The NYT has picked and picked and picked. The Book Review posted its list of 100 Notable Books for 2008, and critics Michiko Kakutani and Janet Maslin selected personal top 10 lists. Only 5 of the critics’ picks are on TBR’s list which, as usual, features a number of books by New York Times’ staffers (and at least one NYT company employee at the Boston Globe), if they do say so themselves. It’s less numerically pretty for children, where the Book Review came up with eight notable books. Here are the critics’ lists, asterisked where they overlap with the Book Review’s notables (and thus candidates for the culling of the year’s top 10.):
Kakutani
* A MERCY by Toni Morrison
THE PLAGUE OF DOVES by Louise Erdrich
* NETHERLAND by Joseph O’Neill
* LUSH LIFE by Richard Price
APPLES & ORANGES by Marie Brenner
AMERICA AND THE WORLD: CONVERSATIONS ON THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft; moderated by David Ignatius
THE BIN LADENS: AN ARABIAN FAMILY IN THE AMERICAN CENTURY by Steve Coll
LINCOLN: THE BIOGRAPHY OF A WRITER by Fred Kaplan
ALEX & ME: HOW A SCIENTIST AND A PARROT UNCOVERED A HIDDEN WORLD OF ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE — AND FORMED A DEEP BOND IN THE PROCESS by Irene M. Pepperberg
MILLENNIAL MAKEOVER: MYSPACE, YOUTUBE, AND THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN POLITICS by Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais
Maslin
* 2666 by Roberto Bolano
WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS? by Kate Atkinson
THE GIVEN DAY by Dennis Lehane
SERENA by Ron Rash
THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE by David Wroblewski
CHARLATAN: AMERICA’S MOST DANGEROUS HUCKSTER, THE MAN WHO PURSUED HIM, AND THE AGE OF FLIMFLAM by Pope Brock
* PICTURES AT A REVOLUTION: FIVE MOVIES AND THE BIRTH OF THE NEW HOLLYWOOD by Mark Harris
THE SNOWBALL: WARREN BUFFETT AND THE BUSINESS OF LIFE by Alice Schroeder
FINAL SALUTE: A STORY OF UNFINISHED LIVES by Jim Sheeler
AUDITION: A MEMOIR by Barbara Walters
Maslin
Meanwhile, at the Boston Globe, an editorial formally endorsed buying books as gifts–“Books make great gifts. Well-priced, wide-ranging, and – with their
nice square corners – easy to wrap, they belong on everyone’s list” and recommended “a quirky collection of [a dozen] new books that caught the eye and imagination of the Globe’s editorial page this year.” (They, too, have Richard Price and Mark Harris on their list.)
Glob