The Writer’s Coin

So after writing about the different lists and how much I like lists of the “best books of the year,” I run into this nifty little list of lists that brings together a whole bunch of top ten lists and adds up the scores, creating one list that kind of keeps track of all the books in a manageable way.

I’ve been looking at all the top books for 2006 and I’ve decided I’m going to read all the books on this list of lists. It’s a goal and I think it’s a good one. Tree of Smoke I’ve been looking forward to for a while (#1) and they have one of my favorites at #2 (Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao) and #3 I’ve ordered from the library already (Then We Came to the End—please note the first sentence from the PW review: “In this wildly funny debut from former ad man Ferris, a group of copywriters and designers at a Chicago ad agency face layoffs at the end of the ’90s boom.” I know, I know!)

A couple of them will be a challenge: M read Yiddish Policeman’s Union and hated it. She read me some parts of it and I wasn’t very enthused, so I have a negative slant coming in. Not good. Then there is the much-talked-about Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño. It’s a translation so I think I’ll read the Spanish version (I hate translation unless I absolutely must), which we’ll see how I like.

I’m also looking forward to The World Without Us, which I’ve heard a lot about and saw the author on the Colbert Report a few weeks back.

I’m also committing myself to the NYT’s 10 best books of 2007. A lot of the same ones are repeated but there is some new non fiction in there that’s been talked about a lot (The Nine)

Let the reading begin!

*Update: I ended up not reading a lot of those books, but I did come up with some pretty good ones to recommend.

Tags: best books, goals