THE BEST READS OF 2004

Books that somehow made me want to put
everything else on hold and read

Novels
Hunger’s Bride / Paul Anderson
Maps for Lost Lovers / Nadeem Aslam
Case Histories / Kate Atkinson
Oracle Night / Paul Auster
Birds Without Wings / Louis de Bernières
You Remind Me of Me / Dan Chaon
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell / Susanna Clarke
Norman Bray, In the Performance of His Life / Trevor Cole
Becoming Strangers / Louise Dean
About Grace / Anthony Doerr
The Persistence of Memory / Tony Eprile
Four Souls / Louise Erdrich
Old Filth / Jane Gardam
The Ghost Writer / John Harwood
War Trash / Ha Jin
Eventide / Kent Haruf
The Line of Beauty / Alan Hollinghurst
The Cripple and His Talismans / Anosh Irani
The Making of Henry / Howard Jacobson
The Ninth Life of Louis Drax / Liz Jensen
Ordinary Wolves / Seth Kantner
Aloft / Chang-Rae Lee
Small Island / Andrea Levy
Ghost Story / Toby Litt
Some Great Thing / Colin McAdam
Prince Edward / Dennis McFarland
The White Earth / Andrew McGahan
Port Mungo Patrick McGrath
Liars and Saints / Maile Meloy
Runaway / Alice Munro
Heir to the Glimmering World (published as The Bear Boy in the U.K. in 2005)/ Cynthia Ozick
Gilead / Marilynne Robinson
The Plot Against America / Philip Roth
Ice Road / Gillian Slovo
A Complicated Kindness / Miriam Toews
The Master / Colm Tóibín
The News from Paraguay / Lily Tuck
Lighthousekeeping / Jeanette Winterson
I'll Go to Bed at Noon / Gerard Woodward
The Shadow of the Wind / Carlos Ruiz Zafon (trans. from the Spanish by Lucia Graves)

Stories
The Lemon Table / Julian Barnes
Natasha and Other Stories / David Bezmozgis
The Dew Breaker / Edwidge Dandicat
Sweet Land Stories / E.L. Doctorow
My Nine Lives: Chapters of a Possible Past / Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Corpus Christi / Bret Anthony Johnston
The Secret Goldfish / David Means
Bad Dirt / Annie Proulx
Collected Stories / Carol Shields
The Laws of Evening / Mary Yukari Waters
Honored Guest / Joy Williams
The Turning / Tim Winton

Poetry
Newborn / Kate Clanchy
These Days / Leontia Flynn
The Never-Never / Kathryn Gray
Ground Water / Michael Hollis
The Tree House / Kathleen Jamie
Collected Poems / Donald Justice
Snow Water / Michael Longley
Walking the Animals / Carola Luther
Hare Soup / Dorothy Molloy
The Rest of Love / Carl Phillips
Corpus / Michael Symmons Roberts
Collected Poems 1943-2004 / Richard Wilbur

Nonfiction
Bound to Please: An Extraordinary One-Volume Literary Education: Essays on Great Writers and Their Books / Michael Dirda
Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare / Stephen Greenblatt
The Polysyllabic Spree / Nick Hornby
Cutty, One Rock: Low Characters and Strange Places, Gently Explained / August Kleinzahler
Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430-1950 / Mark Mazower
Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found / Suketu Mehta
The Places in Between / Rory Stewart