Winter 2008 NBCC Best Book Recomends....

....well, the first thing they recommended is to change the name of the list, to NBCC's Good Reads. And then they came up with a list of books, getting a lot more authors and critics to tell them what they'd recommend to anyone who wanted to know "What should I read?". These first cold dark days (seriously, here in the Midwest States it never got brighter than twilight today!)of 2008, they say your time will be well spent with:

Fiction

1. Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke (Farrar Straus & Giroux)
2. Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead)
3. J.M. Coetzee, Diary of a Bad Year (Viking)
4. Geraldine Brooks, People of the Book (Viking)
5. Steve Erickson, Zeroville (Europa)

Nonfiction

1. The Rest Is Noise, by Alex Ross (FSG)
2. Brother, I’m Dying, by Edwidge Danticat (Knopf)
3. In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan (Penguin Press)
4. Musicophilia, by Oliver Sacks (Knopf)*
5. The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein (Metropolitan)*

Johnson, Diaz and Ross's books were on the list in November, and that's got to be a very strong recommendation, indeed. They're all on my hold list at the local library, and I should be getting all of them very soon (but not at the same time I hope - that's a little too much serious reading for me). I'm happy to see the Michael Pollan's new book is a recommend as well. His The Omnivore's Dilemma was a great read and had a very positive effect on my life. Or perhaps a good negative - it was a major contributor to me losing 60+ pounds. I skimmed this new book at the book store, and it looks just as good.