Mon Dec 1, 2008 — by Robert Greenberger

'Times' 100 Book List Stiffs Genre

Just 4 Titles Qualify as Best in 2008

The New York Times named their 100 notable books of the year today and the genre, as one might expect, was likely under-represented. Graphic novels were entirely ignored and just four works of fiction could be considered within out genre and they are:

The Sacred Book of the Werewolf. By Victor Pelevin. Translated by Andrew Bromfield. (Viking, $25.95.) A supernatural call girl narrates Pelevin’s satirical allegory of post-Soviet, post-9/11 Russia.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A New Verse Translation. By Simon Armitage. (Norton, $25.95.) One of the eerie, exuberant joys of Middle English poetry, in an alliterative rendering that captures the original’s drive, dialect and landscape.

2666. By Roberto Bolaño. Translated by Natasha Wimmer. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, cloth and paper, $30.) The five autonomous sections of this posthumously published novel interlock to form an astonishing whole, a supreme capstone to Bolaño’s vaulting ambition.

The Widows of Eastwick. By John Updike. (Knopf, $24.95.) In this ingenious sequel to The Witches of Eastwick, the three title characters, old ladies now, renew their sisterhood, return to their old hometown and contrive to atone for past crimes.

No non-fiction about the genre made the list.

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