After recently publishing its list of 100 Notable Books of 2007, The New York Times has narrowed things down and selected The 10 Best Books of 2007 — five fiction, and five nonfiction. Have a look.
100 Notable Books of 2007
Gift buying season is now officially upon us. If books are part of your gift buying plan, then have a look at this list just published by The New York Times. The 100 books listed here include fiction, poetry and nonfiction. Among others, you’ll find Philip Roth’s latest book, Exit Ghost, and I mention it simply because you may want to listen to an interview with Roth that aired earlier this week (iTunes — MP3 — Feed — Web Site).
You should also spend some time looking at our list of Life-Changing Books, all of which were selected by our readers this fall. Definitely some good, time-tested reads on this list.
Finally, a quick heads up: Apple is running a one day sale, which gives up to $100 off some computers and $30 off iPod classics. Plus there’s free shipping on all products. If you have Apple products on your holiday list, then it may be worth your time. Again, the sale ends at midnight.
Amazon’s New eBook Reader is Out
The Kindle, Amazon’s new eBook reader, is just now hitting the streets. The promo video below overviews its basic features, including the Kindle’s “paper-like” screen, ergonomic design, and free wireless access to content. As you’ll see, the $399 reader, which holds 200 books, promises to succeed where other digital readers have failed — to offer a satisfying reading experience and unlock the potentially large digital books market.
Not surprisingly, Amazon is backing the Kindle’s launch with a fair amount of marketing. Videos on the Amazon site feature Toni Morrison, a Nobel Prize Winner, talking up the Kindle. Then, there are these comments by Michael Lewis, a bestselling author, “It’s so simple you could be a moron and it works.” “It takes no intelligence at all. Anybody who can read a book can function with this thing.” “It’s easier on the eye than the printed word.” “[A]fter about — I’m telling you! — 5 minutes, you cease to think, ‘I’m looking at a screen.’ It’s not like looking at a computer screen.”
A notable downside to the Kindle (one that’s pointed out by ZDNet) is the cost to access content. Books usually go for $9.99 or less, which is perfectly reasonable. But you’ll pay $9.99 to $14.99 per month for newspaper subscriptions, $1.99 to $2.99 for monthly magazine subscriptions, and 99 cents per month to subscribe to individual blogs. This is all pretty illogical, given that most of this content is otherwise free on the web.
If you get your hands on the Kindle, definitely let us know what you think.
20+ Public Domain E‑Book Sources
Mashable has posted a list of over 20 sites from where you can download lots of e‑books, and it’s all apparently legal. Here’s the list.
Want free audiobooks? Check out this collection.
Norman Mailer Dies at 84 in NYC
Read The New York Times obit and see a slideshow.
Below you can catch a home-brewed video of Mailer reading from his last novel, The Castle in the Forest, which came out early this year.
Reading Great Books with The New York Times (Starting with War & Peace)
Earlier this month, The New York Times Book Review launched an online Reading Room that lets readers tackle great books with the help of “an all-star cast of panelists from various backgrounds—authors, reviewers, scholars and journalists.” The first reading starts with Leo Tolstoy’s 1200+ page epic, War and Peace (1865–69), and it’s led by book review editor Sam Tanenhaus and a supporting crew consisting of Bill Keller (executive editor of The Times), Stephen Kotkin (a Russian history professor at Princeton), Francine Prose (author of Reading Like a Writer), and Liesl Schillinger (a regular reviewer for the Book Review).
At the outset, Sam Tanenhaus’ introduction leaves the impression that the “Reading Room” will offer a fairly structured reading of Tolstoy’s text. But that’s not exactly how things turn out. Often quite fragmentary, the conversation mostly operates outside the text itself and veers in many different, though often intriguing, directions. At one moment, Francine Prose tells us that Tolstoy’s account of the Napoleonic wars reminds her of today’s war in Iraq. For Bill Keller, it evokes the waning days of the Soviet Union. And, for Liesl Schillinger, it’s her youth in 1970s America. (You can get a feel for the flow and focus of the discussion here.) Ultimately, what you think of this new project depends on what you want to get out of the experience. If it’s a more structured reading (as we were hoping), then you may not be completely engaged. But if it’s a more free-flowing conversation that moves in and around great works, then you’ll want to join the conversation. And, yes, there’s a role there for the everyday reader too. Take a look at the Reading Room and let us know what you think.
Related Posts:
- Freakonomics Moves to The New York Times
- The New York Times “Opens Up” at Midnight
- Book Chapters Presented by The New York Times
Timely Talk About Fire
It’s been an unspeakably bad week throughout much of fire-ravaged Southern California. As of Thursday, the toll looked liked this: 500,000 acres burned; 1,800 homes destroyed; 57 people injured and at least six killed. As all of this transpires, a new book has come out that gives you an inside look at firefighters who make their living battling natural wildfires. On the Fireline: Living and Dying with Wildland Firefighters is written by Matthew Desmond, who spent four years tackling these blazes. And, in this lengthy free excerpt you get graphically exposed to the risks and losses that they experience professionally and personally. It certainly makes you feel for the firefighters on the frontlines this week, and we wish them and our fellow Californians the best.
Essential Books for the Critic’s Library
The National Book Critics Circle has a blog and they’ve asked some of the country’s best literary critics to list the “five books a critic believes reviewers should have in their libraries.” The series provides a new list every week, and so far the choices are interesting not just for the books picked (and some of the overlaps in picks), but also for the explanations that the critics offer for their choices. Here’s John Updike on Eric Auerbach’s Mimesis:
a stunningly large-minded survey from Homer and the Old Testament up to Woolf and Joyce. Quoting a lengthy paragraph or two from each classic, Auerbach gives us an essential history of, as his subtitle has it, “the Representation of Reality in Western Literature.”
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