Signs of spring (reading recommendations)

As flowers bloom and winter finally ends in other parts of the country, and we here in South Florida brace for the usual praying/begging/gnashing of teeth that means hurricane season is just around the corner, the National Book Critics Circle has released its spring "Good Reads" list.

The winners, according to PW Daily:

FICTION

1. Richard Price, LUSH LIFE, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
2. Jhumpa Lahiri, UNACCUSTOMED EARTH, Knopf
3. Steven Millhauser, DANGEROUS LAUGHTER, Knopf
*4. Charles Baxter, THE SOUL THIEF, Pantheon
*4. Peter Carey, HIS ILLEGAL SELF, Knopf
*4. J. M. Coetzee, DIARY OF A BAD YEAR, Viking
*4. James Collins, BEGINNNER’S GREEK, Little, Brown
*4. Brian Hall, FALL OF FROST, Viking
*4. Roxana Robinson, COST, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
*4. Owen Sheers, RESISTANCE, Nan A. Talese: Doubleday

Yes. There really WAS a 7 way tie for 4th place. Way to decide, critics!

NONFICTION

1. Nicholson Baker, HUMAN SMOKE: THE BEGINNING OF WORLD WAR II, THE END OF CIVILIZATION, S. & S.
2. Drew Gilpin Faust, THIS REPUBLIC OF SUFFERING: DEATH AND THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, Knopf
3. Mark Harris, PICTURES AT THE REVOLUTION: FIVE MOVIES AND THE BIRTH OF THE NEW HOLLYWOOD, Penguin Press
4. Honor Moore, THE BISHOP’S DAUGHTER: A MEMOIR, Norton
5. Susan Jacoby, THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON, Pantheon

POETRY

1. Grace Paley, FIDELITY, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
2. Frank Bidart, WATCHING THE SPRING FESTIVAL, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
3. Eric Gansworth, A HALF-LIFE OF CARDIO-PULMONARY FUNCTION, Syracuse University Press
4. Marie Howe, THE KINGDOM OF ORDINARY TIME, Norton
5. Robert Pinsky, GULF MUSIC, Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Comments

[Phoebe]

The act of listing favorites is totally tyrannical, and you know it. Therefore, I find it totally acceptable to have a seven-way tie for No. 4. But, like, all that and they can't come up with a No. 5, too?

Also, I've got some poetry for you. ITS NAME IS THE DETROIT RED WINGS. Tomorrow night, baby.

[e.p.l.]

i wonder if joyce carol oates' "wild nights" falls in some category between fiction and nonfiction? i've heard that oughta be on ... some list.

[Connie]

From the Newsday review of Wild Nights!:

"The classic authors who appear as fictionalized characters in Wild Nights! aren't the
ones most of us met in Intro to American Literature.

Edgar Allan Poe copulating with a one-eyed amphibian? Mark Twain pursuing pubescent
girls? Henry James clubbing a cat to death? Joyce Carol Oates may cause a few elderly
professors to keel over, but the rest of us can take perverse delight in her five surreal
tales.

I think you're right, this needs to be on some list somewhere!!