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)
Prufrock in Panels
Recommended Viewing: Julian Peters illustrated T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” as a comic.
Good Clean Fun
Nick Offerman is a jack of all trades—since leaving Parks and Recreation, he has performed in a stage production of A Confederacy of Dunces, and now he’s about to publish his third book, Good Clean Fun: Misadventures in Sawdust at Offerman Workshop. He sat down for an interview with Etsy this week.
Kindle Spam is Here
Inevitable: Spam is increasingly cropping up among the self-publishing hordes on the Kindle.
The Inspiration for Uncle Tom’s Cabin
A professor at Clemson University believes he’s identified the fugitive slave who was harbored for one night in the home of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Moreover, the professor believes that the man was “an inspiration for the novel [Uncle Tom’s Cabin]. I think his pain touched [Stowe] and helped her to act.”
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Discussing Book Design with Jamie Keenan
James Cartwright caught up with London-based book designer Jamie Keenan to discuss his work and his process. (Related: How do American book covers stack up against their counterparts from across the pond?)
A Supposedly Fun Thing We Aren’t Sure About
David Foster Wallace has become an American legend in his own right, so it makes sense that he’ll be coming to the big screen soon. Jason Segel will play the famous writer in an adaptation of David Lipsky’s Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself with Jesse Eisenberg as Lispky. Can one movie handle this much neurosis?
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.