The Library Journal has released its list of 37 books that have earned starred reviews for great writing and good reading. Reference books feature largely, as do sports books, with a surprising focus on soccer. In this last category, Filip Bondy's Chasing the Game: America and the Quest for the World Cup (Da Capo Press) is highly recommended, while The ESPN World Cup Companion: Everything You Need To Know About the Planet's Biggest Sporting Event by David Hirshey and Roger Bennett (Ballantine) is rated as an "affordable purchase" with "enduring value."The fiction list is also a surprise, being dominated by spy books, including that long-neglected form, a collection of short stories -- Agents of Treachery, edited by Otto Penzler (Vintage). Predictably familiar names are there, too --Richard North Patterson, Clive Cussler, Scott Turow, Peter Temple, and Gregg Hurwitz. Oddly, too, mystery is a separate category. Even stranger is that the book with the jacket I like the most -- Recipes from an Italian Summer (Phaidon) -- is in the science and technology section.
But it is a list well worth trawling through for summer reading, though readers in New Zealand are more likely to be curled up by a fire.
No comments:
Post a Comment