Criticism & Features

In addition to the NBCC's member critics, we threw the net out to all of our former finalists and winners to vote in the Best Recommended. Here are the folks

BEFORE the internet, book recommendations traveled at the rate of sound. You had to talk to someone to pass on word about what to read. Or read it in a

It would be silly to act as if the Best Recommended List encapsulated everyone's taste. To do that we'd need a list nearly a thousand books long. But in the

It would be absurd to act as if the Best Recommended List highlighted everyone's votes — to do that we'd need a list of books close to a 1,000 titles

Coming soon, April 2008, just read the advance copy–Lee Martin's River of Heaven whose portrait of Sam Brady, a man in fear of his life and crippled by it, lingers

I had always avoided Edwidge Danticat as a “vegetable writer,” someone you were supposed to read because it was good for you. But this recent memoir, detailing the struggles of

You can find novelist David Leavitt's votes over at NBCC member Mark Sarvas' blog, “The Elegant Variation,” along with those of former NBCC finalist Charles Solomon.

The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly — a harrowing account of life in Burmese prison. All too relevant to the situation in Myanmar and frustratingly little known here — Gish

Peter Cameron's SOME DAY THIS PAIN WILL BE USEFUL TO YOU (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2007) Billed as a young adult book, Peter Cameron's SOMEDAY THIS PAIN WILL BE USEFUL TO