ABSURDISTAN By Gary Shteyngart. THE COLLECTED STORIES OF AMY HEMPEL
THE EMPEROR'S CHILDREN By Claire Messud.
THE LAY OF THE LAND By Richard Ford.
SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS By Marisha Pessl.
FALLING THROUGH THE EARTH A Memoir. By Danielle Trussoni.
THE LOOMING TOWER Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. By Lawrence Wright.
MAYFLOWER A Story of Courage, Community, and War. By Nathaniel Philbrick.
THE OMNIVORE'S DILEMMA A Natural History of Four Meals. By Michael Pollan.
THE PLACES IN BETWEEN By Rory Stewart.
Seems like a fairly good list. I don't know much about the non-fiction (and really couldn't care, although The Places in Between actually looks like something I might enjoy), but the fiction section is pretty good.
Absurdistan and The Lay of the Land are both books I've championed this year (here and here) and The Emperor's Children is a book I'm really eager to read at some point. I don't know anything about Hempel, unfortunately, and Specialty Topics is, well, it's the New York Times throwing a better-than-mediocre populist novel onto their list like they did with Prep last year.
However, they might have wanted to take a look at The Road, Against the Day, or (how could they possibly overlook this??) Suite Francaise, not to mention one or more of the Booker nominees—Black Swan Green especially, or that Edward St. Aubyn novel (though his earlier novel Some Hope is better, I hear). St. Aubyn may be too snooty even for the Times, though.
Anyway, just some ideas for winter break reading.
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