{"id":309,"date":"2005-11-30T18:44:57","date_gmt":"2005-12-01T01:44:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/?p=309"},"modified":"2019-01-15T22:24:00","modified_gmt":"2019-01-15T22:24:00","slug":"best-books-of-2005","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/2005\/11\/30\/best-books-of-2005\/","title":{"rendered":"Best Books of 2005"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For your reading and gift-giving pleasure, I have grabbed the NY Times&#8217; 100 Notable Books of the Year list for 2005 and posted it to this site. Keep in mind this isn&#8217;t the be all end all of lists. For instance, <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Blink<\/span> by Malcolm Gladwell is not on the list and I&#8217;ve heard from a ton of people that it was a great book. That being said, here is the list:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Fiction &amp; Poetry<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/05\/15\/books\/review\/15COVERRAFFE.html\">BEYOND BLACK.<\/a><\/strong> By Hilary Mantel. (John Macrae\/Holt, $26.) Neurotic, demanding ghosts haunt a British clairvoyant in this darkly comic novel.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/03\/27\/books\/review\/027SCHILL.html\">A CHANGED MAN.<\/a><\/strong> By Francine Prose. (HarperCollins, $24.95.) A neo-Nazi engages a Jewish human rights leader in this morally concerned novel, asking for help in his effort to repent.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/05\/29\/books\/review\/29METCALF.html\">COLLECTED POEMS, 1943-2004.<\/a><\/strong> By Richard Wilbur. (Harcourt, $35.) This urbane poetry survived the age of Ginsberg, Lowell and Plath.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/02\/13\/books\/review\/13KLEIN.html\">EMPIRE RISING.<\/a><\/strong> By Thomas Kelly. (Farrar, Straus &amp; Giroux, $25.) A muscular historical novel in which the Irish erect the Empire State Building in a cheerfully corrupt New York.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/07\/17\/books\/review\/17NUSSBAU.html\">ENVY.<\/a><\/strong> By Kathryn Harrison. (Random House, $24.95.) A psychoanalyst is unhappy but distant until Greek-tragedy things start happening in this novel by an ace student of sexual violation.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/04\/03\/books\/review\/03LECLAIR.html\">EUROPE CENTRAL.<\/a><\/strong> By William T. Vollmann. (Viking, $39.95.) A novel, mostly in stories, of Middle European fanaticism and resistance to it in the World War II period.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/05\/22\/books\/review\/22MEANSL.html\">FOLLIES: New Stories.<\/a><\/strong> By Ann Beattie. (Scribner, $25.) This keen observer of the surface of life now slows down for an occasional epiphany.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/07\/31\/books\/review\/31SCHILL.html\">HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE.<\/a><\/strong> By J. K. Rowling. Illustrated by Mary GrandPr. (Arthur A. Levine\/ Scholastic, $29.99.) In this sixth volume of the epic series, the Dark Lord, Voldemort, is wreaking havoc throughout England and Harry, now 16, is more isolated than ever.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/01\/30\/books\/review\/30SKURNIK.html\">HOME LAND.<\/a><\/strong> By Sam Lipsyte. (Picador, paper, $13.) Lipsyte&#8217;s antihero, a loser but unbowed, asserts in endless letters to his alumni magazine that all the others are losers too.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/05\/08\/books\/review\/08COVMCGRA.html\">THE HOT KID.<\/a><\/strong> By Elmore Leonard. (Morrow, $25.95.) Many seek fame in this rendering of America&#8217;s criminal landscape in the 1930&#8217;s; the title character, a killer lawman, achieves it.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2004\/12\/05\/books\/review\/05SCOTTL.html\">HOW WE ARE HUNGRY: Stories.<\/a><\/strong> By Dave Eggers. (McSweeney&#8217;s, $22.) A shining miscellany peopled by characters in close touch with childhood.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/10\/16\/books\/review\/16halpern.html\">IN CASE WE&#8217;RE SEPARATED: Connected Stories.<\/a><\/strong> By Alice Mattison. (Morrow\/HarperCollins, $23.95.) The stories concern a family whose members couldn&#8217;t lose each other if they tried.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/08\/28\/books\/review\/28MCINER.html\">INDECISION.<\/a><\/strong> By Benjamin Kunkel. (Random House, $21.95.) This postmodern, posteverything, fresh and funny novel by a young writer seems to develop a nonironic social conscience.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/02\/06\/books\/review\/06COVERMI.html\">KAFKA ON THE SHORE.<\/a><\/strong> By Haruki Murakami. (Knopf, $25.95.) Two characters alternate in this dreamish novel: a boy fleeing an Oedipal prophecy and a witless old man who can talk to cats.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/08\/14\/books\/review\/14COVERSCOTT.html\">LUNAR PARK.<\/a><\/strong> By Bret Easton Ellis. (Knopf, $25.) A novel starring a brat named Bret Easton Ellis, who knows everybody and has more fun than ever happens to real people.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/05\/22\/books\/review\/22KAPURL.html\">MAPS FOR LOST LOVERS.<\/a><\/strong> By Nadeem Aslam. (Knopf, $25.) Unhappy Pakistani exiles in a cold, hard Britain populate this intricate novel.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/09\/25\/books\/review\/25kirn.html\">THE MARCH.<\/a><\/strong> By E. L. Doctorow. (Random House, $25.95.) Characters in this absorbing novel are transformed by distress and destruction as Sherman marches to the sea in 1864.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/11\/06\/books\/review\/06rafferty.html\">MEMORIES OF MY MELANCHOLY WHORES.<\/a><\/strong> By Gabriel Garcia Marquez. (Knopf, $20.) A strange and luminous novel whose elderly hero pays for sex but finds love.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/08\/14\/books\/review\/14CHIASSO.html\">MIGRATION: New and Selected Poems.<\/a><\/strong> By W. S. Merwin. (Copper Canyon, $40.) Half a century&#8217;s work, from archaic allegories to unpointed lyrics to secular prophecy and wisdom verses.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/10\/09\/books\/review\/09derasmo.html\">MISSING MOM.<\/a><\/strong> By Joyce Carol Oates. (Ecco\/ HarperCollins, $25.95.) This novel peers into the void left by a woman&#8217;s sudden absence.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/10\/16\/books\/review\/16gray.html\">MISSION TO AMERICA.<\/a><\/strong> By Walter Kirn. (Doubleday, $23.95.) In his new novel, Kirn invents a religion whose believers hit the road to recruit.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/11\/13\/books\/review\/13mcgrath.html\">MOTHER&#8217;S MILK.<\/a><\/strong> By Edward St. Aubyn. (Open City, $23.) In this novel an ancient family&#8217;s sins are visited on its offspring, who repeat them.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/11\/20\/books\/review\/20ryan.html\">NATURAL HISTORY: Poems.<\/a><\/strong> By Dan Chiasson. (Knopf, $23.) This second collection conjures a postmodern landscape where folk knowledge and superstitions arrange into oddly moving litanies.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/04\/17\/books\/review\/17KERRL.html\">NEVER LET ME GO.<\/a><\/strong> By Kazuo Ishiguro. (Knopf, $24.) This bold novel imagines a school where clones are trained for a terrible destiny.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/07\/24\/books\/review\/24KIRNL.html\">NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN.<\/a><\/strong> By Cormac McCarthy. (Knopf, $24.95.) Women grieve, men fight in this hard-boiled Texas noir crime novel.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/09\/18\/books\/review\/18rich.html\">ON BEAUTY.<\/a><\/strong> Zadie Smith. (Penguin Press, $25.95.) The author of &#8221;White Teeth&#8221; pounces on a place like Harvard in a cultural-politics comedy.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/04\/24\/books\/review\/24ORRL.html\">OVERLORD: Poems.<\/a><\/strong> By Jorie Graham. (Ecco\/HarperCollins, $22.95.) Politics and World War II, mediated by a major poet.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/09\/11\/books\/review\/11markovits.html\">THE PAINTED DRUM.<\/a><\/strong> By Louise Erdrich. (HarperCollins, $25.95.) A ceremonial drum is magically linked to children and death in Erdrich&#8217;s latest novel set among the Ojibwa.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/02\/13\/books\/review\/13SCHAPPE.html\">PLEASE DON&#8217;T COME BACK FROM THE MOON.<\/a><\/strong> By Dean Bakopoulos. (Harcourt, $23.) When the fathers in the Rust Belt town of this novel abandon it en masse, their sons take over.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/01\/16\/books\/review\/16SCHAPPE.html\">PREP.<\/a><\/strong> By Curtis Sittenfeld. (Random House, $21.95.) A scholarship girl at a nifty prep school is thrust into a world of privilege in this novel.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/03\/20\/books\/review\/020COVERHELLER.html\">SATURDAY.<\/a><\/strong> By Ian McEwan. (Nan A. Talese\/Doubleday, $26.) This novel traces a day off in the life of an English neurosurgeon who comes face to face with senseless violence.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/11\/27\/books\/review\/27rafferty.html\">THE SEA.<\/a><\/strong> By John Banville. (Knopf, $23.) Banville&#8217;s new novel, which won this year&#8217;s Man Booker Prize, concerns an aging art critic mourning his wife&#8217;s recent death &#8211; and his blighted life.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/01\/16\/books\/review\/16MERKINL.html\">SEVEN TYPES OF AMBIGUITY.<\/a><\/strong> By Elliot Perlman. (Riverhead, $27.95.) An Australian novel so large in its concept of fiction&#8217;s grasp on the world it takes seven narrators just to tell it.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/10\/23\/books\/review\/23miller.html\">SHALIMAR THE CLOWN.<\/a><\/strong> By Salman Rushdie. (Random House, $25.95.) Beauty loses out as Kashmir and Rushdie&#8217;s characters who live there turn brutal.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/10\/02\/books\/review\/02just.html\">SLOW MAN.<\/a><\/strong> By J. M. Coetzee. (Viking, $24.95.) Crippled at 60 in a car-bike accident, instructed willy-nilly by a know-it-all female novelist, Coetzee&#8217;s hero studies the diminished life.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/07\/24\/books\/review\/24HAMMERL.html\">STAR DUST.<\/a><\/strong> Frank Bidart. (Farrar, Straus &amp; Giroux, $20.) The fastidious and the primal join in poems concerned with man as maker.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/11\/13\/books\/review\/13adams.html\">THE SUCCESSOR.<\/a><\/strong> By Ismail Kadare. (Arcade, $24.) A whodunit tragicomedy by Albania&#8217;s pre-eminent novelist, about a loyal Communist who dies before succeeding to power in that unlucky land.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/04\/10\/books\/review\/10GILESL.html\">TOWELHEAD.<\/a><\/strong> By Alicia Erian. (Simon &amp; Schuster, $22.) A bluntly erotic novel whose narrator&#8217;s budding sexuality gets her driven from home.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/10\/23\/books\/review\/23orourke.html\">VERONICA.<\/a><\/strong> By Mary Gaitskill. (Pantheon, $23.) A novel that ruminates on beauty and cruelty, told by a former Paris model now sick and poor.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Nonfiction<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/09\/04\/books\/review\/04SEARLEL.html\">THE ACCIDENTAL MASTERPIECE: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa.<\/a><\/strong> By Michael Kimmelman. (Penguin Press, $24.95.) A study of the unpredictable, by the chief art critic of The Times.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/10\/30\/books\/review\/30filkins.html\">AHMAD&#8217;S WAR, AHMAD&#8217;S PEACE: Surviving Under Saddam, Dying in the New Iraq.<\/a><\/strong> By Michael Goldfarb. (Carroll &amp; Graf, $25.95.) A memoir of a good man murdered for his decency.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/05\/15\/books\/review\/15RHODESL.html\">AMERICAN PROMETHEUS: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.<\/a><\/strong> By Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. (Knopf, $35.) The first full biography of the atom bomb&#8217;s father &#8212; rich in new revelations.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/11\/13\/books\/review\/13harrison.html\">ARE MEN NECESSARY? When Sexes Collide.<\/a><\/strong> By Maureen Dowd. (Putnam, $25.95.) The Times&#8217;s twice-a-week Op-Ed columnist for the last decade expands her observations on the gender situation, from the Y chromosome up.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2004\/12\/26\/books\/review\/26SHEEHAN.html\">ARMAGEDDON: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945.<\/a><\/strong> By Max Hastings. (Knopf, $30.) Though obviously beaten, the Germans wouldn&#8217;t give up; an experienced journalist pursues the apparent paradox.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/10\/30\/books\/review\/30zakaria.html\">THE ASSASSINS&#8217; GATE: America in Iraq.<\/a><\/strong> By George Packer. (Farrar, Straus &amp; Giroux, $26.) The New Yorker reporter reviews the pride and ignorance he blames for the war.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/11\/27\/books\/review\/27stern.html\">THE BEATLES: The Biography.<\/a><\/strong> By Bob Spitz. (Little, Brown, $29.95.) Spitz&#8217;s broad, incisive chronicle breathes new life into the familiar story of the Liverpool boys who conquered the entertainment world.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/05\/08\/books\/review\/08KALMANL.html\">BECOMING JUSTICE BLACKMUN: Harry Blackmun&#8217;s Supreme Court Journey.<\/a><\/strong> By Linda Greenhouse. (Times Books\/Holt, $25.) A Times correspondent tells how a Minnesota lawyer became the author of the Roe v. Wade decision.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/10\/02\/books\/review\/02oates.html\">BEYOND GLORY: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and a World on the Brink.<\/a><\/strong> By David Margolick. (Knopf, $26.95.) A heavyweight chronicle of good&#8217;s symbolic clash with evil in the ring.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/03\/27\/books\/review\/027HAMILL.html\">BOSS TWEED: The Rise and Fall of the Corrupt Pol Who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York.<\/a><\/strong> By Kenneth D. Ackerman. (Carroll &amp; Graf, $27.) The colorful master of graft, our greatest.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/03\/27\/books\/review\/027JAMESL.html\">BREAK, BLOW, BURN.<\/a><\/strong> By Camille Paglia. (Pantheon, $20.) Smart, lively essays on 43 poems, written without ego for a popular audience.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/01\/09\/books\/review\/09COVERRO.html\">BURY THE CHAINS: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire&#8217;s Slaves.<\/a><\/strong> By Adam Hochschild. (Houghton Mifflin, $26.95.) How the struggle availed, especially when black Haitian armies beat white French and British ones.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/01\/30\/books\/review\/30EASTERB.html\">COLLAPSE: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.<\/a><\/strong> By Jared Diamond. (Viking, $29.95.) In &#8221;Guns, Germs, and Steel&#8221; (1997), Diamond speculated on how the world reached its present pecking order of nations; his latest book examines geographic and environmental reasons some societies have fallen apart.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/03\/27\/books\/review\/027FRASER.html\">CONSPIRACY OF FOOLS: A True Story.<\/a><\/strong> By Kurt Eichenwald. (Broadway, $26.) A meticulous dissection of the rise and fall of Enron by a correspondent for The New York Times.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2004\/12\/12\/books\/review\/12GROOMSL.html\">DE KOONING: An American Master.<\/a><\/strong> By Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan. (Knopf, $35.) An exploration at length of de Kooning&#8217;s life and work and their role in art&#8217;s midcentury upheaval.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/11\/20\/books\/review\/20leland.html\">DREAM BOOGIE: The Triumph of Sam Cooke.<\/a><\/strong> By Peter Guralnick. (Little, Brown, $27.95.) This exhaustive biography surrounds Cooke in the overlapping worlds of gospel, the civil rights movement and rock &#8216;n&#8217; roll.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/11\/27\/books\/review\/27simon.html\">ELIA KAZAN: A Biography.<\/a><\/strong> By Richard Schickel. (HarperCollins. $29.95.) The stranger-than-fiction life story of the distinguished stage and screen director.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/02\/06\/books\/review\/06GOODHEA.html\">AN END TO SUFFERING: The Buddha in the World.<\/a><\/strong> By Pankaj Mishra. (Farrar, Straus &amp; Giroux, $25.) An intellectual autobiography: what Mishra has learned from the Buddha&#8217;s legacy.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/10\/09\/books\/review\/09baker.html\">1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.<\/a><\/strong> By Charles C. Mann. (Knopf, $30.) This sweeping portrait of pre-Columbian civilization argues that it was far more populous and sophisticated than previously thought.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/05\/15\/books\/review\/15HOLTL.html\">FREAKONOMICS: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything.<\/a><\/strong> By Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. (Morrow, $25.95.) A maverick scholar and a journalist apply economic thinking to everything from sumo wrestlers who cheat to legalized abortion and the falling crime rate.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/07\/10\/books\/review\/10GENZLIN.html\">GARBAGE LAND: On the Secret Trail of Trash.<\/a><\/strong> By Elizabeth Royte. (Little, Brown, $24.95.) A chronicle of the weird stuff that happens to what we discard.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/03\/13\/books\/review\/013COVERPROSE.html\">THE GLASS CASTLE: A Memoir.<\/a><\/strong> By Jeannette Walls. (Scribner, $25.) Walls and her three sibs, dragged all over the country by damaged parents, thought it a glorious adventure. Tough kids.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/04\/03\/books\/review\/03ISAACSO.html\">A GREAT IMPROVISATION: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America.<\/a><\/strong> By Stacy Schiff. (Holt, $30.) A wise account of Benjamin Franklin&#8217;s diplomatic brilliance, revealed in Paris at 70.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/11\/13\/books\/review\/13boot.html\">IN COMMAND OF HISTORY: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War.<\/a><\/strong> By David Reynolds. (Random House, $35.) How a very busy man and a staff of busy assistants managed to turn out six volumes in 1948-54.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/11\/06\/books\/review\/06schiff.html\">JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU: Restless Genius.<\/a><\/strong> By Leo Damrosch. (Houghton Mifflin, $30.) A life of the self-taught Swiss who proclaimed the noble savage and denounced conventional social distinctions.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/02\/27\/books\/review\/27FRANKL.html\">JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH: His Life, His Politics, His Economics.<\/a><\/strong> By Richard Parker. (Farrar, Straus &amp; Giroux, $35.) The career of a public intellectual, ambassador and aphorist.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/04\/24\/books\/24COVERMEACHAM.html\">LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE BRONX IS BURNING: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City.<\/a><\/strong> By Jonathan Mahler. (Farrar, Straus &amp; Giroux, $25.) A narrative that captures New York City&#8217;s about-face from rot to rehab.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/06\/26\/books\/review\/26KIRNL.html\">THE LETTERS OF ROBERT LOWELL.<\/a><\/strong> Edited by Saskia Hamilton. (Farrar, Straus &amp; Giroux, $40.) Confessions, opinions and other people&#8217;s secrets animate these missives from a fine poet.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/10\/23\/books\/review\/23cohen.html\">LINCOLN&#8217;S MELANCHOLY.<\/a><\/strong> By Joshua Wolf Shenk. (Houghton Mifflin, $25.) In an era before the relentless good cheer and glad-handing of modern politicians, Lincoln passed through shadows to triumph.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/11\/13\/books\/review\/13handy.html\">THE LOST PAINTING.<\/a><\/strong> By Jonathan Harr. (Random House, $24.95.) The adventures of Caravaggio&#8217;s &#8221;Taking of Christ,&#8221; painted in 1602, rediscovered by scholar-hunters in 1990.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/09\/11\/books\/review\/11rich.html\">MADE IN DETROIT: A South of 8-Mile Memoir.<\/a><\/strong> By Paul Clemens. (Doubleday, $23.95.) Clemens (born in 1973) recalls growing up working-class white in a black city losing both people and jobs.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/10\/23\/books\/review\/23cover.html\">MAO: The Unknown Story.<\/a><\/strong> By Jung Chang and Jon Halliday. (Knopf, $35.) A huge, meticulously researched biography that paints Chairman Mao in authentic Hitler-Stalin 20th-century hues.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/10\/02\/books\/review\/02wolff.html\">MARK TWAIN: A Life.<\/a><\/strong> By Ron Powers. (Free Press, $35.) A wise and lively biography of an American paradox, always lively, rarely wise.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/09\/04\/books\/review\/04HOWARDL.html\">MATISSE THE MASTER: A Life of Henri Matisse. The Conquest of Color, 1909-1954.<\/a><\/strong> By Hilary Spurling. (Knopf, $40.) The final volume of a huge, careful study of a 20th-century wizard.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/11\/27\/books\/review\/27oshinsky.html\">MIRROR TO AMERICA: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin.<\/a><\/strong> (Farrar, Straus &amp; Giroux, $25.)A riveting and bitterly candid memoir by a seminal African-American scholar, raised and educated in an era of stifling race prejudice.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/10\/16\/books\/review\/16updike.html\">NEW ART CITY.<\/a><\/strong> By Jed Perl. (Knopf, $35.) The art critic of The New Republic explores heroic Abstract Expressionism and its cool, empirical successors in New York.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/10\/30\/books\/review\/30macintyre.html\">NIGHT DRAWS NEAR: Iraq&#8217;s People in the Shadow of America&#8217;s War.<\/a><\/strong> By Anthony Shadid. (Holt, $26.) An Arabic-speaking reporter on life in the Red Zone, outside American control.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/05\/22\/books\/review\/22PROSEL.html\">OH THE GLORY OF IT ALL.<\/a><\/strong> By Sean Wilsey. (Penguin Press, $25.95.) A coming-of-age memoir by a writer so skillful his account of his sufferings as a rich kid never becomes insufferable.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/04\/03\/books\/review\/03OZICKL.html\">OMAHA BLUES: A Memory Loop.<\/a><\/strong> By Joseph Lelyveld. (Farrar, Straus &amp; Giroux, $22.) A memoir of a complicated childhood by a former executive editor of The Times.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/01\/09\/books\/review\/09STEWART.html\">102 MINUTES: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers.<\/a><\/strong> By Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn. (Times Books\/Holt, $26.) A skilled reconstruction by writers of The Times.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/02\/27\/books\/review\/27WHEATCR.html\">THE ORIENTALIST: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life.<\/a><\/strong> By Tom Reiss. (Random House, $25.95.) The bold writer and impostor Lev Nussimbaum (Kurban Said) (Essad Bey) and his lives from 1905 to 1942.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/10\/09\/books\/review\/09grandin.html\">OUR INNER APE: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are.<\/a><\/strong> By Frans de Waal. (Riverhead, $24.95.) De Waal addresses the similarities between humans and their closest relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/10\/16\/books\/review\/16gottlieb.html\">POSTWAR: A History of Europe Since 1945.<\/a><\/strong> By Tony Judt. (Penguin Press, $39.95.) An inquiry into why the condition of Europe is so much better than anyone would have dared hope in 1945.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/07\/10\/books\/review\/10COVERTRAUB.html\">THE PRINCE OF THE CITY: Giuliani, New York and the Genius of American Life.<\/a><\/strong> By Fred Siegel with Harry Siegel. (Encounter, $26.95.) Giuliani seen as the Machiavellian prophet of an alternative urban policy and as an eligible president.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/11\/13\/books\/review\/13wood.html\">THE RISE OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: Jefferson to Lincoln.<\/a><\/strong> By Sean Wilentz. (Norton, $35.) A clear, readable and monumental narrative work of scholarship, full of rich detail.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/10\/16\/books\/review\/16barcott.html\">THE RIVER OF DOUBT: Theodore Roosevelt&#8217;s Darkest Journey.<\/a><\/strong> By Candice Millard. (Doubleday, $26.) A vibrant retelling of Roosevelt&#8217;s postelection expedition through the Rio da Davida; what was supposed to be a well-provisioned safari became instead a survey of an uncharted capillary of the Amazon.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/05\/22\/books\/review\/22HORWITZ.html\">1776.<\/a><\/strong> By David McCullough. (Simon &amp; Schuster, $32.) A lively work that skewers Washington&#8217;s pretensions and admires citizen soldiers.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/10\/09\/books\/review\/09zernike.html\">SPOOK: Science Tackles the Afterlife.<\/a><\/strong> By Mary Roach. (Norton, $24.95.) A diligent, cheerful account of efforts to learn whether science can show that there is (or isn&#8217;t) life after death.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/06\/12\/books\/review\/12COVER-EHRENHALT.html\">THE SURVIVOR.<\/a><\/strong> By John F. Harris. (Random House, $29.95.) An assessment of Bill Clinton&#8217;s performance in the White House; by a reporter for The Washington Post.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2004\/12\/12\/books\/review\/12LEONARD.html\">A TALE OF LOVE AND DARKNESS.<\/a><\/strong> By Amos Oz. (Harcourt, $26.) A memoir by the Israeli novelist, mourning the death of his mother long ago and the demise of the socialist Zion in his own time.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/11\/06\/books\/review\/06mcpherson.html\">TEAM OF RIVALS: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.<\/a><\/strong> By Doris Kearns Goodwin. (Simon &amp; Schuster, $35.) An elegant, incisive study of Lincoln through his relationships with his former political rivals turned cabinet members.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/09\/11\/books\/review\/11miles.html\">THE TENDER BAR: A Memoir.<\/a><\/strong> By J. R. Moehringer. (Hyperion, $23.95.) As an only child abandoned by his father, the author found an adoptive family in a Long Island bar (now defunct).<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/09\/11\/books\/review\/11royte.html\">THEATRE OF FISH: Travels Through Newfoundland and Labrador.<\/a><\/strong> By John Gimlette. (Knopf, $25.) Gimlette explores the provincial psyche by journeying through the barren regions whose chief resource, fish, has departed.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/10\/30\/books\/review\/30mosle.html\">TULIA: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town.<\/a><\/strong> By Nate Blakeslee. (PublicAffairs, $26.95.) How 38 people, mostly black, were convicted of grave drug charges on virtually no evidence but the word of a single cop.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/05\/29\/books\/review\/29BENTLEY.html\">VINDICATION: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft.<\/a><\/strong> By Lyndall Gordon. (HarperCollins, $29.95.) A biography of the brilliant early feminist.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/10\/23\/books\/review\/23johnson.html\">A WAR LIKE NO OTHER: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.<\/a><\/strong> By Victor Davis Hanson. (Random House, $29.95.) The fate of Athens, the superpower of its day, after it tried to export its political system to the rest of the Greek world.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/10\/23\/books\/review\/23folger.html\">WARPED PASSAGES: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe&#8217;s Hidden Dimensions.<\/a><\/strong> By Lisa Randall. (Ecco\/HarperCollins, $27.95.) From a Harvard physicist, advanced cosmological theories for lay folk who are a bit baffled by the idea of 10 dimensions.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/05\/29\/books\/review\/29LEBLANC.html\">WITHOUT APOLOGY: Girls, Women, and the Desire to Fight.<\/a><\/strong> By Leah Hager Cohen. (Random House, $24.95.) Cohen thoughtfully tracks girls&#8217; boxing till she herself is converted to pugilism.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2004\/12\/05\/books\/review\/05MCGRATH.html\">WODEHOUSE: A Life.<\/a><\/strong> By Robert McCrum. (Norton, $27.95.) The prolific, industrious creator of Jeeves and oh so many dear others.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/05\/01\/books\/review\/01ZAKARIA.html\">THE WORLD IS FLAT: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century.<\/a><\/strong> By Thomas L. Friedman. (Farrar, Straus &amp; Giroux, $27.50.) The New York Times columnist maps the next phase of globalization as technological forces level the world&#8217;s economic playing field.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/10\/09\/books\/review\/09pinsky.html\">THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING.<\/a><\/strong> By Joan Didion. (Knopf, $23.95.) A powerful, persuasive account of the crisis of mortality after the sudden death of the author&#8217;s husband.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For your reading and gift-giving pleasure, I have grabbed the NY Times&#8217; 100 Notable Books of the Year list for 2005 and posted it to this site. Keep in mind this isn&#8217;t the be all end all of lists. For instance, Blink by Malcolm Gladwell is not on the list and I&#8217;ve heard from a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[381,537],"class_list":["post-309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","tag-literature","tag-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4095,"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions\/4095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}