New Reader List: The New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of 2021

 

A new Reader List is now available on the Lincoln City Libraries' BookGuide reader advisory resource pages -- The New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of 2021.

Don't forget -- you can submit your own short lists of recommended titles to share with others at BookGuide's Reader List page.

The New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2021
submitted in January 2022 by BookMan

I look forward to this list every year, to see whether my own reading interests cross over with the critics. Here’s the New York Times Book Review's “10 best" list for the 2021 publishing year! (BTW – I’d only read one of these, so I have a lot to look forward to!)

FICTION

How Beautiful We Were
by Imbolo Mbue

Intimacies
by Ktie Kitamura

The Love Song of W.E.B. DuBois: A Novel
by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

No One is Talking About This
by Patricia Lockwood

When We Cease to Understand the World
by Benjamin Labatut, translated by Adrian Nathan West (eBook and eAudiobook only)

NON-FICTION

The Copenhagen Trilogy
by Tove Ditlevsen, translated by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman (Biography Ditlevsen)

How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America
by Clint Smith (306.362 Smi)

Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City
by Andrea Elliott (print book on order, eBook available) 

On Juneteenth
by Annette Gordon-Reed (306.8 AfrYg)

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath
by Heather Clark (Biography – Plath)

New Reader List - A Little Left of Normal

A new Reader List is now available on BookGuide -- A Little Left of Normal. Don't forget -- you can submit your own short lists of recommended titles to share with others at BookGuide's Reader List page.

A Little Left of Normal
submitted in May 2017 by Inkie


Stories that are shrouded in the mists of Eastern Europe and beyond…

The Historian
by Elizabeth Kostova

The Swan Thieves
by Elizabeth Kostova

The Shadow Land
by Elizabeth Kostova

Time Magazine's Top Ten Fiction and Non-Fiction Books of 2013

Time Magazine's Top Fiction and Non-Fiction of 2013
submitted Jan 2014 by BookMan

Fiction

The Encyclopedia of Early Earth
by Isabel Greenberg

Lexicon
by Max Barry

The Interestings
by Meg Wolitzer

The Ocean at the End of the Lane
by Neil Gaiman

NOS4A2
by Joe Hill

The Signature of All Things
by Elizabeth Gilbert

The Lowland
by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Flamethrowers
by Rachel Kushner

Tenth of December
by George Saunders

Life After Life
by Kate Atkinson

Non-Fiction and Biographies

The Selected Letters of Willa Cather
by Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout [Biography Cather]

Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air
by Richard Holmes [387.7 Hol]

Men We Reaped: A Memoir
by Jesmyn Ward [Biography Ward]

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief
by Lawrence Wright [299.936 Wri]

Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
by Sheri Fink [362.11 Fin]

The Book of My Lives
by Aleksandar Hemon [Biography Hemon]

Forty-One False Starts
by Janet Malcolm [not in LCL collection]

The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and the Golden Age of Journalism
by Doris Kearns Goodwin [973.911 Goo]

Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident and the Illusion of Safety
by Erik Schlosser [363.17 Sch]

Book of All Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin
by Jill Lepore [Biography Mecom]

People Magazine's Top 10 Books of 2013

People Magazine's Top Ten Books of 2013

A Lincoln City Libraries' Reader List submitted January 2014 by BookMan

  Tenth of December: Stories
by George Saunders [Saunders]

The Goldfinch
by Donna Tartt [Tartt]

Going Clear
by Lawrence Wright [299.936 Wri]

The Interestings
by Meg Wolitzer [Wolitzer]

The Lowland
by Jhumpa Lahiri

Johnny Carson
by Henry Bushkin [Biography Carson]

The Husband's Secret
by Liane Moriarty [Moriarty]

Wave
by Sonali Deraniyagala [Biography Deraniyagala]

Manson
by Jeff Guinn [Biography Manson]

The Engagements
by J. Courtney Sullivan [Sullivan]

Three new Reader Lists on BookGuide - Best of 2012

Three new Reader Lists have recently been added to the resources available on the libraries' BookGuide reader resource pages. Library customer "BookMan" submitted three different "Best Of" lists from sources celebrating some of the best books of 2012. Check 'em out below

New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2012

Time Magazine's Top 10 Fiction and Non-Fiction Books of 2012

People Magazine's Top 10 Books of 2012

New Reader List - Time Magazine's Top 10 Fiction and Non-Fiction of 2012

Library customer "BookMan" has submitted a new Readerlist to the libraries' web site -- Time Magazine's Top 10 Fiction and Non-Fiction of 2012, with the following commentary: "Once again, not all are owned by the libraries but enough are that I thought people would be interested!"

If you'd like to submit a short list of book/dvd recommendations to share with other readers/viewers on the libraries' web site, please visit the Readerlists index page and click on Submit a List! We're looking for recommendations appropriate for adults and teens!

New Readerlist - Classics Revisited

Library customer "BookMan" has submitted a new Readerlist to the libraries' web site -- Classics Revisited, with the following commentary: "Although I enjoy a lot of contemporary literature, there are some literary friends I always enjoy reconnecting with!"

You can click the above link to see BookMan's list on the library website, or peruse the list of titles below:

Classics Revisited

• The Hobbit
• The Lord of the Rings trilogy
• The Old Man and the Sea
• Slaughterhouse Five
• The War of the Worlds
• A Study in Scarlet
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
• Jazz Age Stories
• A Princess of Mars
• Dune
• A Lost Lady
• The Godwulf Manuscript
• The Bourne Identity
• Treasure Island

If you'd like to submit a short list of book/dvd recommendations to share with other readers/viewers on the libraries' web site, please visit the Readerlists index page and click on Submit a List! We're looking for recommendations appropriate for adults and teens!

What's your favorite scary story?

It's October -- traditionally one of the best times for reading horror fiction. We've just updated the libraries' If You Like...Stephen King booklist on the BookGuide site. That got us to thinking...as librarians we frequently get to share reviews of some of our favorite horror novels or short story collections.

We want to know -- What are some of YOUR favorite horror novels, ghost stories, or paranormal tales? And why?!

Reply back to this post and if we can get at least 20 suggestions (contemporary or classic), we'll create a BookGuide Booklist with your favorite scary reads!

People Magazine's Top 10 Books of 2010

A Readerlist submitted in December 2010 by BookMan, based on the list of titles in People Magazine's year-end December 27, 2010 issue. You can see other Readerlists and submit your own reading/viewing/listening recommendations at the Readerlists page on BookGuide!

Room
by Emma Donoghue






The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebececca Skloot [Biography Lacks]






Freedom
by Jonathan Franzen






Life
by Keith Richards [Music 781.66 Richards]






I Remember Nothing
by Nora Ephron [305.244 Eph]






A Visit From the Goon Squad
by Jennifer Egan






Unbroken
by Laura Hillenbrand [Biography Zamperini]






Just Kids
by Patti Smith [Music 781.66 Smith]






Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1
by Mark Twain [Biography Clemens]






One Day
by David Nicholls

New Readerlist - Slate's Best Reads of 2009

A new Readerlist was submitted to the BookGuide site by reader BookMan, featuring the titles included in Slate.com's "top reads for 2009" column. Take a look, and if you've got a short thematic list of titles you'd like to recommend to other readers at BookGuide, please consider submitting it at our Readerlists page!

Slate's Best Reads for 2009
submitted May 2010 by BookMan

I enjoy the book reviews at Slate.com, and this was their compilation of their writers/editors' choices for the best titles of 2009. Although the libraries don't own a few of these, I figured readers can use Interlibrary Loan for the titles not available locally. Quite a few interesting reads here!

Endpoint and Other Poems
by John Updike [811 Upd]

A Short History of Women
by Kate Walbert

The Good Soldiers
by David Finkel [956.704 Fin]

Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi
by Geoff Dyer

The Liar's Club
by Mary Karr [Biography Karr]

Essays
by Wallace Shawn

What Are Intellectuals Good For?
by George Scialabba

Cheever: A Life
by Blake Bailey [Biography Cheever]

Too Much Happiness
by Alice Munro

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned
by Wells Tower

The Least Worst Place
by Karen Greenberg

A Gate at the Stairs
by Lorrie Moore

The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard
by J.G. Ballard

Substrate
by Jim Powell

Wolf Hall
by Hilary Mantel

Journalism's Roving Eye: A History of American Foreign Reporting
by John Maxwell Hamilton

The Anthologist
by Nicholson Baker

The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith
by Joan Schenkar

Soccernomics
by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski

Bank Notes
by Ken Habarta

The Age of Wonder
by Richard Holmes [509 Hol]

The Glass Room
by Simon Mawer

New Reader List: Western Anthologies to Check Out

Western Anthologies to Check Out!
submitted in March by Spurs

A sample of fairly recent anthologies of Western-themed short stories. A good place to start if you've never read Westerns before and what to see what they're like!

Best Stories of the American West
edited by Marc Jaffe


Black Hats
edited by Robert J. Randisi


American West
edited by Loren Estleman


A Century of Great Western Stories
edited by John Jakes


The Morrow Anthology of Great Western Short Stories
edited by John Tuska


New Writers of the Purple Sage: An Anthology of Contemporary Western Writers
edited by Russell Martin


Law of the Flying U
edited by Kate Baird Anderson


Nights of Terror
edited by Eric Frazee


The Last Mustang
edited by Bill Pronzini