Monday, December 10, 2007

NY Times Books of the Year

The Sunday NY Times choose their books of the year for 2007. I have only skimmed one of them but in the spirit of Pierre Bayard, whose book I have also so far just flipped through, I can recommend The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño. This book required more attention than I could give it at the time and had to return it to the library. It is worth the effort.

Former Iowa Writer's Workshop author Denis Johnson made the list in addition to winning a National Book Award for his tale of Vietnam Tree of Smoke. There is one notable exception to heaps of praise this book has received. A different take from B.R. Meyers in Atlantic monthly was republished here at Powell's Books website. Is this a hatchet job or is the emperor naked? I am suspicious of some of Meyers' claims but I still need to read the book. Or at least skim it.

How about a Christmas song? Here is one from the compilation Stockings by the Fire (Its in a Windows media format as I having some mp3 conversion issues. Thanks to a friend I am now the proud owner of a ten year old Gateway laptop Pentium III running Windows 98 so I have some compatibility issues but I am grateful for the computer as my former desktop is dead.) Anyway let me know if there are any issues. I will try and put up some more holiday songs.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer- Jack Johnson

3 comments:

El Duderino said...

So do any of these tomes have the "Dexter Recommends" seal of approval?

Unknown said...

I will have to think about what I read this year and do a post. Other than the 2 I have not read any of the others.

Churlita said...

I've liked everything else of his that I've read. But I haven't heard much about this particular novel.