Fiction
The Anthologist - Nicholas Baker; "a novel about poetry that's actually about poetry - and that is also startingly perceptive and ardent, both as a work of fiction and as a representation of the kind of thinking that poetry readers do."
Cat Burglar Black - Richard Sala; "From its cinematic opening - a cliffhanger cutaway of a girl being chased by a wild boar - this noir comic sets up an inviting oddball mystery."Fear the Worst - Linwood Barclay; "subtle in analyzing teenage attitudes and behavior, and comes up with revelations that would make any parent's hair stand on end."
Her Fearful Symmetry - Audrey Niffenegger; "In this intricate exploration of love, identity and obsession, a woman buried in Highgate Cemetery haunts the London flat she has left to the twin daughters of her own estranged twin."
The Hour I First Believed - Wally Lamb; "A couple flee to a Connecticut farm after the trauma of the Columbine shootings."
Love and Summer - William Trevor; "A delicate sort of drama - there is no corpse in the basement, no bomb lies hidden in any drawer - but even so, a reader will have his heart in his mouth for the last 50 pages. And when that heart settles back down, it will be broken and satisfied."
The Lucky One - Nicholas Sparks; "A Marine returning home sets out to track down the woman whose photo he found in Iraq."
Push - Sapphire; "An abused, illiterate 16-year-old girl living in Harlem meets a teacher who helps her change her life."
The Roar - Emma Clayton; "Another post-nature dystopia in which the waters have risen and civilization is barely hanging on (you have to hope all children's authors aren's prescient). Maybe the best thing about this debut novel is the grim and dank London setting, a walled city built up above the flood, safe from the Animal Plague. Or the Pod Fighter battles above it as a hero and heroine - telepathically connected twins - battle a totalitarian regime. It isn't Ender's Game, but The Roar is exciting, thought-provoking and very hard to put down."
The Thing Around Your Neck - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; "Calmly eviscerates the pretensions of Westerners whose interest in Africa masks an acquisitive, self-flattering venality."
Nonfiction
Conversations with Woody Allen: His Films, the Movies, and Moviemaking - Eric Lax; "Over the course of several years, Allen sat for hours of interviews with Lax, the author of a 1991 biography."
Freakonomics - Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner; "A maverick scholar and a journalist apply economic theory to everything from cheating sumo wrestlers to the falling crime rate."
How Fiction Works - James Wood; "He is most interested in judging fiction's success and in understanding what makes great fiction great. His models are Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, James and Flaubert, and his own writing is inviting and lucid."
In the President's Secret Service - Ronald Kessler; "Agents and the presidents they protect."
Miss Conduct's Mind over Manners: Master the Slippery Rules of Modern Ethics and Etiquette - Robin Abrahams
No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process - Colin Beavan
Nurtureshock: New Thinking About Children - Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman; "A report on recent research that challenges the conventional wisdom about child-rearing."
The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws - Margaret Drabble; "There is, I think, something decadent about flaunting our mortality that way; about saying, by implication, look at me, I believe I have so much time on earth that I'm going to spend the next hour doing the acrostic in the Sunday Times Magazine. But what would be the point of a pleasure that wasn't a little bit decadent?"
Strength in What Remains - Tracy Kidder; "Shows what can be done when you find a guy who's inconspicuous and say tell me your story."
Wicked Plants: The Weed that Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Atrocities - Amy Stewart; "An A to Z of plants that kill, maim, intoxicate and otherwise offend."
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