Just so we understand one another, there’s cheating going on below. The idea is to get a diverse group of regular Chronicle book reviewers to list our favorite books of the year, the decade, and the books we would take to a desert island. You’ll find all of that below, plus a “wild card,” free-for-all paragraph at the end of each reviewer’s lists, in which we are given space to make comments about whatever we feel deserves commentary.
Some reviewers were able to name 10 books published in 1999 or during the Nineties that they would recommend; others were not. Better, I say, to cut a list of good books short than to fill the list out with so-so books just for the sake of being consistent. If you expected us to be sticklers for rules, you’re reading the wrong publication.
This article appears in 1999.