The banality of the NY Times YEAR'S BEST BOOKS list

What's so banal about a massive gun massacre of teenagers?

Mostly, I'm happy to see they chose so many books by women and persons-of-colour.

Laer Carroll said:

The New York Times recently published its year's end annual YEAR'S 10 BEST BOOKS list for 2015. Reading through the descriptions I got the impression of them being selected by modern-day Puritans. These are all books which are Good For You. They will make you a Better Person.

Click to expand...

I haven't read any of them yet, but I have three on my Xmas list:

Between the World and Me -- Ta-Nehisi Coates
H is for Hawk -- Helen Macdonald
The Invention of Nature -- Andrea Wulf

I could do with being a Better Person.

Some of those look good. Not the sort of thing I tend to read usually, but that might mean it's a good idea to try a couple. I agree that the author diversity is greater than what I've come to expect from recommended readings from the New York Times.

I'm into SF and F, so here's a list of "year's best SFF" from the Washington Post. It's only five books, but it's nice that the list has 3/5 female authors they aren't all white.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/ente...65d9e8-7902-11e5-b9c1-f03c48c96ac2_story.html

I haven't read any of these books yet, though I've read things by Jemisin, Robinson, and Mieville before. Cool to see two new (to me, at least) authors mentioned.

I've read two on the list and they were pretty amazing ... I wouldn't say they were 'banal' at all!

Loved H is for Hawk, and Invention of Nature.

I wish I had time to read (and funds to buy) this much! and I would love to hear a bit more about the books from some of you who have read any of these. The title Invention of Nature particularly tweaks my interest.

I know, I can go to the Times and read descriptions of the books but that's never as fun as hearing from a reader here. As well, several lists have come out at once (as they do this time of year, probably for the sake of people's holiday shopping and the revenue that generates) and I admit I have only skimmed the lists.

ETA: I just looked at the Times' list and remembered I did scan it a few days ago. The collection of short stories by Lucia Berlin, A Manual for Cleaning Women, looks interesting also. Anyone read that one yet?

And by the way, just for the sake of accuracy, here is a definition of "banality" from Merriam-Webster:

: something that is boring or ordinary; especially : an uninteresting statement : a banal remark
: the quality of being ordinary or banal

Click to expand...

Laer Carroll said:

The New York Times recently published its year's end annual YEAR'S 10 BEST BOOKS list for 2015. Reading through the descriptions I got the impression of them being selected by modern-day Puritans. These are all books which are Good For You. They will make you a Better Person.

Disagree about this qualification of the books? Did one of the books especially intrigue you? Give you joy? Food for thought? Stay with you for the whole year?

Don't stick with the NY Times lists if you prefer. Consult any of this year's best books lists, or none at all. Choose ONE book which you felt was terrific this last year. What was it? Why did you choose it?

Click to expand...

YYeah, Puritans are horrible people, doing those good things all the time. Such people should be shot on sight. And why would any sane person want to read a book that's good for them? And who on earth wants to be a better person? Why, the very thought of becoming a better person is repugnant.

You might try actually reading the books on this list before making a judgment. Judging a book by its synopsis is as silly as judging it by its cover. I don't know how in God's name you can call any of the books on this list "banal". Do you even know what the word means? If you do, then tell me how a book about the Norway mass killing can be banal? Did the shooter lack originality? Was he supposed to find some original way of killing all those people?

I've read several of these books, and there's nothing banal about any of them. H Is for Hawk, ​is, for me a startling original memoir, as all good memoirs are. It would also be my pick for one of the best books of 2015. The why is easy, and applies to just about all books. I loved reading it, and I loved looking inside the life of an original thinker. Doing so made me a better person.

Then again, I love books that are good for me, and that make me a better person. I've always though this is what writing is all about. Shoot, I always thought this is what life is all about. We have far more than enough people who aren't worth shooting, and who have no intention of ever being better than they now are.

MacAllister said:

extremely readable, and some of them downright brilliant -- not books-that-are-good-for-you at all.

Click to expand...

I believe readable and brilliant is always good for you.

Jamesaritchie said:

I believe readable and brilliant is always good for you.

Click to expand...

Jamesritchie, this is my favorite thing you've ever posted on these boards. I whole-heartedly agree.

And I think this crop on the NYT list sounds terrific. I've not read any of them and have still had a great reading year, but I thin kone or two of these is going to have to go on the to-be-read pile. Dammit.

The Invention of Nature involves, among other things, the true story of an explorer crawling up the Andes in a storm, painstakingly stopping and making observations every few hundred feet, while suffering from altitude sickness and nearly dying of exposure, because science, dammit.

I'm only partway through it because her writing style doesn't quite work for me, but it's fascinating stuff.

Sadly, for a few reasons, the library option just doesn't work for me. But yeah, it's a good way to go! (I have no library across the street, I don't drive, getting a ride is not so easy, bus doesn't work for me for anywhere I might go, and I almost always want to keep the book anyway if it's a good one, and sometimes can't finish fast enough for the library turnaround and yes I do know about renewals but even so, my life and libraries have not meshed for a while.)

I may, however, ask for one or two of these for Christmas. I got some good books (not used, haha) last year that way. Alice Munro short story collections. Quite tasty.

I'll have to see which of these I'd ask for. Right now H Is For Hawk is sounding quite promising. Well so are some of the others....

Outline by Rachel Cusk looks interesting.

Laer Carroll said:

You wouldn't get a talking to from me, the author. Those books are public property now that they've been published. You are free to say anything you please about them, including "I've only read the summary of L C's book XYZ. It sounds so boring I could not force myself to read even the first page."

Or you could read the first chapter of any one of them, as Old Hack did of Sea Monster's Revenge a few month's ago, and give a detailed and mostly negative review of that chapter, even poking fun at a hilarious mis-spelling I'd made. I'm perfectly at ease with that.

In fact, I challenge everyone to go to my web site and read the first few chapters of any and all books and tear them to pieces publicly if you wish.

Click to expand...

You sound like me trying to convince my friends to leave me reviews.

At first it was like, "I'd appreciate it if you guys could leave a kind--but honest--review."

Now: "PLEASE! ANY REVIEW! Please, just tell Amazon you hate me! PLEASE!"

*wonders how soon I might get a used copy of that off of Amazon or Abe Books....*

I'm up for it!

MacAllister said:

H is for Hawk is next on my to-be-read pile. How bout it, Laer? You wangle a copy and read it, too? Up for a book-group style discussion about it right here, folks?

Click to expand...

I'm in.

Mac I'll have to look into that. Maybe I can borrow that Nook again since its owner doesn't use it. Though reading on there is hard on my eyes.

If we do this, I bet I can get a copy one way or another.

ETA: Of course I found a used copy soon as I looked. So, I'm in.