Best Books of 2007?

[Hippiepoet]

I was curious as to what books came out in the Top 10 for 2007. Of course I'll post several different sources but then I'd also like to hear what everyone here thinks, cause we are all so very damned important. Remember, books that came out in 2007. I was pleased to see one of my favorites on the list in more than a few places. JK Rowling-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

This first list comes from Amazon, our wonderful friend.

Amazon's Customer's Favorites for 2007:

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (http://www.amazon.com/Harry-Potter-Deathly-Hallows-Book/dp/0545010225/dreamindemon-20)-JK Rowling
2. A Thousand Splendid Suns (http://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Splendid-Suns-Khaled-Hosseini/dp/1594489505/dreamindemon-20)-Khaled Hosseini
3. The Dangerous Book for Boys (http://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Book-Boys-Conn-Iggulden/dp/0061243582/dreamindemon-20)-Con and Hal Iggulden
4. Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food (http://www.amazon.com/Deceptively-Delicious-Simple-Secrets-Eating/dp/0061251348/dreamindemon-20)-Jessica Seinfeld
5. God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (http://www.amazon.com/God-Not-Great-Religion-Everything/dp/0446579807/dreamindemon-20)-Christopher Hitchens
6. Eclipse (The Twilight Saga, Book 3) (http://www.amazon.com/Eclipse-Twilight-Saga-Book-3/dp/0316160202/dreamindemon-20")-Stephenie Meyer
7. The Children of Húrin (http://www.amazon.com/Children-H%C3%BArin-J-R-R-Tolkien/dp/0618894640/dreamindemon-20)-J.R.R. Tolkien
8. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (http://www.amazon.com/Long-Way-Gone-Memoirs-Soldier/dp/0374105235/dreamindemon-20)-Ishmael Beah
9. The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich- (http://www.amazon.com/4-Hour-Workweek-Escape-Live-Anywhere/dp/0307353133/dreamindemon-20)Timothy Ferriss
10. The Best Life Diet- (http://www.amazon.com/Best-Life-Diet-Bob-Greene/dp/1416540695/dreamindemon-20)Bob Greene

Sad to say, I've only read one book off the top ten list, yeah, the Potter book. It was an excellent book and I have to say I was so pleased with the ending. Read any books off Amazon's Customer's Favorite List? If so lets hear your review.

Here is a link for the complete top 100 list from Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_5832982_12?ie=UTF8&docId=1000158331&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-3&pf_rd_r=014QQN6HTGS13YQDDBJY&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=324383701&pf_rd_i=383166011). See anything good? Any that you think should be on the top ten that isn't?

[swivel]

I've read 3, 5, and 8. And would recommend them to anyone.

[gprime]

So far I've only completed #1, and was unimpressed with it. I do have the Hitchens book, and will get around to polishing it off at some point in the near future.

[swivel]

So far I've only completed #1, and was unimpressed with it. I do have the Hitchens book, and will get around to polishing it off at some point in the near future.

It's a good book if you can ignore his attitude. He is a smarmy bastard, but there is a ton of good knowledge there. And hey, his smarmy-ness is entertaining of you don't take him too seriously.

I worked for a guy in VA that was good friends with Hitchens and said the guy is just about impossible to be around. Sounds like my kind of guy!

[Kathy]

I own #1 and 2, but haven't read either.

I'm so slack. I think I'll read #2 this week. I loved The Kite Runner by the same author.

[Morbid]

I think I will start at the top (not counting the Harry Potter book) and work my way down, as I have read NONE of them. I'll start this weekend.

[swivel]

I think I will start at the top (not counting the Harry Potter book) and work my way down, as I have read NONE of them. I'll start this weekend.

Replace Harry Potter with "Omnivore's Dilemma". You won't be upset.

You should also read "Better". Can't remember the author of either one and too lazy to Amazon.

[Hippiepoet]

Replace Harry Potter with "Omnivore's Dilemma". You won't be upset.

You should also read "Better". Can't remember the author of either one and too lazy to Amazon.

Hmmm Let me help you with those, Swivel.

Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-Meals/dp/0143038583/dreamindemon-20") by Michael Pollen

I read the review on that book and it sounds wonderful. Definitely something you want to sink your teeth into. ;) Thanks for mentioning that one!


Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance (http://www.amazon.com/Better-Surgeons-Performance-Atul-Gawande/dp/0312427654/dreamindemon-20) by Atul Gawande

This also sounds like a great book to read.


Thank you again, Swivel. :)

[Hippiepoet]

The 10 Best Books of 2007 according to the New York Times.
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b39/hippienurse/10-best-600-2.jpg
Fiction:
1. Man Gone Down (http://www.amazon.com/Man-Gone-Down-Michael-Thomas/dp/0802170293/dreamindemon-20) by Michael Thomas
2. Out Stealing Horses (http://www.amazon.com/Out-Stealing-Horses-Per-Petterson/dp/1555974708/dreamindemon-20) by Per Petterson. Translated by Anne Born.
3. The Savage Detectives (http://www.amazon.com/Savage-Detectives-Novel-Roberto-Bolano/dp/0374191484/dreamindemon-20) by Roberto Bolaño. Translated by Natasha Wimmer.
4. Then We Came To The End (http://www.amazon.com/Then-We-Came-End-Novel/dp/0316016381/dreamindemon-20) by Joshua Ferris
5. Tree of Smoke (http://www.amazon.com/Tree-Smoke-Novel-Denis-Johnson/dp/0374279128/dreamindemon-20) by Denis Johnson
Nonfiction:
6. Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone (http://www.amazon.com/Imperial-Life-Emerald-City-Vintage/dp/0307278832/dreamindemon-20) by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
7. Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression (http://www.amazon.com/Little-Heathens-Spirits-During-Depression/dp/0553804952/dreamindemon-20) by Mildred Armstrong Kalish
8. The Nine: Inside The Secret World of the Supreme Court (http://www.amazon.com/Nine-Inside-Secret-World-Supreme/dp/0385516401/dreamindemon-20) by Jeffrey Toobin
9. The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History (http://www.amazon.com/Ordeal-Elizabeth-Marsh-Woman-History/dp/037542153X/dreamindemon-20)by Linda Colley
10. The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (http://www.amazon.com/Rest-Noise-Listening-Twentieth-Century/dp/0374249393/dreamindemon-20) by Alex Ross.

http://tinyurl.com/3xkgq4

[Hippiepoet]

Fiction

1.
Call Me by Your Name (http://www.amazon.com/Call-Me-Your-Name-Novel/dp/031242678X/dreamindemon-20) by André Aciman
This tender, gay coming-of-age novel set in an Italian palazzo exquisitely renders first love on the Riviera.
2. Fieldwork (http://www.amazon.com/Fieldwork-Novel-Mischa-Berlinski/dp/0312427468/dreamindemon-20) by Mischa Berlinski
This first novel about an anthropology student in northern Thailand who “goes native” has it all: story, mystery characters, suspense, resolution.
3.The Savage Detectives (http://www.amazon.com/Savage-Detectives-Novel-Roberto-Bolano/dp/0312427484/dreamindemon-20) by Roberto Bolaño
Chilean-born novelist Bolaño (1953–2003), beautifully translated by Natasha Wimmer, deliriously tracks Mexico City poets Arturo Belano (Bolaño's alter ego) and Ulysses Lima as they travel the globe over 20-plus years.
4.The Tin Roof Blowdown (http://www.amazon.com/Tin-Roof-Blowdown-James-Burke/dp/0752889168/dreamindemon-20) by James Lee Burke
Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath provide the backdrop for an account of sin and redemption in New Orleans in Burke's 16th Dave Robicheaux novel.
5. Falling Man (http://www.amazon.com/Falling-Man-Novel-Don-DeLillo/dp/1416546022/dreamindemon-20) by Don DeLillo
DeLillo's 9/11 novel captures with breathtaking force the numbness and inchoate rage that followed the attacks.
6.The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (http://www.amazon.com/Brief-Wondrous-Life-Oscar-Wao/dp/1594489580/dreamindemon-20) by Junot Díaz
Díaz's fierce, funny and tragic first novel, starring a sci-fi-and-fantasy–gobbling nerd-hero, is just what readers have held out for since Drown.
7.The Reluctant Fundamentalist (http://www.amazon.com/Reluctant-Fundamentalist-Mohsin-Hamid/dp/0385663455/dreamindemon-20) by Mohsin Hamid
Hamid's intelligent war on terror novel is written from the perspective of a young Pakistani whose sympathies, despite his fervid immigrant embrace of America, lie with the attackers.
8. Returning to Earth (http://www.amazon.com/Returning-Earth-Novel-Jim-Harrison/dp/0802143318/dreamindemon-20) by Jim Harrison
This gorgeous novel of an early death spirals into a wrenching saga set in Upper Michigan, as grief grips a family.
9.The Chicago Way (http://www.amazon.com/Chicago-Way-Michael-Harvey/dp/0307266869/dreamindemon-20) by Michael Harvey
Harvey's debut thriller spins a twisted story in which the line between cops and criminals becomes dangerously blurred; the author combines the sardonic wit of Chandler with the gritty violence of Lehane's Kenzie and Gennaro series.
10. Heart-Shaped Box ("http://www.amazon.com/Heart-Shaped-Box-Novel-Joe-Hill/dp/B0013L4DGM/dreamindemon-20) by Joe Hill
A particularly merciless ghost goes on the rampage in this debut supernatural thriller from the son of Stephen King.

[Hippiepoet]

Nonfiction

1.The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943–1944 (http://www.amazon.com/Day-Battle-1943-1944-Liberation-Trilogy/dp/0805062890/dreamindemon-20) by Rick Atkinson
Atkinson surpasses his Pulitzer-winning An Army at Dawn with this empathetic, perceptive analysis of the second stage in the U.S. Army's grassroots development into the most formidable fighting force of WWII.

2.A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (http://www.amazon.com/Long-Way-Gone-Memoirs-Soldier/dp/0374105235/dreamindemon-20) by Ishmael Beah
This absorbing account by a young man who, as a boy of 12, gets swept up in Sierra Leone's civil war surpasses the best journalistic efforts in revealing the life and mind of a child abducted into the horrors of warfare.

3.The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648–1815 (http://www.amazon.com/Pursuit-Glory-1648-1815-Penguin-History/dp/0670063207/dreamindemon-20) by Tim Blanning
Blanning splendidly blends political events with social and intellectual history to trace the emergence of Europe as we know it today.

4.Photo by Sammy Davis Jr. (http://www.amazon.com/Photo-Sammy-Davis-Burt-Boyar/dp/B0012F9X7S/dreamindemon-20) by Burt Boyar
Davis biographer Boyar offers this collection of beautiful archival snapshots taken by Sammy Davis Jr., beginning in the early 1950s.

5.Brother, I'm Dying (http://www.amazon.com/Brother-Im-Dying-Edwidge-Danticat/dp/1400041155/dreamindemon-20) by Edwidge Danticat
Danticat's memoir recalls how a family adapted and reorganized itself over and over, enduring and succeeding to remain kindred in spite of living apart.

6.The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945 (http://www.amazon.com/Years-Extermination-Nazi-Germany-1939-1945/dp/0060930489/dreamindemon-20) by Saul Friedländer
Integrating a wide-angle history with closeups of individual Jewish lives, Friedländer completes his masterly history of the Holocaust.

7.Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America (http://www.amazon.com/Cant-Buy-Me-Love-Beatles/dp/0307353370/dreamindemon-20) by Jonathan Gould
Page after page, you can hear the music as Gould's deft hand makes the book sing—this is music writing at its best.

8.Graffiti L.A.: Street Styles and Art (http://www.amazon.com/Graffiti-L-Street-Styles-cd-rom/dp/0810992981/dreamindemon-20) by Steve Grody
A 17-year effort, this stunning, definitive examination of Los Angeles street art details all aspects of the still-illegal form with 900 gorgeous photographs, testimony from a double-handful of artists and additional material on an included CD-ROM.

9.How Doctors Think (http://www.amazon.com/How-Doctors-Think-Jerome-Groopman/dp/0547053649/dreamindemon-20) by Jerome Groopman
This could be the most important book on medicine you will ever read, analyzing why doctors misdiagnose—and how to help them get it right.

10.The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0805079831/dreamindemon-20) by Naomi Klein
The economic policies—privatization, free trade, slashed social spending—of the “Chicago School” and Milton Friedman are catastrophic, argues this vigorous polemic that demonstrates how free-market ideologues both welcome and provoke the collapse of other people's economies.

[Hippiepoet]

The Salon Book Awards for 2007. Another source for "Best Books" of 2007. I see a few on this list that look very inviting. #7 I am putting on my Amazon Wish List. Enjoy the new list, hope you find a book that interests you. If you've already read one of these gems, then please, gives us your very own review.

FICTION http://www.salon.com/books/awards/2007/12/12/best_books/wao_cov.jpgThe Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (http://www.amazon.com/Brief-Wondrous-Life-Oscar-Wao/dp/1594489580/dreamindemon-20), by Junot Diaz
The title character of Díaz' first novel is an obese Dominican-American geek living in New Jersey, with a baleful, dying mother, a devoted punkette sister and a heart full of thwarted romance. With grace and brio, Díaz conjures a world that encompasses everything from streetwise Spanglish to Dungeons and Dragons, campus politics to immigrant family saga. And guess what? It all fits perfectly, because, as it turns out, there is no better analogy for Rafael Trujillo, the fearsome real-life Dominican dictator, than Tolkien's Sauron -- no matter how far Díaz extends the metaphor, it keeps on working; "What's more sci-fi than Santo Domingo?" Oscar asks. And what fantasy could be more heartbreaking than the yearning of an oddball "ghetto nerd" (or anyone else for that matter) for perfect love?

http://www.salon.com/books/awards/2007/12/12/best_books/chandra_cov.jpgSacred Games (http://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Games-Vikram-Chandra/dp/B000SJ5Q0M/dreamindemon-20), by Vikram Chandra
At the beginning of Chandra's vast, electrifying second novel, Mumbai's most notorious gangster dies in a strange, cube-shaped bunker after a shootout with the police; the rest of the book tells us why. The man in charge of unearthing the truth is a courtly, middle-aged Sikh police detective named Sartaj Singh, who follows the trail through a dirty, maddening, glorious city that rivals Dickens' London in ruthlessness and vitality. Mumbai may be violent and trashy, drunk on Bollywood dreams and choking on its own smog, but it's the real hero of this story; Chandra clearly loves it to distraction even when it horrifies him. The villain is not a criminal, really, but fanaticism in all its forms, and the battle is literally between life and death, between those who understand that this world is necessarily chaotic, flawed and painful and those whose craving for order, calm and purity make them so very, very dangerous.

http://www.salon.com/books/awards/2007/12/12/best_books/ferris_cov.jpgThen We Came to the End (http://www.amazon.com/Then-We-Came-End-Novel/dp/0316016381/dreamindemon-20), by Joshua Ferris
"We, too, thought it would never end," say a group of ad agency employees in late-20th-century Chicago, speaking of the Internet- fueled economic boom. Joshua Ferris, a former adman himself, has written his first novel entirely in the first-person plural, capturing the way a bunch of mismatched strangers, when thrown together in an office, can learn to function as a single, organic entity. Or not. "Then We Came to the End" is a deeper, sharper, sadder version of that popular Thursday-night sitcom, filled with recognizable types -- the office intellectual staying late to work on his novel, the conspiracy theorist, the woman who knows all the gossip, the guy everybody distrusts, the talented boss they all regard with slightly awestruck incomprehension. There are intrigues over Aeron chairs and paranoia once the layoffs begin, as well as intimations of tragedy throughout. Against the odds, and half the time against the will of the people involved, a single, organic entity does emerge, but what to do with it?
Ferris has taken one of the unsung experiences of modern life and delicately exposed its complicated, conflicted heart."

http://www.salon.com/books/awards/2007/12/12/best_books/johnson_cov.jpgTree of Smoke (http://www.amazon.com/Tree-Smoke-Novel-Denis-Johnson/dp/0374279128/dreamindemon-20), by Denis Johnson
The Vietnam novel to end all Vietnam novels, Denis Johnson's celebrated (and misunderstood) epic takes all the genre's clichés, from the dangerously naive CIA officer to the feral tunnel rats to the cigar-chomping colonel who thinks he can win this thing, and runs them through a blender. The result recasts the war not as a tale of American hubris and Cold War skullduggery gone wrong, not even as a tragedy belonging to a specific place or time, but as a titanic clash between two fundamentally different ways of understanding the universe and how it works. That collision plays out through shattering battle scenes and sweaty afternoons in tin-shack bars, through the after-dinner philosophizing of deluded spies and the calculations of villagers just trying to make it to the next planting season. Johnson's magnificent vision is less tragic than cosmic, the story of history repeating itself not because we don't understand, but repeating itself whether we understand it or not.

http://www.salon.com/books/awards/2007/12/12/best_books/chabon_cov.jpgThe Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel (http://www.amazon.com/Yiddish-Policemens-Union-Novel/dp/0007149824/dreamindemon-20), by Michael Chabon
"During World War II, the Roosevelt administration briefly considered resettling Europe's Jewish refugees in Alaska. Michael Chabon's soulful alternate-history novel dreams up what the world might have looked like if that scheme had played out. In a bustling, if well-bundled, Yiddish-speaking community in Sitka, a burnt-out homicide cop named Meyer Landsman investigates the death of a junkie chess-player who might have been the promised Messiah, and gets on the bad side of the district's Hassidim-run organized crime syndicate. The novel offers lots of genre fun -- snappy dialogue, action and suspense -- yet it's all seamlessly married to a searching consideration of Jewish identity. What would it mean to be a Jew in a world where the Holocaust never happened and the state of Israel didn't exist? Are human beings the products of history, or does our essence transcend it? These are weighty questions for a book that's so entertaining, but Chabon's themes never overload his frame. Like the very best dancers and magicians, he makes it look easy."

NON-FICTION
http://www.salon.com/books/awards/2007/12/12/best_books/bissell_cov.jpgThe Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and The Legacy of Vietnam (http://www.amazon.com/Father-All-Things-Marine-Vietnam/dp/037542265X/dreamindemon-20), by Tom Bissell
"The two books about Vietnam on our list this year prompt a question: When is a war truly over? Can a soldier ever really "get out"? Tom Bissell's engrossing memoir about his relationship to his father, a Vietnam veteran, offers a sobering illustration of how a war's legacy can extend across generations. Tom Bissell wasn't born until after his father returned from Southeast Asia, yet in his mind the collapse of South Vietnam and the crumbling of his parents' marriage are "endlessly connected." At the heart of "The Father of All Things" is a journey the two men took together to Vietnam, 40 years after Bissell's father last set foot in that country. By turns hilarious, grief-stricken, perplexed and enlightening, Bissell's account of that trip offers a new understanding of the war, one designed for all those Americans who, though too young to remember it, still live in its shadow.

http://www.salon.com/books/awards/2007/12/12/best_books/howell_cov.jpgGertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations (http://www.amazon.com/Gertrude-Bell-Desert-Shaper-Nations/dp/0374531358/dreamindemon-20), by Georgina Howell
"Born into Victorian wealth and propriety in 1860s Britain, Gertrude Bell abandoned convention in her 30s to become a mountain climber and explorer, crisscrossing the Arabian desert on her own in the years before World War I, excavating archaeological sites, befriending chieftains and sheiks and writing best-selling books about her adventures. Her political expertise and influence in the region were so prized by Winston Churchill that after the war she became, with T.E. Lawrence, the chief architect of modern Iraq. Unfortunately, her personal life was less successful; ill-fated love affairs and family tragedies took their toll. A woman of great physical courage, panache and intelligence (she spoke six languages, wrote and translated poetry, drew maps for the British Army and photographed ancient ruins), Bell is a dream subject for any biographer, and Howell turns her story into a ripping yarn, complete with detailed accounts of Bell's early, life-and-death exploits while mountaineering in the Alps."

http://www.salon.com/books/awards/2007/12/12/best_books/weiner_cov.jpgLegacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/038551445X/dreamindemon-20) by Tim Weiner
"Before Sept. 11, most Americans (not to mention foreign nationals) would probably have described the Central Intelligence Agency as a puppet-master operation with eyes everywhere, skillfully manipulating world events from behind the scenes. Since the terrorist attacks of 2001, and the revelations of faulty intelligence contributing to the buildup to the Iraq war, we've caught a glimpse of a different but equally troubling CIA. Tim Weiner's fascinating and masterfully reported "Legacy of Ashes" locks this new image in place. It reveals an agency chronically and often disastrously short on solid intelligence, and all too prone to embarking on half-baked covert operations with little concern for the long-term consequences (or even the short-term ones). Weiner, working from impeccable sources, documents that the CIA's recent bumblings represent more than just a temporary difficulty adjusting to the post-Cold War world; incompetence has been a major problem since the agency's inception. The implications of this story are scary (America is in desperate need of a decent overseas intelligence service), but the telling is never less than compulsively readable."

http://www.salon.com/books/awards/2007/12/12/best_books/freeman_cov.jpgThe Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and The Woman He Loved (http://www.amazon.com/Long-Embrace-Raymond-Chandler-Woman/dp/0375423516/dreamindemon-20), by Judith Freeman
"Raymond Chandler -- the supreme master of hard-boiled prose and founder of the bruised-romantic school of noir heroes -- is also the poet laureate of the seedy side of Los Angeles. Judith Freeman, a novelist fascinated by the intersection between Chandler's detective fiction and his real life, became curious about the writer's unusual marriage to a woman almost 20 years his senior. Material on Cissy Chandler's life is scarce (her husband burned all her papers after her death), so Freeman decided to exercise her fiction-writer's skills on the clues that remain: a long inventory Cissy kept of Ray's collection of glass animals, a remark he made about his wife's habit of doing housework in the nude, a handful of photographs and poems, etc. Most evocative are the excursions Freeman makes to houses and apartments the Chandlers rented throughout the city (the couple moved a lot), extended wanderings through a city that seems both lost and timeless. Her version of L.A. is as moodily unforgettable as Chandler's, a fitting tribute to the "new kind of American loneliness" born there and the man who made it his muse."

http://www.salon.com/books/awards/2007/12/12/best_books/weisman_cov.jpgThe World Without Us (http://www.amazon.com/World-Without-Us-Alan-Weisman/dp/0312347294/dreamindemon-20), by Alan Weisman
""Imaginative" is not a word customarily applied to environmental reporting, but Alan Weisman's "The World Without Us" deserves that praise. Rather than trying to dent our apathy with dire images of melting glaciers and megahurricanes, he takes the opposite approach, describing how quickly and utterly the planet would be changed if the human race simply vanished. Within days, New York's subway tunnels would flood, leading to the corrosion of steel supports and the eventual collapse of the streets: Lexington Avenue "becomes a river." Suburban subdivisions fare no better, shattered by frozen pipes and devoured by mold and termites. Our cats would do just fine, but the dogs ... not so much (too dependent on humanity and vulnerable to larger predators). The earth's air and water would soon sweeten without us around to poison it, but our plastic crap, all those bottles and bags, will be sticking around until some microbe figures out how to turn them into lunch. For some reason, this doomsday scenario is more thrilling than depressing, perhaps because it beguiles us into doing what often seems beyond our power -- picturing a much healthier planet -- and considering a less drastic way to get there."

[Hippiepoet]

The Boston Globe's Best Books of 2007 (Yeppers another list, my pretties)

Fiction:

1. The Welsh Girl (http://www.amazon.com/Welsh-Girl-Peter-Ho-Davies/dp/0618918523/dreamindemon-20) by Peter Ho Davies
Set in the mountains of northern Wales during the months surrounding D-day, "The Welsh Girl" is a careful, deceptively simple novel of war and moral consequence: A 17-year-old barmaid and daughter of a shepherd befriends a German prisoner of war. How they each translate these ill-timed affections forms the ballast of the novel. What Davies manages to evoke in this straightforward tale, marked by irony and fate, is a beautifully wrought portrait of humanity under duress — held by the greater forces of land and time.

2.Falling Man (http://www.amazon.com/Falling-Man-Novel-Don-DeLillo/dp/1416546022/dreamindemon-20) by Don DeLillo
Few other writers could dare to capture the shadowy cataclysm of 9/11 and pull it off with such masterful precision. In its close-focus lens on one man's walk away from the collapsing Trade Center towers, "Falling Man" is a spare, brilliant novel that evokes an elegiac world of ash and anguish. Because Don DeLillo has used his breathtaking narrative intelligence with such restraint, he manages to take that sunny September morning of 2001 and render history into myth.

3. The Gathering: A Novel (http://www.amazon.com/Gathering-Novel-Anne-Enright/dp/0802118739/dreamindemon-20) by Anne Enright
Irish writer Anne Enright won the 2007 Man Booker Prize for "The Gathering," which has shades of classic tales of the body being borne, bringing to mind William Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying." The nine surviving siblings of the Hegarty family are in Dublin to bury their brother Liam, who walked into the ocean to end his pain. The narrator, his 39-year-old sister, delivers a memory-laden story as marked by the sad errors of the past as it is by Enright's shimmering prose.

4. Tree of Smoke (http://www.amazon.com/Tree-Smoke-Novel-Denis-Johnson/dp/0374279128/dreamindemon-20) by Denis Johnson (This book seems to have topped a few lists.)
This sprawling, acid-mad Vietnam novel, which won the National Book Award, is Denis Johnson at his visionary best: muscle-bound prose, Mistah-Kurtz characters, and a Byzantine military-intelligence clubhouse that even Yossarian of "Catch 22" would find daunting. Johnson captures the rock'n'roll hubris of the Vietnam War and visits it upon a full-throttle plot of sinister intrigue. His memorable cast includes an aging CIA cowboy, retired from Psy Ops, who sustains himself with old football memories and Bushmills whiskey.

5. On Chesil Beach (http://www.amazon.com/Chesil-Beach-Novel-Ian-McEwan/dp/0385522401/dreamindemon-20) by Ian McEwan
In structure and design, this small and exquisite novel is markedly different from Ian McEwan's magisterial "Atonement," but it still possesses the author's moody worldview, wherein beauty and human intimacy are frailties too often crushed by chance. A newly married couple in mid-20th-century England, bringing their worries and their pasts to their wedding night, try only to connect. The result is a cello suite of sadness, encompassing an entire swatch of English culture and the legacy of roads not taken.

6. Journal: 1952-2000 (http://www.amazon.com/Cheating-at-Canasta-William-Trevor/dp/0670018376/Cheating at Canasta [/URL] by William Trevor
This collection of stories from Irish master William Trevor is so finely wrought, delivered with such confidence and grace, that even their most shocking consequences possess the inevitability of truth unfolding. In his unerring tales of redemption and regret, Trevor can deliver a glimpse of all Ireland through one simple dilemma: a man protecting his dementia-ridden wife, a broken soul facing the cruelties of his past. But because Trevor's fatalism is always trumped by his humanity, even the darkest of these stories can be consoling. His is a moral sensibility even larger than the world of sorrows he assumes.

Non-Fiction:

1.[URL="http://www.amazon.com/Journals-1952-2000-Arthur-Schlesinger-Jr/dp/1594201420/dreamindemon-20) by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s sometimes stirring, occasionally sad, and often sardonic writings across the five decades from Harry Truman to George Bush form a labor-intensive public works project for his fellow historians and biographers. The work is both gossipy and profound, as befits a prize-winning writer who doubled as a longtime Democratic policy adviser. It is always candid, never dull.

2. The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War (http://www.amazon.com/Coldest-Winter-America-Korean-War/dp/1401300529/dreamindemon-20) by David Halberstam
In this book, the posthumous legacy of an American original, David Halberstam approaches the story of the Korean War like the journalist he often was, but tells the tale like a historian. Halberstam, who died last April at 73 in a car accident, took as his starting point conversations with war veterans, as a reporter would, working his way toward documents and "official centers of decision-making.'' The result is compelling and insightful, one of the best of Halberstam's more than 20 books.

3. The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (http://www.amazon.com/Day-Battle-1943-1944-Liberation-Trilogy/dp/0805062890/dreamindemon-20) by Rick Atkinson
The second volume of Atkinson's history of the southern campaign in World War II shows a profound grasp of tactics and strategy, while his use of quotes brings the conflict alive with a terrible vividness. While author Rick Atkinson argues for the necessity of the horrific 608-day campaign to take the fortified Italian hill town of Monte Cassino, he never forgets what war did to the men who fought it, nor the price they paid.

4. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/038551445X/dreamindemon-20) by Tim Weiner
This history points to the flaws in intelligence leading up to the Iraq war as merely the latest major misstep by the Central Intelligence Agency, a bureaucracy that has rarely accomplished its central mission since its birth, the author argues. The work, which won a National Book Award, is scathingly critical, carefully researched and smartly written, painting a frightening portrait of a hapless bureaucracy whose drastic miscalculations — from Korea through the Cold War to Vietnam and now Iraq — have cost the United States dearly in blood, treasure, and prestige.

5. Brother, I'm Dying (http://www.amazon.com/Brother-Im-Dying-Edwidge-Danticat/dp/1400041155/dreamindemon-20) by Edwidge Danticat
This modern-day memoir tells the story of two Haitian brothers, the writer's father and her uncle. For 30 years, they were separated, one having immigrated to America, the other remaining behind. They were finally united only in death, buried in a cemetery in Queens, N.Y. The book finds sad but poetic truths in the relentless hardships of Haiti and its people. And, in a heartbreaking postscript, when her uncle finally decides to join his brother in America, he dies in a detention center in Miami, waiting to see whether he'll be granted asylum.

6. Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography (http://www.amazon.com/Schulz-Peanuts-Biography-David-Michaelis/dp/0066213932/dreamindemon-20) by David Michaelis
This biography of the comic strip legend feels written from the inside out, despite the author never having had the opportunity to interview Schulz, who died in 2000. David Michaelis had to depend, instead, on conversations with family members and research into materials at Schulz's California studio. The triumph of the book is that it takes readers inside the mind of a fundamentally solitary man whose simple-looking postwar comic strip became a visual reflection, interpretation of, and guide to the times.

7. Ralph Ellison (http://www.amazon.com/Ralph-Ellison-Biography-Arnold-Rampersad/dp/0375707980/dreamindemon-20) by Arnold Rampersad
This biography of Ralph Ellison asks: What happened to this promising writer's long-awaited second novel, and to the man himself? And after asking the questions, it provides answers. The acclaim that greeted Ellison's 1952 debut novel "Invisible Man" consolidated his status as a cosmopolitan, certified New York intellectual. But the sparkling achievement, and the honors that followed, bore their own cost over the ensuing decades. The author chronicles the toll that Ellison's position took on him, in a book that lifts the veil and reveals the personality behind the persona.

8. Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (http://www.amazon.com/Unruly-Americans-Origins-Constitution-Holton/dp/0809080613/dreamindemon-20) by Woody Holton
The author of this tale, a National Book Award finalist, argues that the rebellions, threats, and warnings of the post-revolutionary years played a key role in the framing of the US Constitution. This populist vision places the book squarely among recent revisionist studies that have given prominence to grassroots agitation in the origins of both the American Revolution and the Constitution that followed.

9. Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America (http://www.amazon.com/Leviathan-History-Eric-Jay-Dolin/dp/0393060578/dreamindemon-20) by Eric Jay Dolin
Well into the 19th century, New England was the center of the whaling industry, first on Nantucket, then at New Bedford. It was a business whose profits were matched by its legends. This is a lively and thorough history, with the author well-suited to sort out the fish tales and the sometimes ugly truths of a violent, pressure-filled venture. The author describes how the growing push for profit tended to favor investors and captains over ordinary whalemen, whose lot grew increasingly dismal. This inequity led to unrest aboard ships and a string of mutinies. Such tensions would serve as an inspiration to whaling veteran Herman Melville, who explored them in his masterwork, "Moby-Dick."

http://tinyurl.com/ys66dv

[Hippiepoet]

The Friend of Women and Other Stories
by Louis Auchincloss
"These previously uncollected stories, set in the 1930s, provide pure old-fashioned reading pleasure. Most have happy endings, and the graceful style of the author makes the stories flow with ease. They hold the reader's interest even though they may lack the subtlety and complexity of much contemporary writing."
Away
by Amy Bloom
"In Lillian Leyb, the indomitable heroine of this engrossing novel, Bloom has created a woman who overcomes appalling brutality and bad luck and persists, with almost superhuman bravery, in her quest to find the baby daughter lost to her. Bloom's best book"
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
by Michael Chabon
"Chabon uses detective-story and fantasy elements to explore issues of identity, the intersection of faith and politics and religious conflicts in this wonderful story."
Falling Man
By Don DeLillo
"DeLillo again turns reality into riveting fiction with story of a lawyer working in one of the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001."
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Díaz
"The long-awaited second work of fiction from the author of 1996's "Drown" is another account of a boy from the Dominican Republic growing up (as Diaz did) an immigrant in contemporary New Jersey."
Engleby
By Sebastian Faulks
"The story of an obsession and possible murder is told through the off-kilter lens of Mike Engleby, the charmless protagonist and consummate outsider of this riveting, often hilarious novel."
Then We Came to the End
By Joshua Ferris
"In his debut novel Ferris explores the insular world of office life, that fertile breeding ground of romance, mental disorders and desktop tchotchkes. At turns sympathetic and satirical, Ferris' amusing story relies on a group "we" narrator to capture the office-style group-think of his cast of oddball characters."
Fiddler's Ghost
By Mitch Jayne
"A young schoolteacher and his wife find mystery, magic and music in the post-World War II Missouri Ozarks. The author, of "Dillards" bluegrass fame, draws on his intimate knowledge of Ozark lore and language to craft a witty, beguiling winter's tale."
Tree of Smoke
By Denis Johnson
"With Vietnam as a backdrop, Johnson plumbs the psychological depths of a CIA agent Skip Sands and a supporting cast that earned "Tree of Smoke" this year's National Book Award."
Fellow Travelers
By Thomas Mallon
"In a novel suffused with wit and melancholy, a gay senatorial aide who is a staunch anti-Communist confronts all the contradictions and hypocrisy of the McCarthy era when he has a passionate affair with an older diplomat."


http://tinyurl.com/ypoj6a

[Hippiepoet]

The Day of Battle
By Rick Atkinson
"This book stands in the middle of what will be journalist-turned-historian Atkinson's trilogy on the U.S. Army versus the German army in World War II. In this volume, the Americans come of age in Italy. Despite mud, mountains and malaria, they give a better account of themselves than do their generals."
Reclaiming History
By Vincent Bugliosi
"Bugliosi, a former prosecutor, provides convincing details to rebuke and rebut theorists who have tried to prove that President John F. Kennedy's assassination had to be the result of a conspiracy."
China Road
By Rob Gifford
"NPR's former Beijing correspondent travels by whatever means available from Shanghai to Kazakhstan and discovers along the way many ordinary Chinese and unusual, revealing stories. The author's fluency in Mandarin and bold curiosity afford him exceptional access."
Can't Buy Me Love
By Jonathan Gould
"Part social history, part musicology, the vivid analysis that Gould attaches to the compositions of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison vaults "Can't Buy Me Love" into a Fab Four category unto itself."
The Coldest Winter
By David Halberstam
"Journalist Halberstam's final book salutes forgotten people who deserve it: the veterans of Korea, The Forgotten War. Although many big-picture people like Douglas MacArthur come off looking poorly, the GIs shine."
Fateful Choices
By Ian Kershaw
"Kershaw surveys the enormously important choices made by Roosevelt, Churchill, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and the Japanese rulers in 1941, that pivotal year which marked the high tide of Fascist power. As ever, the author ties everything together with consummate skill."
The Shock Doctrine
By Naomi Klein
"In this polemic, Klein shows how free-market ideas have spread often through catastrophe and at the point of a gun and that the violence necessary for such reforms will only increase."
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
By Barbara Kingsolver, with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver
"In a narrative that is equal parts folk wisdom and political activism, bestselling author Kingsolver describes a year in which her family moved to a farm and vowed to get off the industrial food grid by eating only what they could produce or purchase from other nearby farms. Funny, wise and compulsively readable, Kingsolver's first full-length work of nonfiction succeeds on many levels."
Nixon and Mao
By Margaret MacMillan
"President Richard M. Nixon altered the global balance of power and brought China into the modern world with his historic visit to the isolated communist country in 1972. This account brings back those dramatic days in Beijing and wherever the president traveled on his fabled tour."
No Vulgar Hotel
By Judith Martin
"A love letter from a virtuoso writer about a virtuoso city. This book about Venice is a charming combination of well-selected history, handy tips on the present city and a spirited defense of tourist appreciation of that incomparable place. There are no dull pages."

http://tinyurl.com/ypoj6a

[Hippiepoet]

Leni
By Steven Bach
"The life of a vivacious, absolutely amoral woman who achieved her period of fame by becoming a notorious woman of the Third Reich. Leni Riefenstahl's powerful moviemaking abilities, so admired by Hitler, made her one of the few significant women of the Nazi regime and earned her a half-century of relegation to pariah status."
House of Abraham
By Stephen Berry
"Stephen Berry's gripping account of Lincoln's experiences with his wife's family in the Civil War shows that as commander in chief he endured strife and hardship resembling, if not exceeding, that suffered by the families of his troops."
The Father of All Things
By Tom Bissell
"This writer visits now-peaceful Vietnam and reports on his father's complex reactions to his own return four decades after having fought in what the Vietnamese call the American War."
The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh
By Linda Colley
"A "female Candide," Marsh was born in the 18th century into a seafaring family, bounced around the Mediterranean with her family, was taken captive by Moroccan pirates and followed her husband to India. Not only a biography, but an interesting social history."
Brother, I'm Dying
By Edwidge Danticat
"A substantive, unsentimental and beautiful about Danticat's family, which immigrated from Haiti."
Peeling the Onion
By Günter Grass Translated by Michael Henry Heim
"The author of "The Tin Drum" surprised the world with this memoir by admitting that he'd served under Hitler. But that surprise isn't all that this sensational story has to offer."
The Mistress's Daughter
By A.M. Homes
"Novelist and short-story writer A.M. Homes turns her talent to the memoir in a beautifully told account of her life as an adoptee."
Einstein
By Walter Isaacson
"A smart look at an even smarter man. Isaacson delves deeply into the scientist's personal life and places his work in the context of the times."
Ike
By Michael Korda
"After all these years biographer Korda still likes Ike, and thinks the rest of us should, too. Korda focuses on Dwight D. Eisenhower the soldier, at the expense of Eisenhower the president. Korda's message: The Army taught Eisenhower all he needed to know as president."
Mr. Jefferson's Women
By Jon Kukla
"Historian Jon Kukla draws on solid documentary sources and interesting speculations to propose plausible interpretations of Thomas Jefferson's problematic relationships with women, including his slave, Sally Hemings."

http://tinyurl.com/ypoj6a