Because lists are just fun.

This one comes with all the usual caveats: I don’t finish books I don’t like, I don’t always read what’s new, out of all my compulsive reading these are my top ten favorite books that I read in ‘08. And if you ask me tomorrow, you’re likely to get a different list.

10.  East Of Eden by John Steinbeck (1952)
Not much to be said here - an incredible, huge moving story. A big book of hope and despair, and like most of Steinbeck’s work, especially relevant as we head towards ever greater financial uncertainty.

And Cathy Ames is just brutal.

9. Heat by Bill Buford (2006)
Buford makes me want to move to Italy. He makes me want to buy a whole pig and eat off it for a year. He makes me want to go out drinking with Mario Batali. Most of all, in Heat, Bill Buford makes me want to enjoy my life to the fullest and pursue my dreams to the hilt.

8.   U & I by Nicholson Baker (1991)
Baker’s meditation on John Updike’s work is one of the strangest, funniest books of literary criticism I’ve ever read, and that would be enough, but the work is much more than criticism. Baker takes the reader into the twisting caverns of his mind, using Updike’s work as obsessive and sometimes disturbing signposts along the way.

If I were Updike, I would be very weary of Nicholson Baker.  Like, restraining order-weary.

7. Lisey’s Story by Stephen King (2006)
2008 was the year I got over some of my irrational literary snootiness and learned to appreciate Stephen King. Sure, his prose is clumsy at times, but the guy can tell a fucking story like no other. Lisey’s Story is vivid, touching, and scary, not in a slasher-flick horrific sense, but in a very human sense; King slices into base human emotion, invoking a dark, chilling sense of the uncanny. Once you’re in his world, you’re under his spell.

6. Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris (2007)
Sad because it is so true. Ferris revels in exposing the absurdities of office life and he pulls it off in a hysterical first person-plural voice. If you’re on the fence about your life in cubicle land, this one could push you over the edge.

5. Anathem by Neal Stephenson (2008)
A dense, fun book about the struggles wrought by knowledge, time and power. Stephenson can be a bit pedantic, but it’s worth it to get wrapped up in this fast-paced fantasy. At its core, Anathem is a very thinly-veiled critique of modern America’s views towards science, religion and politics. Though it’s just shy of the 1,000 page mark, this book is a breeze for fans of fantasy, philosophy, science, religion… oh, it’s a just a good book for anyone who likes a little thinking with their entertainment.

4. Clockers by Richard Price (1992)
Clockers is the source text for HBO’s brilliant crime drama, The Wire.  And it’s just as moving and gripping as the show it inspired. Pure gritty realism - drugs and guns and all that good shit. Price - who is a screenwriter when he’s not a novelist - writes some of the best dialogue I’ve ever read, so it’s no wonder he was brought on to write for The Wire. But please, do yourself a favor and skip the 1995 Spike Lee adaptation of the novel. It blows.

3. Gilead (2004) and Home (2008) by Marilynne Robinson 
Though Gilead is the stronger of the two books, these two tales of two family and faith will always go together for me.  The stories of the Ames and Boughton families are simply beautiful; so incisive and thoughtful, and so damn simple.  The warm thrill of settling into Robinson’s gorgeous prose in the first pages of Gilead is an experience I hope to keep close till I’m at the end of my days.

Robinson could publish a grocery list and she’d have my in tears by the time it got to the eggs.

2. Rabbit, Run by John Updike (1960)
I polished off two of the big, lurking beasts of the Narcissistic Husband canon in ‘08, Yates’ Revolutionary Road and Rabbit, Run. (Fitting, since I got married this year. Don’t worry babe - these guys are jerks!)

Yates is great, but he can’t hold a candle to the cruel, myopic pen of John Updike. I’m eager to read the rest of the Rabbit novels, but I suspect that Updike’s introduction to Rabbit Angstrom - a character that every twenty or thirty-something man can identify with on a cringe-worthy level - will always be my favorite.

1. 2666 by Roberto Bolano (2008)
I know that 2666 is at the top of every critic’s list, but this is a rare instance where you should believe the hype.  Right before he died, Bolano left us with a rambling, fucked-up, beautiful condemnation of humanity.  2666 is a painful, unanswered cry for understanding told through five stories revolving around gruesome, senseless murders, bumbling academics, war and a revolving cast of 20th century iconic characters. The prose is blunt, mesmerizing in its casual plot digressions and selectively obsessive detail.  It’s also surprisingly funny for a book about a string of unsolved murders in the harsh desolation of a Mexican border-town.

But 2666 is very much a novel for the new century.  I’m not sure what the point of this book is - Bolano had already established himself as a virtuoso, cementing his reputation with The Savage Detectives - but I think if it’s anything besides brilliant fiction, 2666 is a bold warning to humanity.  Bolano was never so crass as to telegraph his message, but the margins of this massive story are screaming, warning us that all our thoughtless excesses and greed could soon be our unravelling.