As many of you know, I'm a book junkie. And it being December, sites are putting out their 'best books of the year' lists. Here are some...
New York Times'
-Best children's books
-Best books
The Christian Science Monitor's
-Best non-fiction books
-Best novels
-Best children's books
-Best short stories
The best I've read this year...
Non-fiction: The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart by Bill Bishop. Probably one of the two or three most insightful works of non-fiction I've ever read. If you want to understand why divisiveness has exploded in this country and why actual dialogue about politics has virtually vanished, this book goes a long way to explaining why.
Fiction: The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini. I usually avoid best sellers (and clichés) like the plague, especially in fiction. This is based on the premise that such books need a certain lowest common denominator effect in order to gain mass appeal. But this novel is actually lived up to the hype.
Young adult fiction: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. A compelling novel about two outsiders that's just strange enough to grab your interest but never degenerates into predictable coming-of-age cheesiness.
Readers, feel free to leave your own recommendations.
1 comment:
I can't resist recommending my dear friend, Katherine Arnoldi, and her collection of short stories, All Things Are Labor. It won the Juniper Award for Fiction which is sponsored by UMass.
She is an impressive writer, poet, artist and activist who is currently on a Fulbright Travel Grant studying the Mennonites of Paraguay.
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