Tag Archives: New York Times

These are the best?

December 11, 2007 By in Books, Culture, Links Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

I’ve looked at the New York Times‘ 100 Notable Books of 2007 with special attention to the fiction and can’t help but wonder if this is the best we’ve got. I discussed The Abstinence Teacher here and here, but Perrotta was better live than in print. The Bad Girl never lived at all; Harry Potter might have improved with age but I’m not about to find out. House of Meetings was better as history and essay than novel and The Savage Detectives overrated. I read five pages of Tree of Smoke in a bookstore and suspect B.R. Myers‘ slam is probably deserved. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union was likable but not lovable.

Of the books listed, On Chesil Beach deserved its place, as did The Indian Clerk (more on that in the next few days). Of the ones I discussed in the paragraph above, a few were outright bad, but most were as The Indian Clerk says of the novels of Henry James: “[…] I admire them yet I cannot love them” (italics in original). So I feel about most picks from The New York Times, which, even if I admire them, I can’t really see how they would inspire love.

That brings us to the New York Times‘ 10 best books, with two fiction books of limited interest to me, two already discussed, and one that I actually plan to read: Joshua Ferris’ Then We Came to the End. The nonfiction was better, with Jeffrey Toobin’s The Nine and Alex Ross’ The Rest is Noise, a book en route after I read a chapter online.

These year end lists—there are too many to bother linking to most—remind me how important the Everyman’s Library and Library of America are, as both feature excellent quality in thought and production; I suspect that I, like many others, will return to the books in their catalogs long after most copies of Harry Potter have been pulped and resurrected as grocery bags.

EDIT: Added a link to The Indian Clerk.

CEO libraries

December 5, 2007 By in Books, Life, Links Tags: , , , ,

I normally expect to find book discussions in the Books or Arts sections of The New York Times, but last July they ran an article in the Business section called “C.E.O. Libraries Reveal Keys to Success.” A friend reminded me of it and by extension its most ludicrous assertion: “Ken Lopez, a bookseller in Hadley, Mass., says it is impossible to put together a serious library on almost any subject for less than several hundred thousand dollars.” What? Several hundred thousand dollars? How does Mr. Lopez define “serious?” The answer might in part be “expensive,” judging from his line of business: “We deal in rare books, specializing in modern literary first editions.”

I sent him a link to this post and my query about his definition, and if I hear back I’ll post his response.

UPDATE: I posted Mr. Lopez’s response here, and, as too often happens, things are not as they appeared.

Martin Amis

January 20, 2007 By in Books, Links Tags: , , , ,

The New York Times loves Martin Amis’ new novel, House of Meetings, which rather heartens me because I agree with Kakutani’s low assessment of his last few novels. But his best stuff—and here I’m thinking of Money, mentioned in my comments about The Player—cements his reputation, and even his worst is at least serious. Next Friday he’ll be in Seattle. In the meantime, enjoy this Q&A. Sample:

The phrase “horrorism”, which you invented to describe 9/11, is unintentionally hilarious. Have you got any more? JONATHAN BROOKS, by email

Yes, I have. Here’s a good one (though I can hardly claim it as my own): the phrase is “fuck off”.

And:

How do you think you might have ended up spending your working life if your father hadn’t been a famous writer? JOHN GORDON, Eastleigh

Well, John, that would depend on what my father had chosen to do instead. If he had been a postman, then I would have been a postman. If he had been a travel agent, then I would have been a travel agent. Do you get the idea?

There are serious answers too, though all of them have at least something comic about them, which, as Robertson Davies does, should be distinguished from funny or silly.