This is one of my favorite lists uncovered so far — Library Journal’s Best Books of 2008! It’s not separated into fiction or non-fiction categories, and there are several different titles chosen here than on any other academic-like lists I’ve seen lately! I don’t know who likes all of the obvious, pretentious selections. That being said, I’ve still not read any of these books . . . but I have a new starting point when figuring out what will be on my challenge list for 2009!
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Library Journal’s Best Books of 2008
Say You’re One of Them. –Akpan, Uwem.
The Hakawati. –Alameddine, Rabih.
The Wasted Vigil. –Aslam, Nadeem.
The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman’s Fight To Save the World’s Most Beautiful Bird. –Barcott, Bruce.
All We Ever Wanted Was Everything. –Brown, Janelle.
The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life. His Own. –Carr, David.
This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. –Faust, Drew Gilpin.
Split: A Memoir of Divorce. –Finnamore, Suzanne.
Hurry Down Sunshine: A Memoir. –Greenberg, Michael.
Shakespeare’s Wife. –Greer, Germaine.
What Do We Do Now? A Workbook for the President-Elect. –Hess, Stephen.
My Guantánamo Diary: The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me. –Khan, Mahvish Rukhsana.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. –Larsson, Stieg.
The Boat. –Le, Nam.
The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food. –Lee, Jennifer.
Lavinia. –Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Given Day. –Lehane, Dennis.
Books: A Memoir. –McMurtry, Larry.
A Mercy. –Morrison, Toni.
John Lennon: The Life. –Norman, Philip.
The Painter of Battles. –Pérez-Reverte, Arturo.
The Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century World Architecture.
Home. –Robinson, Marilynne.
Cost. –Robinson, Roxana.
Indignation. –Roth, Philip.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. –Shaffer, Mary Ann & Annie Barrows.
Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape. –Shehadeh, Raja.
How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone. –Saša Stanišic.
Edward Steichen: Lives in Photography. –Steichen, Edward (photogs.) & Todd Brandow & others (text).
Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural. –Steinmeyer, Jim.
Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators. –Stolzenburg, William.
Olive Kitteredge. –Strout, Elizabeth.
Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us). –Vanderbilt, Tom.
Without a Backward Glance. –Veitch, Kate.
Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon-and the Journey of a Generation. –Weller, Sheila.
How Fiction Works. –Wood, James.
The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life. –Zimbardo, Philip & John Boyd.
I’ve only read 1 of those, but I have 2 of them in my TBR pile.