Notable Books of 2008

Posted by Lisa Rufle Nov 26, 2008

Looking for a way to decompress during the hectic holiday festivities? Winter is the perfect time to settle in with a good book and indulge in a little bit of literary pampering! Whether you are short on ideas for what to read, or you are looking to get your hands on some of the most popular books of the past year, this list covers all the bases to get the right book in your hand.

The Book Review has just released its yearly list of the 100 most notable books over the last year. This list covers a wide variety of genres including Fiction, Poetry and Nonfiction. Here is this years anticipated list:

Fiction and Poetry

• American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
• Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen
• Bass Cathedral by Nathaniel Mackey
• Beautiful Children by Charles Bock
• Beijing Coma by Ma Jian. (Translated to English by Flora Drew)
• A Better Angel: Stories by Chris Adrian
• Black Flies by Shannon Burke
• The Blue Star by Tony Earley
• The Boat by Nam Le
• Breath by Tim Winton
• Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories by Steven Millhauser
• Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles
• Diary of a Bad Year by J. M. Coet­zee
• Dictation: A Quartet by Cynthia Ozick
• Elegy: Poems by Mary Jo Bang
• The English Major by Jim Harrison
• Fanon by John Edgar Wideman
• The Finder by Colin Harrison
• Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3 by Annie Proulx
• The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti
• Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems by Juan Felipe Herrera
• His Illegal Self by Peter Carey
• Home by Marliynne Robinson
• Indignation by Philip Roth
• The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
• Legend of A Suicide by David Vann
• Life Class by Pat Barker
• Lush Life by Richard Price
• A Mercy by Toni Morrison
• Modern Life: Poems by Matthea Harvey
• A Most Wanted Man by John le Carre
• My Revolutions by Hari Kunzru
• Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
• Opal Sunset: Selected Poems 1958-2008 by Clive James
• The Other by David Guterson
• Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories by Tobias Wolff
• The Road Home by Rose Tremain
• The Sacred Book of the Werewolf by Victor Pelevin
• The School on Heart's Content Road by Carolyn Chute
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A New Verse Translation by Simon Armitage
• Sleeping it Off in Rapid City: Poems, New and Selected by August Kleinzahler
• Telex from Cuba by Rachel Kushner
• 2666 by Roberto Bolano
• Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahari
• The Unfortunates by B.S. Johnson
• When Will There be Good News? by Kate Atkinson
• The Widows of Eastwick by John Updike
• Yesterday's Weather by Anne Enright

• American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham
• Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency by Barton Gellman
• Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause by Tom Gjelten
• The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded American is Tearing Us Apart by Bill Bishop
• Blood Matters: From Inherited Illness to Designed Babies, How the World and I Found Ourselves in the Future of the Gene by Masha Gessen
• Capitol Men: The Epic Story of Reconstruction Through the Lives of the First Black Congressmen by Philip Dray
• The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight Over Presidential Power by Jonathan Mahler
• Champlain's Dream by David Hackett Fischer
• Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World by Samantha Power
• Condoleeza Rice, An American Life: A Biography by Elisabeth Bumiller
• The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer
• Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music by Ted Gioia
• Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason by Russell Shorto
• Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East by Robin Wright
• The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow
• An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken
• Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China by Leslie T. Chang
• The Forever War by Dexter Filkins
• Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention by Gary J. Bass
• A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books by Alex Beam
• Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life by John Adams
• The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Anette Gordon-Reed
• Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How it Can Renew America by Thomas L. Friedman
• The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood by Helen Cooper
• How Fiction Works by James Wood
• Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists by Susan Neiman
• The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life. His Own by David Carr
• Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America by Rick Perlstein
• Nothing to be Frightened of by Juliana Barnes
• Nureyev: The Life by Julie Kavanagh
• Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of New Hollywood by Mark Harris
• The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria
• Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions by Dan Airely
• The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse by Richard Thompson Ford
• Retribution: The Battle for Japan 1944-45 by Max Hastings
• A Secular Age by Charles Taylor
• Shakespeare's Wife by Germaine Greer
• The Superorganisim: The Beauty, Elegance and Strangeness of Insect Societies by Bert Holldobler
• Tell Me How This Ends: General David Petraeus and the Search for a Way Out of Iraq by Linda Robinson
• The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How it Changed America by David Hajdu
• They Knew They Were RIght: The Rise of Neocons by Jacob Heilbrunn
• This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust
• The Three of Us: A Family Story by Julia Blackburn
• Thrumpton Hall: A Memoir of Life in My Father's House by Miranda Seymour
• Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What it Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt
• The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers and the Great Credit Crash by Charles R. Morris
• A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World by Tony Horwitz
• Walking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson by David S. Reynolds
• While They Slept: An Inquiry into the Murder of a Family by Kathryn Harrison
• White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson by Brenda Wineapple
• The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane
• The World is What it is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul by Patrick French