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. […]
Best of 2008
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: […]
Favorite Books: LAT; Sunday Times; Stephen King
“The Times’ book staff offers 50 picks in fiction and nonfiction, as well as asking its online columnists to weigh in with their choices in mysteries, science fiction, children’s and more.”LAT In London, the Sunday Times has also posted their books of the year package. They name Toni Morrison’s A MERCY as novel of the year.Times And in Entertainment Weekly, Stephen King lists his ten (or so) favorite reads and emphasizes the value that books deliver: “Books are still the best bang for your entertainment buck, and 2008 was a great year for reading. Below are my personal best for […]
NYT's Top Ten–A Near-Sweep for Random; USAT Gift Picks
The paper has announced their ten best books of 2008, which looks a lot like a Knopf catalog: FictionDANGEROUS LAUGHTER, by Steven Millhauser (Knopf)A MERCY, by Toni Morrison (Knopf)UNACCUSTOMED EARTH, by Jhumpa Lahiri (Knopf)NETHERLAND, by Joseph O’Neill (Pantheon)2666, by Roberto Bolano (FSG) NonfictionTHE FOREVER WAR, by Dexter Filkins (Knopf)NOTHING TO BE FRIGHTENED OF, by Julian Barnes (Knopf)THIS REPUBLIC OF SUFFERING, by Drew Gilpin Faust (Knopf)THE WORLD IS WHAT IT IS, by Patrick French (Knopf)THE DARK SIDE, by Jane Mayer (Doubleday) Separately, USA Today has a guide to holiday books in multiple categories. Among “bestsellers,” the top “critic’s pick” is Dennis […]
People and Awards: $1 Mil "American Nobel"; Telegraph Editor Let Go
Two historians–Princeton’s Peter Robert Lamont Brown and Romila Thapar, emeritus professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University–will share the Library of Congress’s $1 million Kluge Prize. The award “honors lifetime achievement in studies not covered by the Nobel, including history, philosophy, politics, anthropology, sociology, religion, criticism in the arts and humanities, and linguistics.” Brown, called among “the greatest historians of the last three centuries,” is best-known for his book The World of Late Antiquity (Norton) and The Rise of Western Christendom (Wiley-Blackwell), while Thapar’s A History of India (Penguin) and Early India (U.of California Press “were breakthrough works, replacing a static view […]
Newspaper Picks
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 […]