Best Books of 2007

One of the advantages to my 2 hour plus daily commute is the opportunity to do a lot of reading. In 2007, so far, I've completed 46 books. That's equal to my reading total for 2006 but does not equal my yearly average since I began keeping track in the mid 80's of 52 a year. I attribute the drop off to subscribing to the weekend newspaper which occupies whatever reading time I have on the weekends.

As the end of the calendar year approaches I thought that I would share my top books of 2007. Not all of these books were published in 2007 but they are close enough to qualify. When I complete a book I record the author, title, date completed, and a rating of 1 to 10. I started doing this because I wanted to be able to recommend books in case anyone asked me and to be sure that I was not reading something that I had already read and, perhaps, didn't like.

2007 was a pretty good reading year for me. Eleven books earned a score of 8 or better. For this posting I'll list 5. These are books that earned the highest rating and that I can still remember what they were about as the year ends;

1. The Road - Cormac McCarthy - A father and son struggle for survival in a post-apocalyptic America. A dark novel but strangely uplifting as well.
2. God is Not Great - Christopher Hitchens - Hitchens spares none of the world's major and minor religions from scathing criticism of dubious stories and impossible to obey rules.
3. A Woman in Jerusalem - A.B. Yehoshua - The tale of an unknown and invisible migrant worker in Israel who is killed in a terrorist attack and the bureaucrat who attempts to do right by her and her family.
4. Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen - A glimpse into circus life during the Great Depression.
5. The Brief History of the Dead - Keith Brockmeier - A story about the place that souls go after they die and while the living still remember them.

Looking back over this list it appears that what I enjoyed this year revolved around the dark and thoughtful. There doesn't seem to be a lot of escapism here. I'll stick with these choices, though. I had a hard time putting any of these down.