100 Notable Books
100 Notable Books of the Year
As the year ends, we get inundated with best of lists. Here's one that always makes me feel like an illiterate piker, the New York Times' 2007 100 Notable Books of the Year. This year I did worse than usual. So far, I've read a grand total of four--and one of those is Deathly Hallows, which I suspect the Book Review included just to keep common folks from getting shut out.
Normally, they throw genre readers a few bones with a Stephen King or Walter Mosley's latest, but this year the NYT went strictly hardcore. No sf, mystery, or horror fiction and one graphic novel, Adrian Tomine's Shortcomings. As a result, not only is there not much on the fiction list that I have read, there's not much on there that I think I want to read. I love Richard Russo and Bridge of Sighs is waiting on my shelf. I'm sure I'll eventually read Chabon's book. Maybe the Ha Jin book when it comes out in paperback. In non-fiction, I've heard great things about the Ralph Ellison biography. That's about it. I'd be fascinated to meet someone who'd read a significant amount of the fiction listed here. To be fair, the non-fiction seems a bit more mainstream.
Are any of you reading what our New York Times overlords are telling us to read?
(Next up is the People Magazine year end best book list, which I always use to make myself feel smarter. And just for the record, the other books on the NYT list I'd already read, each of which I can recommend, were Schulz and Peanuts, David Michaelis' biography of Charles M. Schulz' surprisingly melancholy life, The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross' (not that Alex Ross) history of modern classical music, and The Day of Battle, Rick Atkinson's history of the Allied invasion of Italy in World War II. Two Leni Riefenstahl biographies came out this year and of course I read the one that didn't make the NYT list. But it was pretty good and one is enough).
As the year ends, we get inundated with best of lists. Here's one that always makes me feel like an illiterate piker, the New York Times' 2007 100 Notable Books of the Year. This year I did worse than usual. So far, I've read a grand total of four--and one of those is Deathly Hallows, which I suspect the Book Review included just to keep common folks from getting shut out.
Normally, they throw genre readers a few bones with a Stephen King or Walter Mosley's latest, but this year the NYT went strictly hardcore. No sf, mystery, or horror fiction and one graphic novel, Adrian Tomine's Shortcomings. As a result, not only is there not much on the fiction list that I have read, there's not much on there that I think I want to read. I love Richard Russo and Bridge of Sighs is waiting on my shelf. I'm sure I'll eventually read Chabon's book. Maybe the Ha Jin book when it comes out in paperback. In non-fiction, I've heard great things about the Ralph Ellison biography. That's about it. I'd be fascinated to meet someone who'd read a significant amount of the fiction listed here. To be fair, the non-fiction seems a bit more mainstream.
Are any of you reading what our New York Times overlords are telling us to read?
(Next up is the People Magazine year end best book list, which I always use to make myself feel smarter. And just for the record, the other books on the NYT list I'd already read, each of which I can recommend, were Schulz and Peanuts, David Michaelis' biography of Charles M. Schulz' surprisingly melancholy life, The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross' (not that Alex Ross) history of modern classical music, and The Day of Battle, Rick Atkinson's history of the Allied invasion of Italy in World War II. Two Leni Riefenstahl biographies came out this year and of course I read the one that didn't make the NYT list. But it was pretty good and one is enough).
Labels: Charles Schulz, genre fiction, J. K. Rowling, New York Times
posted by Paul Miles at
12:40 AM
2 Comments:
I've got 4, too: Hallows,The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,Then We Came To the End, and The House That George Built. I'll eventually read the Murakami and the Chabon and Bolitho's Savage Detectives. I've heard great things about Jim Shepard's Like You'd Understand, Anyway. Non-fiction possibilities are Brother, I Am Dying and How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read, which seems to be irritating highbrows and lowbrows alike.
Every year, I buy at least one literary novel based on its backstory that ends out sitting on my shelf unread. Savage Detectives has come pretty close to being that book for 2007 but I've held off. I'll be curious to see what you think of it.
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