I love end of year round ups. In fact, I largely base my success as a human against Pitchfork’s annual list. I love to see what everyone has been reading, or listening to, or watching. I like to see if there have been any gems I may have missed over the previous 365 days.
Mostly, however, I like to make shallow and massively subjective character appraisals of people I’ve never met based solely on their choices. With that I mind, Alan, Sarah and I have asked a bunch of people we do know what they think was the best book of 2008 and as we are all way ahead of the curve here at Penguin, we also asked them to pick a real beauty that’s coming next year too.
So what are my choices, well, 2008 was a strong year for literature, vintage one might say, so it is hard to choose, but Junot Diaz’ exceptionally funny, moving, vibrant and exciting The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Steve Toltz’ A Fraction of the Whole and Joshua Ferris’ And Then We Came to the End are the pick of the bunch for me. It is reassuring to know that while tragically we will not be reading anything new from the great, late David Foster Wallace, that there is plenty of new talent out there to pick up the slack. And from next year, well, I am so damn excited about Dave Eggers’ novelisation of Where The Wild Things Are (The Wild Things) that I could literally explode.
There you have it, judge away.
Matt Clacher, Literary Marketing Executive
Book of the Year
A friend recommended Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama in the spring. Like all those people whom I've recommended the book to since, at first I couldn't believe that a modern politician could also be a great writer (most people say, when you say how brilliant the book is, 'Did he really write it?'). It now seems an utterly predictable book to have as a book of the year but it truly is a breathtaking read: moving, beautifully written, angry and honest. It reminded me of the writing of James Baldwin. It is one of the best memoirs I've read in recent years.
Hot Tip for Next Year
Colm Tóibín has been a favourite writer of mine for many years and his new novel, Brooklyn, is his finest book to date. If you've never read him before, read this one - you'll be blown away. It is about lost love and being far from home, about personal freedom vs. duty. It is a novel of devastating emotional power. I absolutely loved it and would recommend it to EVERYONE.
Mary Mount, Editorial Director, Viking
Book of the Year
Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama was the memoir that took me by surprise in 2008: well written and absorbing, it details an eye-poppingly odd life story and inheritance. Barack Obama reveals himself an immensely thoughtful man, someone whose parentage forced him to confront and interpret all the the traumas of the twenty-first century - race, religion, violence, education, poverty. Having read it, I can't wait to see what he does now...
In fiction, to my astonishment (I thought my girly taste would get in the way) I loved Cormac McCarthy's The Road. It made me cry, and made me think about religion (or the lack of it) and the nature of goodness.
Hot Tip for Next Year
I think The Help by Kathryn Stockett is the most assured debut I have seen (and am thrilled to be publishing) in years. It weaves riveting personal and public history to make an epic, funny, angry, brilliantly plotted novel with characters you'll never forget and it has everything my girly heart yearns for in the way it depicts women's relationships with each other. Those comparisons that have been made comparing Stockett to Harper Lee and Alice Walker aren't out of place.
Juliet Annan, Publishing Director, Fig Tree
Book of the Year
The Rain Before it Falls by Jonathan Coe
Hot Tip for Next Year
Dine with fine wine in two thousand and nine.
Danielle Innes, Web-Editor, Spinbreakers
Book of the Year
Of non-Penguins I enjoyed Patrick French's eye-wateringly revealing biography of V.S. Naipaul and Jonathan Wilson's very clever history of football tactics, Inverting the Pyramid (which should have won the William Hill Sports Book Prize rather than the ghosted "autobiography" which did) but I'll plump for Alex Ross's The Rest Is Noise. Much of the musical analysis was way above my head - there were literally whole paragraphs I didn't understand - but the biographical and historical stuff was fascinating. The portrait of Sibelius sitting in his forest stringing along America orchestras by accepting commissions and never delivering whilst drinking his way through crates of wine and brandy was funny and heart-breaking at the same time.
Of Penguins, like a lot of other people I read Galbraith's account of The Great Crash and I'm now halfway through Michael Lewis's Panic. The only feasible response is to slit one's throat.
Hot Tip for Next Year
Next year I'm really looking forward to Alan Beattie's False Economy (Viking, June) which I haven't read but which sounds fascinating, apparently answering questions like how did the United States become richer than Argentina and why countries rich in resources are often so poor. Then of course there is a fantastic new novel from Nick Hornby in the autumn but I can't decently plug one of my own titles!
Tony Lacey, Publishing Director, Viking
Book of the Year
I love short stories and Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock is a brutal collection from this year. The American Dream doesn’t seem to exist in Pollock’s small-town portrait: if you get out you’re just on the run from something you’ll never escape. Most likely an amphetamine-riddled trucker who wants to dress you up as his sister and slow-dance with you.
Hot Tip for Next Year
For 2009, people at Penguin have been talking about Rawi Hage’s Cockroach for a while now, and with good reason. The most direct antecedents are Kafka and Camus but Hage’s transmogrative, phantasmagorical prose is all on its own in English at the moment. I’m looking forward to reading Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden when it’s out here, which won Canada’s equivalent of the Booker in 2008. I also think Ed O’Loughlin’s Not Untrue & Not Unkind could surprise a few people when it comes to awards lists later in the year.
Joe Pickering, Press Officer, Literary
Part two coming tomorrow.
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This is a great post (along with Part II). Thanks for taking the time to put it together.
I particularly like the sound of Mary's future recommendation - Colm Tóibín's Brooklyn (looks real tasty), and Joe's recommendation for Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock (I'm a real sucker for short stories :o)).
Posted by: Robert Burdock | December 17, 2008 at 11:11 PM
Great series! Pleased DFW got a mention; 2008 was made a little more gloomy with the loss of his talent. His essays still make more sense to me than most else I read.
Excited to hear about Brooklyn; will definitely add that to 2009's wish list. Meanwhile, seems there's a lot to catch up with from 2008.
Posted by: Stephen | December 18, 2008 at 05:51 PM
We bibliophiles seem to love lists, so I thank you for giving us such an excellent new list to argue about this December!
On a technical note, this post contains a number of non-standard characters (mostly apostrophes) most likely pasted from a word processor. They look fine on this page, but they appear as ??? in Google Reader.
I thought I'd bring it to your attention, since a number of this blog's fans (myself included) read new posts in Google Reader.
Posted by: David Stamm | December 19, 2008 at 06:58 PM