Topic 5: Books of the Year

Robert: It is a source of wonder to me that  "best lists" continue to fascinate (I assume they fascinate vast numbers of faceless people, otherwise why waste all the newsprint and airtime, though clearly these are no longer precious commodities?). Not to mention, why would you take someone's recommendation that you did not know? Appreciation of fiction being so deeply subjective these seasonal gathering of names strike me as idle and/or infantile. I wait for the day that this whole enterprise of listing things that are so deeply subjective is discredited. I mean, that NYC newspaper has its 100 notables and its 10 best - what could be more silly and meaningless?

Anyway, until this silliness ("best" lists) disappears, here are the books that I read (all the way through), in no particular order, which are my unqualified recommendations for worthy and enjoyable reading experiences:

Prisoners of War - Steve Yarborough
After Such Knowledge - Eva Hoffman
Birds without Wings - Louis de Bernieres
The Divine Husband - Francisco Goldman
An Unfinished Life - Mark Spragg
Cottonwood - Scott Phillips
The Dew Breaker - Edwidge Danticat
A Chance Meeting - Rachel Cohen
The  Fall of Baghdad - John Lee Anderson
An Unfinished Season - War Just
The Rope Eater - Ben Jones
The Last Crossing - Guy Vanderwighe
Inheritance - Lan Samantha Chang
Heir to a Glimmering World - Cynthia Ozick
Politics - Hendrick Hertzberg
The Falls - Joyce Carol Oates
Project X - Jim Shepard

Alex: I don't think I read any of the big critically-acclaimed award-winners. I really liked a little book called The Inactivist by Chris Eaton. I was quite impressed by Stephenson's Baroque Trilogy, though it took me the better part of 2004 to get through it. I didn't read enough poetry (again), but I would want to include The Burning Eaves by David Manicom. 

I read a lot more non-fiction than fiction this year. Most of these were overblown magazine articles. One of the better pre-election political books, and one whose message is still relevant, was Linda McQuaig's It's the Crude, Dude (but what a godawful title!). A War Against Truth by Paul William Roberts and Dennis Johnson's The Big Chill make the list for reportage.

Michael:

Stand-outs:
Piano, Jean Echenoz
The Kill, Emile Zola (new translation)
Magic Seeds, V.S.Naipaul
Kaddish for an Unborn Child, Imre Kertesz (new translation)
Bobby Fischer goes to War, David Edmonds and John Eidinow
Like a Fiery Elephant, Jonathan Coe
Stalin, Simon Sebag Montefiore
Nine Suitcases, Bela Zsolt

Honorable mention:
The Half Brother, Lars Saabye Christensen
Heir to the Glimmering World, Cynthia Ozick

Jessa: Taking into account that I have yet to read any of the award winners and a large stack of books that are supposed to be the best of the year (Gilead, The Darling, The Fall of Baghdad, Runaway, etc), my list is skewed. And I'm not checking copyright dates, so apologies if the end of 2003 and beginning of 2004 bleed together.

Cutty, One Rock by August Kleinzahler
Pillow Talk in Europe and Other Places by Deborah Levy
You Have to be Careful in the Land of the Free by James Kelman
Plot Against America by Philip Roth
In the Shadow of No Towers by Art Spiegelman
Rent Girl by Michelle Tea and Lauren McCubbin
Clearing Land by Jane Brox

Maud: It's almost physically painful for me to name favorite books of the year when there are so many out there I haven't had time to read.  I mean, just this year, thanks to a recommendation from a book critic I admire - Chris Lehmann - I discovered my favorite book of 1978: Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea. Now it resides somewhere between fifth and tenth on a vague mental list of my favorite books of all time.

A few weekends ago I picked up Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus, to see what all of last year's hubbub was about. Now I'd have to say the hubbub, which seemed so widespread then, wasn't nearly extensive enough.

This year I've yet to read the new Danticat and Roth offerings, and Nicholson Baker's Checkpoint. These are three major omissions, particularly given my admiration for the authors' prior work. And I still have a stack of twenty or thirty more 2004 novels leaning against my bedroom wall that I plan to read at some point.

That said, in a short piece for Newsday, I mentioned Muriel Spark's The Finishing School (much more plot-driven than the sort of fiction I normally like, and very, very funny), James Hynes' Kings of Infinite Space, Miljenko Jergovic's Sarajevo Marlboro, Stephen Elliott's Happy Baby, Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, Lucy Ellmann's Dot in the Universe, and Andrew Sean Greer's The Confessions of Max Tivoli. I would've included A.L. Kennedy's Paradise, but it doesn't appear in the U.S. until the spring (although it's been out in Britain for months).