Another snore-worthy list from the ALA.
31 January 2014
I have never been a huge fan of the American Library Association.
Each year this opinion is solidified when I check out their lists of Notable Books. It's always one of the least interesting lists I come across, and this year is no exception. Here are the books they suggest:
FICTION
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Americanah
- Kate Atkinson - Life After Life
- Edwidge Danticat – Claire of the Sea Light
- Juliann Garey – Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See
- Paul Harding – Enon
- Kristopher Jansma – The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards
- Herman Koch – The Dinner
- Anthony Marra – A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
- Claire Messud – The Woman Upstairs
- Ruth Ozeki – A Tale for the Time Being
- Donna Tartt – The Goldfinch
No kidding, I find this fiction list so boring my eyes literally started wandering anywhere else across the room by the time I got to Paul Harding.
NONFICTION
- Scott Anderson – Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East
- Nicholas A. Basbanes – On Paper
- Cris Beam – To the End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care
- Daniel James Brown – The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics
- Ian Buruma – Year Zero: A History of 1945
- Sheri Fink – Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
- Margalit Fox – The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code
- Simon Garfield – On the Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks
- Robert Hilburn – Johnny Cash: the Life
- Brendan I. Koerner – The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking
- Virginia Morell – Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures
- Eric Schlosser – Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety
- Rebecca Solnit – The Faraway Nearby
Wow, I'm even worse with this list than I was with the New York Times Notable list. The only one I've read here is Sheri Fink's Five Days at Memorial.
Has anyone read any of these books? Should I read any more of them, or can I just accept that I will never want to read much of anything that the ALA wants me to?