Tag Archives: Best of
Honor Roll, 2010!
Even so, 700-something is a big number. As vituperative and well-meaning as these ‘Top 10′-style lists are, they can only cover so much ground – a great many titles I loved in 2010 are inevitably left out. I read a small pile of paperback romance novels, for instance, and an equally-big pile of murder mysteries. [...]
Recap, 2010!
Worst Fiction 2010: 10. The Three Weissmanns of Westport – Cathleen Schine 9. The Scent of Rain and Lightning – Nancy Pickard 8. How to Read the Air – Dinaw Mengestu 7. Hester – Paula Reed 6. All That Follows – Jim Crace 5. The Instructions -Adam Levin 4. The Privileges – Jonathan Dee 3. [...]
Best Nonfiction, 2010!
Of course you all know where I stand: I have a very large, very roomy space in my heart reserved for nonfiction, so I’ve left Best Nonfiction of 2010 for last. This, too, was a crowded field – I read 97 works of military history alone this year, for instance. Books on every time period [...]
Best Fiction, 2010!
If cynicism was the besetting sin of the Worst Books of 2010, we’re all the more fortunate that cynicism has a counterpart in literature as well as life. The counterpart, of course, is truth, and just as a novel born of calculation and greed can never be anything but a weak little lie, so too [...]
Stevereads 2009 Honor Roll!
Several of you have made interesting suggestions for how I should wrap things up here at Stevereads in 2009 – and some of those suggestions have been more practical than others! Perhaps influenced by what you’ve read on other book-blogs, several people have emailed (privately, of course! wouldn’t be the Silent Majority without the ‘silent’ [...]
Once Again!
Twice as many books this year, so a handy summary is in order! Worst Fiction of 2009: 10. Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer 9. The Murder of King Tut by James Patterson and Martin Dugard 8. The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell 7. Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem 6. Nobody Move [...]
Best Books of the Year! Nonfiction!
The Best Nonfiction of 2009: 10. Endless Forms, edited by Diana Donald and Jane Munro – The central idea behind this stunning volume is simple and undeniable: great ideas manifest far outside their native spheres. The great idea in this case is Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, and since both Darwin and [...]
Best Books of 2009! Fiction!
2009 displayed an epic lineup of new novels from old hands at the form: we had new works from Margaret Atwood, Mary Gaitskill, A.S. Byatt, E. L. Doctorow, John Irving, Thomas Pynchon, Richard Powers, William Trevor, Pete Dexter, Richard Russo, J.M. Coetzee and a list of other luminaries, almost all of whom disappointed in some [...]
The Best Books of 2008!
Against all odds, a tenacious little thread of hope worked its way through 2008. A great deal of that hope was grafted to the American presidential race and its singularly restorative outcome, but even in the realm of books, all was not bleak. True, tidal waves of crap still crash onto bookstore display tables every [...]
The Best Books of 2007!
But even in the midst of waste and desolation, there is hope. Even in 2007, a year in which the forces of darkness were exalted, there were bright spots here and there, and it’s our duty here at year’s end to extoll those bright spots, to assure you all that your reading is not in [...]
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