May 4, 2008
Spring 2008 NBCC Good Reads list
The National Book Critics Circle, an organization I joined several months ago, has published its seasonal Good Reads list, in which recommendations from active book reviewers and book-review editors are tallied "as an alternative to the many best sellers lists available." My fiction nomination came in tied at number four with six other worthy titles, and my nonfiction nomination did not make the cut. (I believe, however, that a brief blurb I wrote about the book will be posted to the NBCC site soon; I'll link to it if/when that happens.) The top three in each category are:
FICTION
1. Richard Price, Lush Life, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
2. Jhumpa Lahiri, Unaccustomed Earth, Knopf
3. Steven Millhauser, Dangerous Laughter, Knopf
1. Nicholson Baker, Human Smoke: The Beginning of World War II, The End of Civilization, Simon & Schuster
2. Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, Knopf
3. Mark Harris, Pictures at the Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, Penguin Press
POETRY
1. Grace Paley, Fidelity, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
2. Frank Bidart, Watching the Spring Festival, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
3. Eric Gansworth, A Half-life of Cardio-pulmonary Function, Syracuse University Press
To read the rest, click here.