CATEGORIES
- Assmonkeys (4)
- Author Interview (5)
- Awards (12)
- Book News (29)
- Book Reviewing (14)
- Book Reviews (37)
- Bookish (8)
- Bookselling (1)
- Canada Reads (8)
- Censorship (1)
- Design (1)
- Envy (1)
- Favourite Books of 2007 (10)
- Film (8)
- Flannery O’Connor (4)
- Grammar & Language (1)
- Guest Blogger (2)
- Jottings (13)
- Libraries (1)
- Literary Criticism (30)
- Marketing (2)
- Mindless fun (2)
- Music (7)
- Neglected Reads (1)
- Obituaries (8)
- Poetry (3)
- Publishing (8)
- Quotable (1)
- Reading Life (3)
- Scotiabank Giller Prize (7)
- Short Stories (1)
- Technology (7)
- Unbelievable (4)
- Uncategorized (49)
- Writing (3)
- Writing Life (10)
ARCHIVE
- July 2008 (16)
- June 2008 (19)
- May 2008 (12)
- April 2008 (14)
- March 2008 (17)
- February 2008 (13)
- January 2008 (16)
- December 2007 (24)
- November 2007 (25)
- October 2007 (20)
- September 2007 (21)
- August 2007 (27)
- July 2007 (23)
- June 2007 (23)
META
The Best … Recommended
Posted 28 November, 2007 in Book News |
In a similar vein to the NYT’s 100 notable books list, the blog of the National Book Critics Circle has today inaugurated what it is calling (rather awkwardly) the Best Recommended List:
Polling our nearly 800 members, as well as all the former finalists and winners of our book prize, we asked, What 2007 books have you read that you have truly loved?
Nearly 500 voters—from John Updike and Robert Hass to Carolyn Forche, Anne Tyler, Julia Alvarez and Cynthia Ozick—answered the call. Over 300 of our member critics voted as well. Starting in 2008, we plan to offer our Best Recommended List every month.
The inaugral lists consist of five titles each for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Of the ten fiction and nonfiction titles, only two — Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine and Alan Wiseman’s The World Without Us, both in the nonfiction category — do not also appear on the NYT list. This may mean that these eight books are truly the best of the best from the past year, or it may speak to the narrow sensibility at work in making the selections. There are 500 voters plus 300 member critics accounted for in the NBCC poll, which should provide for a multiplicity of viewpoints, but the populist opinion will always win out nonetheless.
What is interesting about the NBCC endeavour, as Mark Sarvas points out over at The Elegant Variation, is that in addition to the top-five lists, the NBCC will also be posting reactions by individual writers and critics talking about their favourite books. Sarvas quotes NBCC President John Freeman:
We’re excited to post this on the web because we know lists of 5 are nowhere near complete. So in addition to posting a list of all the books which received multiple votes, each day at the NBCC blog we’ll be posting votes from critics and writers who participated, to widen the scope of the conversation and to hopefully present a little bit of how much is out there.
This sounds like an interesting way to broaden the discussion, and to ensure that it’s not always the same five titles that get talked about.