Sunday, May 04, 2008
The National Book Critics Circle Announces the Spring 2008 NBCC Good
Reads List
The votes are in, and this weekend the National Book Critics Circle
announces the Spring 2008 NBCC Good Reads list:Recommendations From
NBCC members, award winners and finalists.
The NBCC Good Reads List was created in fall 2007 as an alternative to
the many best sellers lists available, instead offering books being
avidly read and discussed by America’s leading critics and the world’s
most celebrated writers.
Now the NBCC returns with its third seasonal list, assembled by
polling the 825 members of the National Book Critics Circle as well as
former finalists and winners of NBCC book awards. I think of it as is
a freeze frame on book culture today, what critics and authors have
been impressed by at this point in the year.
NBCC award winning and finalist authors who contributed to this list
included finalists Diane Ackerman, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Mary Jo
Bang, Kate Christensen, Louise Erdrich, Gary Giddins, Maureen Howard,
Troy Jollimore, David Leavitt, Julie Phillips, Richard Price, Norman
Rush, Ron Slate, Susan Stewart, Jean Strouse, and Anne Tyler.
NBCC member contributors included book editors and critics for Time,
Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Entertainment Weekly, Bloomberg
News, the Believer, Slate, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post,
the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel, the Hartford Courant, the Seattle Times, the Kansas
City Star, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the Cleveland Plain Dealer,
the Newark Star-Ledger, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, American Book Review,
Bookforum, Pleiades, Brooklyn Rail, and the New Republic.
Following is a list of the top vote getters in fiction, nonfiction,
and poetry. Asterisks indicate a tie. Further details, including
fiction and nonfiction longlists and individual poetry
recommendations, will be posted here during the coming weeks.
FICTION
1. Richard Price, LUSH LIFE, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
2. Jhumpa Lahiri, UNACCUSTOMED EARTH, Knopf
3. Steven Millhauser, DANGEROUS LAUGHTER, Knopf
*4. Charles Baxter, THE SOUL THIEF, Pantheon
*4. Peter Carey, HIS ILLEGAL SELF, Knopf
*4. J. M. Coetzee, DIARY OF A BAD YEAR, Viking
*4. James Collins, BEGINNNER’S GREEK, Little, Brown
*4. Brian Hall, FALL OF FROST, Viking
*4. Roxana Robinson, COST, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
*4. Owen Sheers, RESISTANCE, Nan A. Talese: Doubleday
NONFICTION
1. Nicholson Baker, HUMAN SMOKE: THE BEGINNING OF WORLD WAR II, THE
END OF CIVILIZATION, S. & S.
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
4. Honor Moore, THE BISHOP’S DAUGHTER: A MEMOIR, Norton
5. Susan Jacoby, THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON, Pantheon
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
4. Marie Howe, THE KINGDOM OF ORDINARY TIME, Norton
5. Robert Pinsky, GULF MUSIC, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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