The National Book Critics Circle Announces the Spring 2008 NBCC Good Reads List
The votes are in, and this weekend the National Book Critics Circle announces the Spring 2008 NBCC Good Reads list:Recommendations From NBCC members, award winners and finalists.
The NBCC Good Reads List was created in fall 2007 as an alternative to the many best sellers lists available, instead offering books being avidly read and discussed by America’s leading critics and the world’s most celebrated writers.
Now the NBCC returns with its third seasonal list, assembled by polling the 825 members of the National Book Critics Circle as well as former finalists and winners of NBCC book awards. I think of it as is a freeze frame on book culture today, what critics and authors have been impressed by at this point in the year.
NBCC award winning and finalist authors who contributed to this list included finalists Diane Ackerman, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Mary Jo Bang, Kate Christensen, Louise Erdrich, Gary Giddins, Maureen Howard, Troy Jollimore, David Leavitt, Julie Phillips, Richard Price, Norman Rush, Ron Slate, Susan Stewart, Jean Strouse, and Anne Tyler.
NBCC member contributors included book editors and critics for Time, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Entertainment Weekly, Bloomberg News, the Believer, Slate, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Hartford Courant, the Seattle Times, the Kansas City Star, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Newark Star-Ledger, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, American Book Review, Bookforum, Pleiades, Brooklyn Rail, and the New Republic.
Following is a list of the top vote getters in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Asterisks indicate a tie. Further details, including other top vote getters in fiction and nonfiction and individual poetry recommendations, will be posted here during the coming weeks.
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, Sarah Crichton Books:Farrar, Straus & Giroux
*4. Owen Sheers, RESISTANCE, Nan A. Talese: Doubleday
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
PS Yes, the NBCC membership is up from 575 in April 2007 to more than 825 a year later, and adding new members each week.
Labels: Book Reviewing, NBCC Good Reads 3
posted by Jane Ciabattari 4:35:00 PM
10 Comments:
Most interesting, and perhaps troubling, that my fellow NBCCers stay so closely on the mainstream side of the street.
I recently reviewed FALL OF FROST for AMERICA magazine and want to say how pleased I am to see it included on this list. Marvelous book!
Kelly Cherry
Sarah, Keep an eye out for the longlist and the loooong tail. There are some surprises there.
I look forward to that long list and long tail.
I'm sure this is shocking coming from a co-founder of Dzanc Books, but the lack of many independent and university presses in the "freeze frame on book culture today" is disappointing.
I'm most surprised (though this is as far from my area of expertise as possible) at the lack of poetry specific publishers like Copper Canyon or BOA (I know, they've begun to publish fiction too, but for the most part are still poetry heavy), and others like them in the poetry list.
That said, I do appreciate the various small press series that have been run here at Critical Mass.
Hey Dan, The NBCC Good Reads list comes from polling NBCC members, former awards winners and finalists. A goodly number of those polled must recommend a book for it to get on the shortlist and the longlist. I'll also be posting the favorites of individual judges, and that will open the door to the indy presses.
This list represents many people, not thinking, in unison.
Disappointing.
Let the majority elect candidates and wage war. Not pick books. "Critical mass" is oxymoronic, "a contradiction in terms."
Dan, I'm sure you know that the problem is getting the indy and university press books into the hands of and on the actual reading schedule of editors, reviewers, and professors (for starters). Fewer readers mean fewer nominations, and most of the influential readers stay close to home in their reading choices.
Kelly C.
The #1 choice in nonfiction is a book written as an oral history, a la David Markson, that looks at the escalation of violence in World War II, and documents the rather overlooked presence of pacifist agitation in the build-up to that violence...a book huzzahed by you too Sarah Wienmann. So it's published by S&S, I'd say that's pretty outside the mainstream, especially in a country at war. The focus on small press/big press is a red herring: look at the books and their quality. Ulysses, you'll remember, was published by Random House in the U.S.
Yes, Kelly. Reading the list of who votes, it is pretty apparent that unless tha majority of these papers, NBCC members, authors, etc. are on your galley/review copy list as a publisher, the odds seem slim indeed of making the short list.
This will indeed lend itself towards this list consistently seeing titles from Knopf, Penguin, Viking, S&S, FSG, etc. having representation. It is here that the "red herring" disappears somewhat as most independent publsihers are not printing up 500 plus galleys and sending them out to every reviewer in the country. They tend (and this is a generalization as I believe there are a couple of indies that do print up that number of galleys) instead to send galleys to a target reviewing audience - places they really feel they have a shot at seeing their title pulled from the massive pile of books received.
And, as both an independent publisher, and a blogger/reviewer who is receiving books, I can say this is pretty close to the case. I receive many books I'd never have asked for from the big publishers, in some cases their full catalogue each quarter. With independents, or university presses, I much more frequently am asked which titles from the catalogue I'd like to see, or in the case of some really good publicists, I'll get the occasional email letting me know they know I'm going to love a book they've published.
So, I agree in theory with anonymous, the quality is all that should matter. I just don't think that quality is indeed the only factor in the creation of the Good Reads List. That isn't at all to say that the titles listed aren't of great quality. Those in these lists that I've read, or at least looked at, have been excellent. Just to note that there are many other excellent titles out there that hopefully get recognized in these long tail posts Jane has set up.
Based on her comments above, I have no doubt we'll be seeing some excellent, and less spoken of, titles.
Dan, I hope you're right about the long tail. In my life I've seen little enough of it; a very short tail far outweighs the long one. But maybe the Internet is changing that. Meanwhile, let me say again, for anyone's who's interested, that Fall of Frost is well worth reading in spite of (one may say) the publisher.
Kelly
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