Best Books

Here are 64 books from the 1117 reviewed that have particularly impressed me, divided into fiction and nonfiction lists. They can also be found in the other indices, marked with a “**”.

Fiction

* Ivo Andric: The Bridge on the Drina
- a novel of three centuries in eastern Bosnia
* Roberto Calasso: Ka
- a superb synthesis of Hindu mythology
* Bruce Chatwin: The Viceroy of Ouidah
- a short but powerful novel of West Africa
* Hugo Claus: The Sorrow of Belgium
- an adolescence in Flanders during World War II
* Frederick Crews: Postmodern Pooh
- biting parody of modern literary criticism
* John Gardner: Grendel
- an original and provoking philosophical novel
* Alan Garner: Strandloper
- an Australian convict escapes and joins the Aborigines
* Juan Goytisolo: The Marx Family Saga
- Karl Marx faces the failure of communism
* Stefan Heym: The King David Report
- a very funny novel about the politics of history in the 10th century BC
* Viðar Hreinsson: The Complete Sagas of Icelanders
- Icelandic tales of Viking Age feuds, legal conflicts, love affairs
* Imre Kertesz: Kaddish for a Child Not Born
- the introspective monologue of an Auschwitz survivor
* Ahmadou Kourouma: Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote
- the life story of an African dictator
* Laszlo Krasznahorkai: The Melancholy of Resistance
- a small town falls apart with the showing of a whale
* Halldór Laxness: Independent People
- the epic story of an Icelandic sheep farmer
* Ursula K. Le Guin: The Earthsea Trilogy
A Wizard of Earthsea; The Tombs of Atuan; The Farthest Shore
* Primo Levi: The Periodic Table
- stories of a chemist working with elements
* Irmtraud Morgner: The Life and Adventures of Trobadora Beatrice as Chronicled by Her Minstrel Laura
- socialist magical realism from East Germany
* Borislav Pekic: How to Quiet a Vampire
- a psychological and philosophical novel of totalitarianism
* Marge Piercy: Woman on the Edge of Time
- parallel conflicts in a far-future utopia and a present mental hospital
* Mesa Selimovic: Death and the Dervish
- a spiritual crisis amidst Ottoman Bosnian politics
* James Tiptree Jr: Her Smoke Rose up Forever
- dark, powerful science fiction stories about sex and death
* Pramoedya Ananta Toer: This Earth of Mankind
- the Buru Quartet: novels of colonial Indonesia
* Mario Vargas Llosa: Conversation in the Cathedral
- a novel about power and politics in Peru in the early 1950s
* Peter Weiss: The Aesthetics of Resistance
- art and politics in pre-WWII Germany and Spain
* Austin Tappan Wright: Islandia
- gentle romance and captivating fantasy
* Roger Zelazny: Lord of Light
- epic science fiction using Hindu and Buddhist themes

Non-Fiction

* Martin Aigner, Günter M. Ziegler: Proofs from THE BOOK
- mathematical results that are beautiful, accessible, and profound
* Bruce Alberts, Dennis Bray, et al.: Essential Cell Biology
An Introduction to the Molecular Biology of the Cell
* Kevin Bales: Disposable People
- a passionate but scholarly study of modern slavery
* Joel Beinin, Joe Stork: Political Islam
Essays from Middle East Report
* David Bellos: Georges Perec
A Life in Words
* Fernand Braudel: Civilization and Capitalism 15th-18th Century
- a social and economic history of the shaping of the modern world
* Marc Zvi Brettler: The Creation of History in Ancient Israel
- the biblical authors and their presentations of the past
* Timothy Brook: The Confusions of Pleasure
Commerce and Culture in Ming China
* Dorothy L. Cheney, Robert M. Seyfarth: How Monkeys See the World
Inside the Mind of Another Species
* Robert Cribb: Historical Atlas of Indonesia
- learned and lavish
* Alan Davidson: The Oxford Companion to Food
- a gloriously erudite encyclopedia of biology, culture, history
* Christopher Dickman: A Fragile Balance
The extraordinary story of Australian marsupials
* Thomas Eisner: For Love of Insects
- the grand synthesis of a veteran scientist
* Gary William Flake: The Computational Beauty of Nature
Computer Explorations of Fractals, Chaos, Complex Systems, and Adaptation
* Ronald Fraser: Blood of Spain
An Oral History of the Spanish Civil War
* Stephen Jay Gould: Ontogeny and Phylogeny
- the history of recapitulation; developmental timing and evolution
* Stewart Guthrie: Faces in the Clouds
A New Theory of Religion
* Cemal Kafadar: Between Two Worlds
The Construction of the Ottoman State
* Audrey Kahin: Regional Dynamics of the Indonesian Revolution
- an unusually appealing essay collection on 1945-50
* Steve Keen: Debunking Economics
The Naked Emperor of the Social Sciences
* Patrick Vinton Kirch: On the Road of the Winds
An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands before European Conquest
* Donald E. Knuth: The Art of Computer Programming
Fundamental Algorithms; Seminumerical Algorithms; Sorting and Searching
* Richard Lewontin: Human Diversity
- the realities of human biological variation
* Cecilia Lindqvist: China, Empire of the Written Symbol
- Chinese history and culture through written characters
* Jessica Litman: Digital Copyright
- intellectual property and the Internet
* Nancy A. Lynch: Distributed Algorithms
- for a deep understanding of formal methods
* Harry Mathews, Alastair Brotchie: Oulipo Compendium
- people, works, and forms, with extensive examples
* John McPhee: Annals of the Former World
- travels across the United States with geologists
* Arthur Morris: The Art of Bird Photography
The Complete Guide to Professional Field Techniques
* Brian Morris: Anthropological Studies of Religion
An Introductory Text
* Jakob Nielsen: Designing Web Usability
The Practice of Simplicity
* Karl J. Niklas: The Evolutionary Biology of Plants
- evolution makes sense of otherwise unconnected areas of botany
* S. Robert Ramsey: The Languages of China
- social, cultural, and historical background as well as linguistics
* Orrin W. Robinson: Old English and its Closest Relatives
A Survey of the Earliest Germanic Languages
* James C. Scott: Weapons of the Weak
Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance
* Elliott Sober: Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology
- a mix of classic papers and more recent material
* Edward R. Tufte: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
- the classic work on statistical graphics
* Mary E. White: After the Greening
- a geological and botanical history of Australia