So lots of conversation has been happening for weeks now as awards season has kicked in and it seems as if the same big books get the same awards everywhere. The latest list to not get everyone jazzed is from the NBCC and while I certainly appreciate the judges' right to pick and choose the books they like best (that's their job after all), it's all just ended up looking a bit uninspiring to we, the reading public.
Then today I got the early January issue of Booklist and it includes the 2006 Editors' Choice lists.
Wow - just wow!
They have them online, split by category so do take a look and see - I'm sure you will get tons of ideas on books to read. Just a few observations from me first though. The Booklist folks are not hampered by only having to choose five books for each category, and they run with that leeway. It is also very obvious from these lists that while there are traditionalists weighing in there are also some folks who are interested in authors taking chances. To wit, in the fiction category you do have Richard Ford, Richard Powers, Cormac McCarthy and Pynchon - all the heavyweights we have been seeing everywhere else. You also have Anne Tyler and Alice McDermott - perhaps the traditional female choices? (or I could be off my rocker with that one...). But more interestingly, there is Joe Meno for The Boy Detective Fails and Chris Adrian for The Children's Hospital and Chimamanda Adichie for Half of a Yellow Sun (which the NBCC also liked). Dara Horn's The World to Come is listed - the first place I've seen it listed anywhere, and Ivan Doig's latest along with Daniel Woodrell and Thrity Umrigar. In other words - lots and lots and lots of choices.
Beyond fiction though, the biography category looks at books on Dolley Madison, Flaubert, the chief executioner under Pol Pot and Scottish author George Mackay Brown. Roger Angell's wonderful autobiography is included (I loved this), as is Michael Perry's love story about fixing up an old pickup truck.
You've gotta love a category that goes from Antonia Fraser to old trucks! (With a stop for Jane Goodall as well.)
The editors also include lists for fiction and nonfiction adult titles that young adults will enjoy - love this idea and wish I could see more of it. (The Newberrys seem to be going younger and younger lately - but more on that tomorrow.) This category also included the graphic novel Pride of Baghdad, one of the best releases last year for any age and Sarah Grace McCandless's The Girl I Wanted to Be - a very impressive family drama I'm including in a YA column this spring.
There are just a ton of good books here - varied good books - and I'm delighted to have this issue of Booklist as a future reading reference. Do I agree with all the choices? Of course not - and all of us never will. But this is by far the most thorough and complete and open-minded listing of notable books from 2006 and it should certainly be appreciated for that.
(And for all you William Vollmann fans, Poor People gets a starred review in this issue. "A writer of epic empathy impelled to visit hot spots all over the world, Vollmann, winner of the NBA for his novel Europe Central (2005), has created a bracing mix of risky oral history, passionate social observation, and bold interpretation that illuminates not only the obvious deprivations suffered by poor people but also the impovershments of their inner lives.")
