Amazon released their annual Best Books of the Year: Top 100 in Print list today (as well as a free and helpful Reader’s Guide), and numerous Millions favorites made the cut. Both George Saunders’s Tenth of December and Philipp Meyer’s The Son cracked the top 10. We reviewed both here and here, respectively. Other notable books boasting extensive Millions coverage include Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings (review), George Packer’s The Unwinding (review), Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries (review), Dave Eggers’s The Circle (review), James Salter’s All That Is (review), Karen Russell’s Vampires in the Lemon Grove (interview), Stuart Nadler’s Wise Men (review), Colum McCann’s TransAtlantic (review), and Colm Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary (review). Meanwhile, the top spot belongs to Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch.
The Best Books of the Year (2013)
“Call Me” – Ishmael
Another phone-related book project: Call Me Ishmael, a site that collects stories about reading and life via voicemail messages. The instructions are simple: call Ishmael at 774-325-0503 and leave him a message “about a book you love and a story you have lived.” Several of these messages are transcribed and posted online every week but, if we’re being honest, we appreciate this project for the pun as much as for the stories.
The Other Side of Europe
Recommended Reading: On translating the literature of smaller European nations.
Grading Died Today
“The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. Don’t let this dissuade you from revising again and again, which can really improve a piece of writing.” Albert Camus, creative writing instructor.
3 comments:
Add Your Comment: Cancel reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
A Necessary Evil
Is the system rigged? Aaron Bady at The New Inquiry discusses the inherent evil of the canon and the general problem with lists. For more on why we care about literary awards in the first place, here is Mark O’Connell from The Millions.
Tuesday New Release Day: Ringwald, Semple, Rendell, Randall
Former Brat Packer Molly Ringwald makes her literary debut with When It Happens to You: A Novel in Stories this week. Also out this week, Where’d You Go, Bernadette by comedy writer turned novelist Maria Semple, The St. Zita Society by Edgar Award-winner Ruth Rendell, and, in non-fiction, Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep by David K. Randall.
Pale King Confusion
After our discovery yesterday that The Pale King was already on sale, the New York Times finds lots of angry booksellers, but not much by way of explanation.
The Great 2014 Indie Press Cheat Sheet
Interested in reading some of the indie and small press books coming out in 2014, but don’t know where to start? Michael Seidlinger put together a great Cheat Sheet of titles to get excited about this year. Think of it as a complement to our Great 2014 Book Preview.
Completely predictable and wholly boring list.
I’ve heard a lot of good things about “The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt. To be honest I haven’t heard of the other books! Thanks for posting the review links too :) My contribution to the list would be the mainstream literary fiction masterpiece by author A.R. Taylor, “Sex, Rain, and Cold Fusion.” (http://www.lonecamel.com/the_book/). The link gives a good description of the book and some pages from the first chapter. This is one of the funniest novels I’ve ever read, and not only did it have me laughing throughout it had me hooked at page one. The main character, David Oster, is a genius with a complicated life full of sex, physics, and the endless search for some sort of meaning in his day to day routine. He moves from California to Washington leaving the sunshine and women behind for a new job that promises more money and more time researching the thing he loves most, underwater physics. Unfortunately, the new job brings nothing but chaos to David Oster’s already confusing life and he is thrown into a murder mystery thanks to his employer and his employer’s newly murdered wife. He also enters into a very demanding relationship himself and is pushed to his limits when he finds that his ocean studies must be put on hold so he can spend time figuring out the physics of horses performing on a basketball court. There are so many funny twists and turns. This novel needs to be added to the best books of 2013 for sure.