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)
ourmaninboston 