National Book Critics Circle's Good Reads Winter List

The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) has been around for 34 years and during that time has remained dedicated to honoring quality writing in the national community and developing a membership consisting of over 700 active book reviewers. The NBCC put this question to consumers, book sellers, critics, etc.: what are smart readers not just buying, but reading and recommending to their friends, roommates, coworkers and anyone they can collar? The results of that poll were put to a vote of the NBCC membership and have been refined down to the following Good Reads Winter List! The NBCC will now be releasing a Good Reads list quarterly.

Fiction
1. Denis Johnson / Tree of Smoke
2. Junot Diaz / The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
3. J.M. Coetzee / Diary of a Bad Year
4. Geraldine Brooks / People of the Book
5. Steve Erickson / Zeroville

Nonfiction
1. Alex Ross / The Rest Is Noise
2. Edwidge Danticat / Brother, I’m Dying
3. Michael Pollan / In Defense of Food
4. Oliver Sacks / Musicophilia
5. Naomi Klein / The Shock Doctrine

Poetry
1. Mary Jo Bang / Elegy
2. Robert Hass / Time and Materials
3. Robert Pinsky / Gulf Music
4. Zbigniew Herbert / The Collected Poems, 1956–1998
5. Toby Barlow / Sharp Teeth

Happy Reading!

htw