Book Recommendations

Conversation Starters: 2011’s Top 5 Book Club Picks : NPR. “Here are five fascinating books that will be sure to catalyze serious and lively conversation”: State of Wonder by Ann Patchett The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes We the Animals by Justin Torres Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks The Sojourn by Andrew Krivak

The best audio books of 2011 – The Washington Post. Recommendations from Katherine A. Powers.

Best Books of 2011 – The Washington Post. The Washington Post weighs in with its top five fiction and top five nonfiction books of 2011. Warning: This is another one of those “click for every item” lists. And there’s also a link labeled “More Best of 2011.”

Booksellers’ Picks: Catch The Year’s Freshest Reads This winter, our independent booksellers have selected books that range in subject from toasters to typeface, odd bookmarks to old Volkswagens, department stores to pasta design. Whether you need a picture book for a toddler, kid lit for a young reader, or quirky nonfiction for the grown-up set,

The best nonfiction of 2011 – Books – Salon.com Our favorite nonfiction spanned centuries and the world, and told stories of writers, princesses and great thinkers As promised yesterday, Salon’s Laura Miller today presents her list of the five best nonfiction books of the year: Townie by Andre Dubus, III Love and Capital: Karl and

The best fiction of 2011 – Books – Salon.com In a stellar year for the novel, these five books stood above all others Salon’s Laura Miller lists the five best novels of the year: The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides Pym by Mat Johnson State of Wonder by Ann Patchett The Tragedy of Arthur by

Goodreads Choice Awards: Best Books of 2011. Goodreads’ readers have spoken. Check out their favorites in just about any category you can imagine.

What Sticks: Five 2011 Books That Stay With You : NPR The five books below — three novels, a memoir and a nonfiction narrative — top my list of keepers published in 2011. While it’s no surprise that Julian Barnes and Joan Didion produced books to have and to hold onto, it’s the serendipitous finds

Plot Driven: Alan Cheuse’s Top 5 Fiction Picks : NPR Although I love the wit and mood of introspective (and lyrically composed) fiction, I’m nearly always drawn to thoughtful, well-plotted books — everything from Ulysses to The Man Without Qualities, Cervantes to Murakami, and Faulkner and Hemingway and Woolf in between. Given all this, 2011’s