Tuesday, December 23, 2008

ricklibrarian Books That Matter 2008 and Other Awards

It is that time again - the end of the year. All the major reviewing publications are issuing their best books lists, and bloggers are keeping pace with their more personalized lists. Here is what I really liked in 2008. Happy Holiday Reading!


Recent Nonfiction

At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays by Anne Fadiman

Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange's Photographs and Reports from the Field by Anne Whiston Spirn

Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment by Anthony Lewis

Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln
by John Stauffer

The Legend of Colton H. Bryant by Alexandra Fuller

The Man Whom Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus by Jashua Kendall

Mr. Adams's Last Crusade: John Quincy Adams's Extraordinary Post-Presidential Life in Congress by Joseph Wheelan

True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society by Farhad Manjoo

Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood at FDR's Polio Haven by Susan Richard Shreve

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman



Recent Fiction

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut

For the Relief of Unbearable Urges by Nathan Englander

A Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Nicholas Drayson

The Jew of Home Depot and Other Stories by Max Apple

My Fellow Americans by Keir Graff

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri



Great Old Books

The Abbess of Crewe: A Modern Morality Tale by Muriel Spark (from 1974)

Jordan County by Shelby Foote (from 1954)



Children's Books

Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai by Claire A. Nivola



Audiobook

Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat, read by Robin Miles

The Lodger Shakespeare: His Life on Silver Street by Charles Nicholl

The Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family by Martha Raddatz



Book Review Blog

Blogging for a Good Book


Library Science

Serving Teen Through Readers' Advisory by Heather Booth



Movies

Chop Shop, directed by Ramin Bahrani

Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, directed by Yimou Zhang



Music

Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss



Performance

Jeeves Intervenes: A Play from First Folio



Presentations at Conferences

Andrew Carnegie with a Yak

2 comments:

Deb Nance at Readerbuzz said...

I liked Planting the Trees of Kenya a lot, but I also liked Wangari's Trees of Peace. I can't decide which I liked more.

maggie moran said...

Great lead on movies and titles! I'll be ordering heavy when I get back to work! :) Merry Christmas to you and your family!