An email from Amazon arrived yesterday announcing their Best Books of 2007 lists. This is an earlier-than usual opening of the "Year's Best" season, in which every publication in the universe produces a list of the N best Whatever of the past year, but with the Christmas shopping season now starting before Halloween, I suppose this is only to be expected.
Amazon helpfully provides both a list of bestsellers, and an Editor's Picks list of the Best Books of 2007:
- A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7), J. K. Rowling
- The World Without Us, Alan Weisman
- The Dangerous Book for Boys, Conn Iggulden
- Heartsick, Chelsea Cain
- Tree of Smoke: A Novel, Denis Johnson
- A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Ishmael Beah
- Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, Atul Gawande
- I Am America (And So Can You!), Stephen Colbert
I look at that list, and all I can say is "Wow. What a terrible list."
I've read exactly one of those books. There's one unread book that I definitely want, and one other that seems vaguely interesting, and that's pretty much it. Their Science Fiction and Fantasy list isn't a whole lot better. The Science picks are the best of the lists I looked at, but I've still only read one of the ten, and while some of the others look interesting, realistically, I probably wouldn't get around to reading them any time soon.
These are, of course, only the first of approximately a billion of these lists to come, but it's got to be possible to do better. So, what should I be considering for the real Best Books of 2007?
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Try Zubrin's new book, "Energy Victory", assuming you can find a copy of it. It's about renewable fuels.
I think the second sentence should cause you to reconsider the first.
I think it's very interesting that Deathly Hollows is the 3rd best book of the year, but doesn't even PLACE in the top 10 fantasy books of the year. Wha-HUH?
I think the second sentence should cause you to reconsider the first.
That was phrased somewhat badly, but the point is not just that I haven't read them, but that I have absolutely no interest in reading seven of the books on that list. The one I have read, I didn't like all that much, and the other two are in the "If somebody gives this to me for Christmas, I'll be happy, but I'm not going to buy it for myself."
It continues in that basic vein, but I was too lazy to transcribe the rest of the titles. Basically, the list is an incredibly bad match for my tastes and interests.
Jeff Vandermeer, who put together the top 10 SF/F list, talks more about his choices here