So every newspaper in town is publishing it's favourite-books-of-2005-type-lists . . . which can only mean one thing: Christmas is around the corner!
I thought it would be interesting to compare "lists" published in The Independent, The Times, The Observer and The New York Times to see if there was any particular book all the critics agreed was the best novel of 2005.
It looks like Ian McEwan's Saturday and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go topped the poll, with four votes apiece.
This was closely followed by:
John Banville The Sea* (2)
Julian Barnes Arthur & George (2)*
Bret Easton Ellis Lunar Park (2)
Hilary Mantel Beyond Black (2)
Cormac McCarthy No Country for Old Men (2)
Haruki Murakami Kafka on the Shore
(2)
Caryl Phillips Dancing in the Dark (2)
Salman Rushdie Shalimar the Clown (2)
Zadie Smith On Beauty (2)*
Other books that received one vote (in alphabetical order by author's surname) were:
Stephen Amidon Human Capital
Nadeem Aslam Maps for Lost Lovers
Margaret Atwood The Penelopiad
Tash Aw The Harmony
Silk Factory
Dean Bakopoulos Please Don't Come Back From the Moon
Sebastian Barry A
Long Long Way
David B Epileptic
Anthony Briggs (new translation of) War and Peace
Stefan Chwin Death in Danzig
Philippe Claudel Grey Souls
J. M. Coetzee Slow Man
E. L. Doctorow The March
Louise Erdrich The Painted Drum
Alicia Erian Towelhead
Diana Evans 26A
Sebastian Faulks
Human Traces
Mary Gaitskill Veronica
Gabriel García Márquez Memories of My Melancholy Whores
Maggie Gee My Cleaner
Richard Gwyn The Colour of a Dog Running Away
Kathryn Harrison Envy
John Haskell
American Purgatorio
Pawel Huelle Mercedes-Benz
Dan Jacobson All for Love
PD James The Lighthouse
Ismail Kadare The Successor
Thomas Kelly Empire Rising
Walter Kirn Mission to America
Benjamin Kunkel Indecision
Nick Laird Utterly Monkey
Marina Lewycka A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
Elmore Leonard The Hot Kid
Sam Lipsyte Home Land
Patrick McGrath Ghost Town
James Meek The People's Act of
Love
Andrew Miller The Optimists
Wu Ming 54
Joyce Carol Oates Missing Mom
Cynthia Ozick The Bear Boy
Elliot Perlman Seven Types of Ambiguity
Per Petterson Out Stealing Horses
Francine Prose A Changed Man
J. K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince
Lionel Shriver We Need to Talk about Kevin*
Curtis Sittenfeld Prep
Ali Smith The Accidental*
Edward St. Aubyn Mother's Milk
Rupert Thomson Divided Kingdom
John
Updike Villages
Barbara Vine The Minotaur
William T. Vollmann Europe Central
Unsurprisingly,
I have not read any of these, mainly because many are not yet available
in paperback and some of which I've never even heard of (mostly the ones
on the New York Times list). I do, however, have some of these books on my Must Read List.
Have you read any on this list? Are there any you would recommend? Do you think these annual lists are of any use? Alternatively, what has been your favourite read for 2005?
* I own these but am yet to read.
