Leslie Jamison's 10 Favorite Books of the Decade

"Leslie Jamison has managed to fit what could be an entire lifetime's worth of writing into the past 10 years. She published her debut novel, The Gin Closet, in 2010, followed four years later by her breakout essay collection, The Empathy Exams, which won publisher Graywolf's Nonfiction Prize and would go on to become a bestseller. It is a thoughtful, compassionate book about how we do (or do not) regard the pain of others. Last year's The Recovering stretched the bounds of the addiction memoir to not only tell the story of Jamison's alcoholism but to also consider how writing and drinking are portrayed in literature. In September of this year, she published her second collection, Make It Scream, Make It Burn, whose subjects—including Second Life, reincarnation, and the world's loneliest whale—she treats with just as much sensitivity."