The newspaper forsakes a “book of the year” to pick Stephenie Meyer as their author of the year. And the staff picks their 10 favorite reads of the year: The White Tiger, by Aravind AdigaThe Story of Edgar Sawtelle. by David WroblewskiOlive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth StroutAn Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination. by Elizabeth McCrackenThe Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie BarrowsThe House at Sugar Beach. by Helene CooperLush Life. by Richard PriceThe Blue Star, by Tony EarleyFor the Thrill of It, by Simon BaatzThe Forever War, by Dexter Filkins USAT
Awards
Critics Challenge Newbery Selections
The Washington Post covers the debate over the value of the Newbery Medal, “asking whether the books that have won recently are so complicated and inaccessible to most children that they are effectively turning off kids to reading. Of the 25 winners and runners-up chosen from 2000 to 2005, four of the books deal with death, six with the absence of one or both parents and four with such mental challenges as autism. Most of the rest deal with tough social issues.” Associate professor of literacy education at St. John’s University John Beach “studied 30 years of book lists chosen […]
People, Award News, and More
In the marketing and publicity departments at Tor and Forge; Phyllis Azar has bee promoted to executive director of marketing; Patty Garcia has been promoted to director of publicity; Brian Vaughan moves up to the new position of director of publishing operations; Joseph Bendel takes the new position of manager of publishing operations; and Jennifer Kaufler has been promoted to marketing manager. In the UK, Pan Macmillan non-fiction publisher Richard Milner will leave at the end of next week to explore “new opportunities.” In awards, the American Library Association has announced nominees for their new YA debut award for books […]
The Best of The Best Of
In our second not-necessarily-annual compilation, we’ve put together best books of 2008 lists from the Amazon.com (their top 25), the Boston Globe, the Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine, the New York Times, the National Book Awards finalists, PW, Salon, Time magazine, the Washington Post, plus lists from critics Michiko Kakutani and Janet Maslin to determine the consensus picks from among all the lists. Of course we could have told you the winner this summer, when critics across the land made it clear they were prepared to love Robert Bolano’s 2666–whether or not the public was eager […]
More Top Tens, from Time
Time magazine’s top fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books: 1. 2666, by Roberto Bolano2. Lush Life, by Richard Price3. American Wife, by Curtis Sittenfeld4. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson5. Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri6. Personal Days, by Ed Park7. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows8. When Will There Be Good News?, by Kate Atkinson9. The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean10. The Widows of Eastwick, by John Updike Fiction 1. The Forever War, by Dexter Filkins2. The Thief at the End of the World, by Joe Jackson3. The Snowball, by Alice Schroeder4. […]
Washington Post's Ten Best, and More Picks
FictionCost, by Roxana RobinsonThe Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel BarberyA Mercy, Toni MorrisonThe Outlander, Gil Adamson2666 Robert Bolano NonfictionThe Eaves of Heaven: A Life in Three Wars, by Andrew PhamThe Hemingses of Monticello, by Annette Gordon-ReedLincoln: The Biography of a Writer, by Fred KaplanOne Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Krushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War, by Michael DobbsWords in the Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, ed. by Thomas Travisano Full list As usual, New York Magazine puts a quirky gloss on loving the same books this year as all the other critics: […]