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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
Our picks for the 10 most pleasurable fiction and nonfiction reading experiences of the year.
By Laura Miller
Read more: Fiction, Books, Laura Miller, Movies, History, Salon Book Awards, Best Books
Dec. 8, 2008 | The conventional wisdom in publishing holds that tough economic times are good for books, because books provide more hours of entertainment per dollar, more life-enhancing education and more grist for post-materialistic soul-searching than any other form of purchasable culture.
Then again, 2008 was a year when all conventional wisdom went south, and we end it with layoffs in many of the largest publishing companies and an announcement from Houghton/Harcourt, a recently merged fusion of two venerable houses, that, for the time being, they will not be acquiring any new manuscripts. (Publishers have imposed informal buying freezes in the past, but announcing it publicly is almost unprecedented.) On the other hand, the Hachette Book Group, its coffers fattened by the "Twilight" series of teen vampire romance novels and James Patterson’s unnervingly productive thriller-industrial complex, is dishing out bonuses at a time when even hedge fund managers feel lucky to still be getting a paycheck.
There's no doubt that escapism pays, especially when there's plenty to escape from, but great books continue to be published and read, and many of these also provide welcome respite for jittery readers. Remember what it was like to slow down, take the phone off the hook and immerse yourself in a story, true or invented, that made the world around you disappear for hours on end? Or to give yourself the time to understand some important aspect of this world in a deeper and more comprehensive way than any newspaper or magazine can offer? Here is our annual list of 10 books -- five fiction, five nonfiction -- that brought us back to that experience.
In this distracted, anxious and superficial age, getting lost in a good book has begun to look like the very best way to get away from it all.
Next page: Our favorite fiction
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