On Wednesday the New York Times unveiled its list of the ten best books of 2008, which the editors of the New York Times Book Review culled from the one hundred notable books of the year that were highlighted in the newspaper a week earlier. Divided evenly between the categories of fiction and nonfiction, the list has drawn a strong response from readers and bloggers alike, and while the whole point of grand editorial gestures such as "The Best Books of 2008" is to spark conversation and debate, the dialogue that this year's New York Times has elicited is more spirited than usual.
Here's the list:
Fiction
Dangerous Laughter (Knopf) by Steven Millhauser
A Mercy (Knopf) by Toni Morrison
Netherland (Pantheon) by Joseph O’Neill
2666 (Farrar, Straus and Girous) by Roberto Bolaño, translated by Natasha Wimmer
Unaccustomed Earth (Knopf) by Jhumpa Lahiri
Nonfiction
The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals (Doubleday) by Jane Mayer
The Forever War (Knopf) by Dexter Filkins
Nothing to Be Frightened Of (Knopf) by Julian Barnes
This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (Knopf) by Drew Gilpin Faust
The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul (Knopf) by Patrick French
It doesn't take super analytical powers to observe that Knopf published seven of those books (eight if one counts O'Neill's Netherland, published by the Knopf imprint Pantheon), a point that did not go unnoticed by the newspaper's readers. "The NYT should not be letting Sonny Mehta compose its Best Books list," one reader commented on the newspaper's Web site, referring to Knopf's publisher. "Where are the lists of top-tens from other presses?" asked another. While acknowledging the talent of the authors on the list, GalleyCat's Ron Hogan wrote, "To claim that one publishing house so thoroughly dominates the industry in terms of quality seems...weird."
Knopf aside, what books do you think are missing from the list? Let us know by posting a comment below. (And don't let the newspaper's neglect of poetry in its top ten limit your choices!)
