Best Fiction
Anne Enright, THE FORGOTTEN WALTZ
Chad Harbach, THE ART OF FIELDING
Roberto Bolaño, 2666 [not 2011]
David Foster Wallace, THE BROOM OF THE SYSTEM [not 2011]
Jennifer Egan, A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD [not 2011]
Edie Meidav, LOLA, CALIFORNIA
Tom Perrotta, THE LEFTOVERS
Joseph Heller, CATCH-22 [not 2011]
Michael Ondaatje, THE ENGLISH PATIENT [not 2011]
Arthur Phillips, THE TRAGEDY OF ARTHUR
Best Fiction With An Asterisk
Jeffrey Eugenides, THE MARRIAGE PLOT
Best Nonfiction
Tom Scocca, BEIJING WELCOMES YOU
Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly, ALL THINGS SHINING
Susan Orlean, RIN TIN TIN
Best Unfinished Work
David Foster Wallace, THE PALE KING
Best Memoir, Just One This Year
Vera Brittain, TESTAMENT OF YOUTH
Page-Turners of Awesome: The Stieg Larsson "Failed To Finish GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST" Memorial Category
Glen David Gold, CARTER BEATS THE DEVIL
Douglas Kennedy, THE MOMENT
Modern Library of Yes, We're Still Doing This Thing
JP Donleavy, THE GINGER MAN
Joseph Heller, CATCH-22
Joseph Conrad, LORD JIM
V.S. Naipaul, A BEND IN THE RIVER
Best Books With Not-The-Best Endings
Manuel Munoz, WHAT YOU SEE IN THE DARK
Teddy Wayne, KAPITOIL
John O'Hara, A RAGE TO LIVE
Saddest Ending
Stephen Kelman, PIGEON ENGLISH
Best Book Endings
James Hynes, NEXT
Roberto Bolaño, 2666
Tom Scocca, BEIJING WELCOMES YOU
Creepiest Premise
Drew Magary, THE POSTMORTAL
Best Villains, Maniacal Laugh, Maniacal Laugh!!!
Italian law enforcement and magistrates in Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi's THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE (even the potential killers weren't as menacing!)
Most Surprising
Hannah Pittard, THE FATES WILL FIND THEIR WAY
Jim Knipfel, THE BLOW-OFF
Bella Pollen, THE SUMMER OF THE BEAR
Michael Ondaatje, THE ENGLISH PATIENT
3 comments:
ooh, I am just finishing Broom of the System right now. I like it a lot. I don't love it quite as much as his other stuff. It is like the definition of "flashes of brilliance." The treatment of psychologists and private colleges are brilliant, and I really enjoy the digressive "submission" stories.
But it feels weighed down by unnecessary bits like the parts of RV's fiction about Fieldbinder and basically the whole Vlad the Impaler plot.
Yeah, it feels a little overstuffed, along the lines of "Let me put all the things I've been saving up for a novel in THIS novel!" Even so, I can't believe he wrote it while he was still in college.
It's interesting to think about the leap from Broom of the System to Infinite Jest. On a word-for-word basis, they both seem to be at basically the same level--the language is impossibly erudite and clever. But it's the stuff behind the words--the sentiment, the intentions, all the stuff that's hard to talk about--that makes Infinite Jest a far superior work. Not that Broom is bad at all. It's a good-vs-great type thing.
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