MAN GONE DOWNBy Michael Thomas. Black Cat/Grove/Atlantic, paper, $14. This first novel explores the fragmented personal histories behind four desperate days in a black writer’s life.
OUT STEALING HORSESBy Per Petterson. Translated by Anne Born. Graywolf Press, $22. In this short yet spacious Norwegian novel, an Oslo professional hopes to cure his loneliness with a plunge into solitude.
THE SAVAGE DETECTIVESBy Roberto Bolaño. Translated by Natasha Wimmer. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27. A craftily autobiographical novel about a band of literary guerrillas.
THEN WE CAME TO THE ENDBy Joshua Ferris. Little, Brown & Company, $23.99. Layoff notices fly in Ferris’s acidly funny first novel, set in a white-collar office in the wake of the dot-com debacle.
TREE OF SMOKEBy Denis Johnson. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27. The author of “Jesus’ Son” offers a soulful novel about the travails of a large cast of characters during the Vietnam War.
Nonfiction
IMPERIAL LIFE IN THE EMERALD CITY: Inside Iraq's Green Zone.By Rajiv Chandrasekaran. Alfred A. Knopf, $25.95; Vintage, paper, $14.95. The author, a Washington Post journalist, catalogs the arrogance and ineptitude that marked America’s governance of Iraq.
LITTLE HEATHENS: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression.By Mildred Armstrong Kalish. Bantam Books, $22. Kalish’s soaring love for her childhood memories saturates this memoir, which coaxes the reader into joy, wonder and even envy.
THE NINE: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court.By Jeffrey Toobin. Doubleday, $27.95. An erudite outsider’s account of the cloistered court’s inner workings.
THE ORDEAL OF ELIZABETH MARSH: A Woman in World History.By Linda Colley. Pantheon Books, $27.50. Colley tracks the “compulsively itinerant” Marsh across the 18th century and several continents.
THE REST IS NOISE: Listening to the Twentieth Century.By Alex Ross. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30. In his own feat of orchestration, The New Yorker’s music critic presents a history of the last century as refracted through its classical music.
more here
So embarassed-lah. Have not read a single one.
ReplyDeleteNeither have I and nope, I am not embarrassed! hehe ...
Me neither! We embarrassed together-gether!!
ReplyDeleteshould i be MORE embarassed as i've not even heard of the titles???
ReplyDeleteHave not read a single one either. But not embarrassed. Just surprised Alex the prodigious reader from across the Causeway has not read even one! :)
ReplyDeleteIf only there were some manga titles on the list! :)
hi ireneq and doc,
ReplyDeleteit is so good to have such good company in my embarassment :)
hi pearlie and kenny,
such good company in not being embarassed :)
Interesting that these books have not crossed my radar until I read about them in the 10 best book list for 2007. Guess my focus is elsewhere. I try to read as widely as I can.
nope, kenny, the mangas will be on another list but will not appear in the high brow NYT list.