The Best List of 2011

Russell Banks Copright 2011 Robert Birnbaum

As you are being besieged by the predictable onslaught of seasonal and year-end commercial and media gestures, rest assured that my list is no mere journalistic contrivance but more in the spirit of Umberto Eco’s catalogue of civilization. There is, of course, no such thing as a best list but employing such a fiction to get your attention seems reasonable to me. No?

Anyway, in no particular order:

Luminarium-Alex Shakar(Soho)
Men in the Making– Bruce Machart(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
The Sisters Brothers– Patrick Dewitt (Ecco)
The Barbarian Nurseries -Hector Tobar (FSG)
Doc– Mary Doria Russell (Random House)
Remembering Ben Clayton -Steve Harrigan (knopf)
Galore– Michael Crummey(Other Press)
The Lost Memory of Skin– Russell Banks (Ecco)
Love and Shame and Love-Peter Ormer (Little Brown)
Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self-Danielle Evans (Riverhead)
To Be Sung Underwater by Tom McNeal (Little Brown)
21: The Story of Roberto Clemente -Wilfred Santiago (Fantagraphics)
Bin Laden’s Bald Spot-Brian Doyle (Red Hen Press)
You Think That’s Bad: Stories by Jim Shepard (Knopf)
Broken Irish-Edward Delaney (Turtle Point Press)
Once the River by Bonnie Jo Campbell (WW Norton)
Rules of Civility-Amor Towles(Viking)
Chango’s Beads and Two Toned Shoes-William Kennedy (Viking)
Conquistadora– Esmeralda Santiago (Knopf)
The Cut–George Pelecanos (Reagan Arthur)

Best Books of the Year

Creating best-of lists used to be a seasonal matter, heavily skewed toward the year-end summations and not a little influenced by commercial considerations stemming from the media business’s dedication to service, uh, journalism. Now, of course, the ubiquity of lists is only tamped down by the media attention to the latest tsunmami, oil spill, nuclear disaster or impending plague or rampant contagion. And, of course, the current crime of the century.

Thus, the sins of my colleagues afford me the license to indulge in the lazy practice of forming a list. The only labor involved being under what pretense such an enumeration is entitled. And having so labored I inclined to proffer Best Books (of 2011) as the appropriate rubric. If you have a better idea, give me a yell.

The Sisters Brothers:A Novel by Patrick deWitt (Ecco)

Once Upon a River:A Novel by Bonnie Jo Campbell (W. W. Norton & Company)

To Be Sung Underwater:A Novel by Tom McNeal (Little Brown)

Rules of Civility:A Novel by Amor Towles (Viking)

Galore by Michael Crummey Other Press)

Doc:A Novel by Mary Doria Russell Random House

The Informant by Thomas Perry (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Mink River by Brian Doyle (Oregon State University Press)

Rodin’s Debutante by Ward S. Just (Houghton MIfflin Harcourt

The Pale King by David Foster Wallace (Little Brown)

Tyrant Memory by Horacio Castellanos Moya and (New Directions)

You Think That’s Bad: Stories by Jim Shepard (Knopf)

The Cut by George P. Pelecanos(Reagan Arthur Books)

Remember by Stephen Harrigan (Knopf)

Broken Irish by Edward Delaney(Turtle Point Press)

The Secret History of Costaguana by Juan Gabriel Vasquez and Anne McLean (Riverhead)