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)
Elections and All
Recommended Reading: John Williams suggests some reads as we prepare for the presidential primaries.
The Great Gadsby
“The entire manuscript was written with the E-type bar of the typewriter tied down; thus making it impossible for that letter to be printed. This was done so that none of that vowel might slip in, accidentally; and many did try to do so!” Abe Books tells the tale of Gadsby, a self-published 50,000-word novel written without using the letter “e.” Its author, Ernest Vincent Wright, won some notoriety when he accomplished the feat – called a lipogram – in 1939, although it’s unlikely Wright could have foreseen that individual copies of his book would eventually fetch prices upward of $1,200. And if it’s literary hijinks you’re after, definitely read our own Anne Yoder on the work of Georges Perec, who wrote a lipogram of his own in 1969.
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Hard Time
One of the more common questions that comes up in The Nervous Breakdown’s self-interviews is what the subjects consider to be the hardest part of the writing life. The most recent edition sees Jac Jemc, whose latest came out last week, admit that time is what foils her: “Everything takes longer than I think it will, more drafts than I think it will.” This might be a good time to look back on some earlier examples of the form.
Writing the Self
Laura Bennett writes for Slate about how personal essays are taking over the internet. “I think there is just a very fine line between providing a platform for these writers and exploiting them,” says one editor.
Old Writers, New Media
Which convergence between classic author and modern technology is more off-putting: the University of Virginia’s William Faulkner recordings, or this YouTube video of Leo Tolstoy sawing wood?
Animals!
Today in things you might like to read about animals: Some birds, apparently, not only mourn their dead but even hold funeral services. And while it’s widely known that the internet is made of cats, Wired dug a little deeper and tried to uncover the root of our collective feline fixation.
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.