by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian
Do you enjoy seeing the lists of the best books of the
year? I have always loved any kind of best-of,
awards, or honor list. There are just so
many books, movies, television shows, and songs out there; I enjoy guides to
the best ones. And of course some of the
fun is in the debate about what was chosen and what was left off.
There are many publications and companies that produce lists
of their best books of the year. Publishers Weekly, a trade journal for
people who work with books, has a top ten list for the year, plus lists of the
best in many categories, including lifestyle, religion, and comics. Library
Journal does the same, but with even more categories beyond its top ten,
such as the best sci-tech, young adult literature for adults, and memoir. The Minneapolis
Star Tribune calls its end-of-year book list the holiday gift guide. That’s uniquely useful to us because they
include a list of Minnesota-related books.
And the major booksellers, Amazon and Barnes & Noble, produce lists
of the best books of the year that they publish on their websites. You’ll find that we have many of this year’s
most wonderful books at the Litchfield Library.
I will highlight for you a few that have been on more that one of these
lists this year.
Minnesota author Louise Erdrich’s The Round House won this year’s National Book Award for
fiction. It was also featured by the Star Tribune and named by Amazon as one
of the best of the year. Sometimes
compared with To Kill a Mockingbird,
this novel tells a story of injustice and vengeance. An Ojibwe woman is attacked on a reservation
in North Dakota and is so traumatized that she will not share the details with anyone. Her husband, a judge, is unable to bring
about justice, so her teenage son sets out with his friends to find the
answers.
Behind the Beautiful
Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity won the 2012 National
Book Award for nonfiction. This is
author Katherine Boo’s first book, although she writes for the New Yorker and
has won a Pulitzer Prize. Boo’s husband
is from India. The book tells the
stories of people living in a slum next to the Mumbai International Airport, near
new, luxurious hotels. Boo spent three
years reporting on the lives of this group of people, whose poverty-stricken existence
we can hardly imagine. This book is on
nearly every “best” list of 2012.
Bring Up the Bodies
is Hilary Mantel’s sequel to Wolf Hall. It won the 2012 Man Booker Prize, which is a
British book award, and it has been on most American lists of the best books of
the year. This is the second book of a
trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s chief minister, but it can be read
alone. It focuses on the arrest, trial,
and execution of Anne Boleyn from Cromwell’s point of view.
Billy Lynn’s Long
Halftime Walk is a modern novel about soldiers at a Thanksgiving Day football
game at Texas Stadium. They have become
stars because of news coverage of their firefight with Iraqi insurgents, so
they’re on a media tour to boost support for the war. Billy Lynn and his squad mates rub elbows
with wealthy businessmen, Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, a Hollywood producer, and
Beyonce, while feeling painfully conflicted about the wartime experiences from
which they have just returned. Author
Ben Fountain has been praised for this “inspired, blistering war novel” by the
New York Times and others.
When you read one of those lists of the best books of the
year and something intriguing catches your eye, take a look in our catalog or
ask a librarian for help. We’ll be happy
to loan you a copy to read for yourself.
