Spring Good Reads

The National Book Critics Circle has posted its Spring "Good Reads" recommendations, as voted by the reviewer-organization's 825 members, to its blog, Critical Mass. The list, which is intended to highlight good new books that you might not otherwise have heard about, is as follows:

Fiction:

1. Richard Price, "Lush Life"
2. Jhumpa Lahiri, "Unaccustomed Earth"
3. Steven Millhauser, "Dangerous Laughter."
*4. Charles Baxter, "The Soul Thief."
*4. Peter Carey, "His Illegal Self."
*4. J. M. Coetzee, "Diary of Bad Year."
*4. James Collins, "Beginner's Greek."
*4. Brian Hall, "Fall of Frost."
*4. Roxana Robinson, "Cost."
*4. Owen Sheers, "Resistance."

Nonfiction:

1. Nicholson Baker, "Human Smoke: The Beginning of World War II, the End of Civilization."
2. Drew Gilpin Faust, "This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War."

3. Mark Harris, "Pictures at the Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood."
4. Honor Moore, "The Bishop's Daughter."
5. Susan Jacoby, "The Age of American Unreason."

Poetry:

1. Grace Paley, "Fidelity."
2. Frank Bidart, "Watching the Spring Festival."
3. Eric Gansworth, "A Half-Life of Cardio-Pulmonary Function."
4. Marie Howe, "The Kingdom of Ordinary Time."
5. Robert Pinsky, "Gulf Music."

Wait a minute! says the Globe's David Mehegan, over at his blog, Off the Shelf. "This season's list has only a few new faces, which perhaps suggests that NBBC members are as susceptible to bestsellerdom, publicity, and review buzz as everyone else."

My friend Scott McLemee, a member of the NBBC, can't be accused of such susceptibility. His Spring Good Read picks: Victor Serge's "Unforgiving Years" (New York Review of Books Classics), which he describes as "the final and most wrenching novel by one of the great witnesses to the triumph and the degeneration of the Bolshevik Revolution"; and Richard Sennett's "The Craftsman" (Yale University Press), which he describes as "an inquiry into what special qualities are involved in learning and practicing a craft -- whether it be brickmaking, architecture, computer programming, or playing a musical instrument."

I have an enormous pile of recent, new, and forthcoming books on my desk. I've winnowed out the ones I have no intention of reading, and the pile is still big. I'll start blogging about these books soon. Call it: Brainiac's Spring Reads.