I've been reading lots of year-end "best of" lists, from serious outlets that is, and these are the books which I see recurring with special frequency:
1. Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science.
2. Cheever: A Life, by Blake Bailey.
3. David Grann, The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon.
4. Gordon Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic.
5. Columbine, by David Cullen.
8. By Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City.
9. Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World.
10. Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, by Terry Teachout.
I thought all of those were well done but Lords of Finance was the only one I loved. My favorites are here and Lords arguably would be third on that non-fiction list of two. In fairness to the authors I've only browsed Gordon Wood (report coming soon) and I haven't yet read Pops but suspect I might like it very much (report coming soon).
If you wish, you can dig into some of the book source lists I used for this meta-list here. Have someone ready to throw you a rope.
Here are some "best albums" lists, if you wish to wade through those. They are harder to aggregate and I haven't found a useful way of doing it.
Tyler, I’ve seen through your dining guide schtick. It is just a way of expressing your take on being a modern, anti-urban free trader cosmopolitan.
I’ve also learned your rhetorical tricks (push an argument one step too far so the commentators get all frothy).
So why is it I still like your book picks?
Metacric does the aggregation for you; they haven’t yet compiled their list of 2009 top-ten lists so that link is to last year’s; make sure you scroll down to the bottom for a nice graphical overview of which albums are on many lists.
They do the same thing for movies, DVDs, and video games, but sadly not for books. It’s an invaluable resource for selecting movies to watch, I use it for that purpose frequently.
Charlie–You know these are not Tyler’s own picks, right?
I’m confused by the numbering. Does it mean anything? If so, where are #6 and #7?
Comments on this entry are closed.