The Best Books You’ve Never Read (61 Critics Pick Their Favorites in New York Magazine)

Looking for a good book to take on vacation instead of one of those clinkers that may end up on my list of the summer’s worst beach books? Sixty-one critics and writers pick “the best under-the-radar books of the last ten years or so” in the current issue of New York magazine (June 4) www.nymag.com/arts/books/features/2007/32390/.

The literati who chose books include Frank Rich, Katha Pollitt, Michael Cunningham, Azar Nafisi and, well, me. Rich loves Leslie Epstein’s San Remo Drive, Pollitt praises Robert Hellenga’s The Fall of a Sparrow, Cunningham went for Jonathan Baumbach’s On the Way to My Father’s Funeral and Nafisi singled out Robert M. Sapolsky’s A Primate’s Memoir: Neuroscientist’s Unconventional Life Among Baboons. I chose Guiseppe Pontiggia’s great novel of fatherhood, Born Twice, reviewed on One-Minute Book Reviews on March 8, 2007 www.oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2007/03/08. The review is archived with the March posts (and there’s a reading group guide saved in the Totally Unauthorized Reading Group Guides category).

(c) 2007 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.