Best Books
March 30, 2008
The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC), of which I am a member, is putting out its quarterly call for suggestions of the best book published in fiction, non-fiction and poetry. This is the time when I get to promote some of the books from smaller publishers that have impressed me, even though I am but one in eight hundred member voices. I read relatively little poetry and usually forgo that category. But in fiction, I have chosen Go With Me (Steerforth Press; $21.95) by Castle Freeman, and in nonfiction my favorite choice is Traversa: A Solo Walk Across Africa, from the Skeleton Coast to the Indian Ocean (Overlook Press; $24) by Fran Sandham.
* * * With the death last week of renowned classical literature translator Robert Fagles, Nicki Leone, who previously wrote about her experience of listening to the audio version of the Fagles’ translation of The Iliad, re-visits her experience in A Reading Life to again explore the impact of this classical work on her reading life. Popular novelist Caroline Leavitt sits down with Daniel Jaffe to share her excited, almost breathless voice and her thoughts about her books in this month’s Talking Across the Table. Leavitt is well known for her use of painful personal experiences in her novels. “Making art, or at least what I hope it is art, out of tragedy seems to me the only way to make sense of it, to put it to rest,” she notes in an interview that intertwines the real and the fiction of one writer’s life. Every time I read one of Henry Carrigan’s Readings columns, I learn something—as well as add one or more books to my To Buy and Read list. This week, his piece on The Hermitage Journals, John Howard Griffin’s diary of his experiences while working on his biography of Thomas Merton. More than a description of his work, it is an account of his solitude and of the joys of the contemplative spirit he found in this most uncommon of pursuits today. Hotels. Who doesn’t love staying in one? Perhaps, if you are on the road for weeks on end, a hotel might seem nothing more than an impersonal bed and walls, but for most of us it is exciting. To their credit, hotels seem to be trying hard to make a stay with them a pleasurable experience. Some of them see bookmarks not only as inexpensive but useful advertising but also as a way to entice their guests to enjoy their library or to instill values of a popular game, reports Laine Farley in On Marking Books. Is there a role for the book critic in today’s world of shrinking book sections and serious literary criticism and in the rise of the Internet and book bloggers? What impact if any are the two having on each other and on the world of publishing and reading? Those are the questions Lisa Guidarini asks herself and us while partway through her reading of The Death of the Critic, this week in Reviews & Reflections. A television commercial sends Anne Michael on a journey back in time to her memories of her father, of his reading novels to her, of joining him in his remodeling projects, of learning to appreciate the magic of words. “It’s funny how those small and seemingly insignificant things stay with us throughout our lives and can, in fine ways, define who we ultimately become,” she writes. In this week’s Seasoned Lightly, she offers a tribute not only her parent but to all parents who cared enough to steer each of us onto the good path of adulthood. “I am a manic blog hopper,” notes Andi Miller in The Finicky Reader. “Literary blogs to me are what caffeine and Doritos are to the junk food-addicted masses.” In other words, she enjoys learning about the oddities of other readers and writers while admitting to a few of her own much-beloved if peculiar literary lifestyle habits.
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Frank X. Roberts, a literary Renaissance man and a former regular contributor to “On Marking Books,” still contributes occasional poems to “Bibliopinions.” He has a passion for poetry and a knowledge and love of it that is wonderful. And he has self-published a small book of his own poetry. It has a simple, classic burgundy cover. The poems are, he notes in the Preface, “fictionalized outcomes of past experiences and encounters with people or places, and of things read, heard or observed.” If you are looking for a gift for someone of a contemplative nature, this would be good. It’s only $12, and you can contact him directly at
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