NBCC'S BEST RECOMMENDED LIST

For years now, we've lamented the arbitrary silliness of most "Best of" lists.  They crop up with alarming frequency around this time of the year, generally making sweeping claims of Greatness while divulging little about the selection process.  The NBCC has unveiled a new feature today that we're watching with enough interest that we're going to support the endeavor by setting up a sidebar before the week is out to track it - namely, their well considered (if oddly named) Best Recommended List.  NBCC President John Freeman has described it thus:

"What if a best seller's list was made up of books people read rather than books they simply bought? What if it was a list of books you just had to read rather than books that were just good reads. And what if the matrix for recommending those books wasn't cash-registers, but the opinion of award-winning poets, novelists, biographers, novelists, critics and readers? These are the utopian ideas that prompted the National Book Critics Circle to create a monthly Best Recommended List. Polling our 800 members, as well as 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, Jane Smiley, Jonathan Raban, and Cynthia Ozick-answered the call. Here is the list of books that writers and critics are most often recommending to each other. Starting in 2008, we plan to offer our Best Recommended List every month, as a kind of barometer for taste -- where it's going, and where it's been."

Now, the following is the part we think is particularly interesting.  Freeman continues:

"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."

Which we think is potentially cool as hell as it will tap into the reading habits of a fascinating group of readers and writers and is likely to offer up some overlooked jewels.  As for the picks themselves, the inaugural five in the fiction category are:

1) Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead) 2) Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) 3) Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union (HarperCollins) 4) Philip Roth, Exit Ghost (Houghton Mifflin) 5) Per Petterson, Out Stealing Horses (Graywolf)

In non-fiction, the top five are:

1) Edwidge Danticat, Brother, I’m Dying (Knopf) 2) Alan Weisman, The World Without Us (St. Martin’s) 3) Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine (Metropolitan) 4) David Michaelis, Schulz and Peanuts (HarperCollins) 5) Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes (Doubleday)

And in poetry, with a three-way tie for first place:

1) Robert Hass, Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005* 2) Zbigniew Herbert, Collected Poems: 1956-1998 (Ecco)* 3) Robert Pinsky, Gulf Music (Farrar Straus & Giroux)* 4) Rae Armantrout, Next Life (Wesleyan) 5) Mary Jo Bang, Elegy (Graywolf)

We also wanted to partake in the promised widened conversation, so we're happy to have a pair of special commentators weigh in here.  First up, NBCC finalist David Leavitt - whose The Indian Clerk we've championed here - talks about what book he voted for and why:

"Of the novels I read in 2007, Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach is the one that has stayed with me most viscerally. The story of a honeymooning couple doomed by sexual terror and inexperience to make decisions that will affect their entire lives, On Chesil Beach provides a pitch-perfect rendering of England in the early sixties while telling a cautionary tale of misjudgment and misplaced pride that fits it squarely into the English tradition initiated, centuries before, by Jane Austen. There are moments in this book that made me wince with the most uncomfortable sensations of recognition, as well as moments when McEwan seemed to be bringing me almost too close to his characters. In the end, though, what I felt most acutely was the proximity of redemption--political, historical, and personal--that is McEwan's great theme and perhaps his great quest."

We're also pleased to have the thoughts of the renowned animation historian and critic (and NBCC finalist for Enchanted Drawings: The History of Animation) Charles Solomon (seen below, appropriately, in caricature), who takes a slightly different approach, talking about a category the NBCC doesn't yet have under consideration - manga.  But if it were a category, here's what Solomon - a contributor to the New York Times, TV Guide, Newsweek (Japan), Rolling Stone, the Los Angeles Times, Film Comment, the Hollywood Reporter, the Manchester Guardian, and others - thinks we should be reading:

"Manga (Japanese graphic novels) is the fastest growing area of American publishing. For most adults, the manga aisle of the local bookstore may seem as unfamiliar as Cathay or Cipango, but for adolescents, teen-agers and college students, it's a welcome and familiar harbor. Most manga begin in Japan as serials published in magazines that are later reissued in book form. In the US, manga are rapidly becoming what "Nancy Drew," "Henry Huggins" and "Tintin" were for earlier generations. The combination of words and pictures speaks to younger readers in ways other books don't.

Fullmetal Alchemist,Volumes 1-15 by Hiromu Arakawa (Viz: $9.99 each, paperback): Young Alphonse and Edward Elric violated the laws of alchemy when they tried to to bring their mother back from the dead, and paid a terrible price for that transgression. Edward lost a leg and Al nearly died, but Ed sacrificed his right arm to preserve his brother's soul in a suit of armor. Ed's robotic prostheses make him The Fullmetal Alchemist. The Elric brothers wander far and wide in search of the Philosopher's Stone, which they believe can restore their damaged bodies. Five juvenile novels about the "Fullmetal Alchemist" characters have been published in the US: the most recent is "Under the Faraway Sky" by Makoto Inoue (Viz: $9.99, paperback).

Mushi-Shi, Volumes 1-4 by Yuki Urushibara (Del Rey: $12.95 each, paperback) In contrast to the dynamic adventures of the Elric Brothers, the stories in Mushi-Shi unfold at a cool, measured pace that recalls traditional folk tales. Mysterious creatures that represent "life in its purest form," Mushiare more ancient than plants and animals. Neither good nor evil, they just exist. Ginko, the chain-smoking Mushi-Shi("MushiMaster"), roams Japan, studying Mushiand their interactions with humanity. Urushibara's manga won the Kodansha Award in 2006, and is rapidly building a following in the US.

Naruto, Volumes 1-29 by Masashi Kishimoto (Viz: $7.95 each, paperback) The wildly popular Naruto series has spawned a small publishing industry: in addition to the original manga, there are calendars, novelizations, "Art of" books, game guides, and fan books. Audiences can't get enough of the misadventures of knuckle-headed ninja-in-training Naruto Uzumaki. These rollicking adventures combine feats of daring-do, exotic jutsu (magical techniques) and broad, slapstick comedy. The animated series enjoys an equal popularity."

Special thanks to our guest contributors and note to the NBCC: Consider simply calling the thing TBR - after all, "To Be Read" is a near universal designation among readers, isn't it?  If you've got a great idea for a name, please feel free to weigh in.

Comments

[Anglofille]

As a woman who is writing a novel, I'm dismayed that all the recommended fiction is by men. Not surprised, just dismayed.

[Malcolm R. Campbell]

While a list based on books read and loved from cover to cover trumps a list of books read and displayed on coffee tables, the ultimate value of this list will only be proven to me if it varies from all the other high-buzz lists. I want to see some books listed here that are NOT on everyone else's lists already, for that only makes the entire list charade more ingrown and exclusive than it already is. My reading habits are seldom influenced by people whose love of books arises out of conversations that begin with, "I'll write a blurb for your book if you'll write a blurb for mine."

Malcolm

[denise hamilton]

Malcolm has a good point and any booklover reading this blog already knows about the first top five ficpix. (not that they're bad books by any means, but they've gotten tons of ink). So critics, tell us something we don't know. Also, thanks for including manga. I would certainly add Shawn Tan's The Arrival if we are casting a wider graphic novel net. Gorgeous drawings, universal immigrant story, no words.

[John Freeman]

Denise, Good point, which is why we put up the lists on our blog of every book which got more than one vote. There are some less expected choices on these lists -- Lydia Millet's upcoming novel for example, there's an upcoming novel by Manil Suri on there, Matthew Eck's book, which is very good. In the new year I think the list will change because the books people are reading will have changed -- not to take away from the books which made the top 5, many of which are very very good. Here's a rec, though: if you read poetry, track down Michael O'Brien's "Sleeping and Waking," (Flood Editions) terrific book.

[TEV]

I also do suspect that future iterations will go farther afield. I think, being the first go-round, there was a bit of a clearing house effect, with everyone still sort of buzzing with the year's big books.

[Katharine Weber]

As an NBCC member, my fiction vote was for the forthcoming Pat Barker novel, LIFE CLASS, and in poetry I voted for Janet McAdam's FERAL. (Both women, as it happens.)