaining story it tells.

j.m. coetzee, waiting for the barbarians

i'm not a huge coetzee fan. i like his stuff, but always think it falls short of the hoopla that surrounds everything he writes. this one, however, "grabbed" me. it's a chilling, sobering story that examines the thin, thin line between civility and barbarism, care and abuse.

dbc pierre, vernon god little

i couldn't put this one down. it read like a simple page turner, but in the style of delillo's white noise, if that makes any sense. what i didn't realize was that as i was turning the pages i was becoming deeply emotionally vested in the story. i desperately wanted - needed - a certain outcome to happen. and in the end i was strangely embarrassed at what i was rooting for. and i was also really, really angry at the absurdity and stupidity of the world in which we live.