The New York Times has printed 100 Notable Books for 2007. I’ve read 5, including Ian MacEwan’s slender On Chesil Beach, the hefty Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson, and Don Delillo’s midsized Falling Man. The others, I’ve both read and reviewed — Twenty Grand by Rebecca Curtis and The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta.
There are several others that are in my to-be-read pile or wish-I-owned hypothetical pile or started-but-haven’t finished pile. And I’m not the only one.
What’s funny is that the NY Times only includes books on its list which it deigned to review in the first place. The paper didn’t look beyond its own review pool to consider books that might be “notable.”
Thirteen read here, and very disappointed (but not too surprised) to see genre so thoroughly underrepresented. To deal with the base inadequacies of this list at length is to eke out time that I do not have right now. Probably for the best.