"Notable" Books 2005
The NY Times has a list of 100 "notable" books for the year. A friend was over a few weeks ago and after seeing my shelves made a curt remark about my not having read1 "half of them," so I've been guilted into caging my urge to keep stocking my shelves. That doesn't prevent me, however, from putting the following on my radar:
Never Let Me Go - by Kazuo Ishiguro, probably best known for The Remains of the Day. I like the anomaly that is Ishiguro, a Japanese man who gets the English better, or more than they care to, themselves.
On Beauty - by Zadie Smith. After trying and not really getting into White Teeth, I think this will be a bit of an easier book to connect with - set in the US, jabbing at the conservative and the liberal, establishment and hip hop. Glowing reviews and a great interview on Fresh Air.
Prep - by Curis Sittenfeld. It's a good story, and especially for people like me who have this unhealthy fascination with establishment, Ivy League, and Prep school, it's a good morality tale. For a while I'd read a chapter each time I found the time in Barnes & Nobles.
Freakanomics - Levitt and Dubner. From the abstract: "economic thinking [about] everything from sumo wrestlers who cheat to legalized abortion and the falling crime rate." But the chapter that got me was on baby names and how they relate to economic well being. The moral, of course, is not to name your child an expletive [warning on language for those likely to be offended].
1By the way, I have read more than half of them, and if I include the ones I've partially read I'd say more than two-thirds. Just to save face...
2:23:47 PM 
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