My friend Bethanne Patrick (also known as the Book Maven) regularly writes about and reviews books and is one of my favorite resources for the best in literature being published today. Her blog is a must-read for book lovers, and she recently brought out her list of the top 20 books of the past decade. It's mostly a prose list, but three graphic novels made her cut, which is why it's important here. What made the cut for Bethanne? Persepolis, Fun Home, and Stitches (the comics-related The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao also makes an appearance).

An added bonus is that I got name-checked in Bethanne's blog. (I'm the John she refers to in the entry on David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas.) That's quite an honor, so I won't quibble and tell Bethanne that it was Ghostwritten (Mitchell's short-story debut) that I urged her to read for years, not Number9Dream. No matter; all of his books are great. In fact, Mitchell is my favorite modern prose writer, so I heartily recommend anything he writes.

So there you go...a new list to start off your new year. Enjoy!