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Recently in Salon Books

Reviews
"Trials of Intimacy: Love and Loss in the Beecher-Tilton Scandal" by Richard Wightman Fox
A beautifully written book about a sensational 19th-century sex scandal unravels stories wrapped in stories about what really happened.
By Stephen Prothero
[12/15/99]

Presents of mind
A selection of books sure to charm, delight and inform even the most particular readers on your list.
By Maria Russo and Stephanie Zacharek
[12/14/99]

Reviews
"My Century" by Günter Grass
In a new novel, the cantankerous 1999 Nobel laureate takes on his times, year by year.
By Michael Scott Moore
[12/14/99]

Dear Mr. Blue
How much is too much?
I can't focus on my schoolwork unless I have sex three or four times a day. Does this make me an addict?
By Garrison Keillor
[12/14/99]

Book Bag
Sincerely ours
The author of "Dewey Defeats Truman" selects five great collections of letters.
By Thomas Mallon
[12/13/99]

Complete archives for Books

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Nonfiction
"Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War" by Mark Bowden
"Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley" by Peter Guralnick
"Lost on Earth: Nomads of the New World" by Mark Fritz
"Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette" by Judith Thurman
"Show Me a Hero: A Tale of Murder, Suicide, Race and Redemption" by Lisa Belkin

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We confess we didn't begin the process of choosing our 10 favorite books of 1999 with quite the enthusiasm we felt in the past three years of the Salon Book Awards. Is it millennial malaise, we wondered, that caused most of the readers we asked for suggestions to murmur listlessly, "I didn't really read anything that blew me away this year"?

Gallery A visual celebration of books and reading by Salon artists

Of course, everyone had at least one exception to that ennui, and many of the books on our final list were the sole bright spot in some readers' otherwise lackluster ventures between the covers. Others we like to consider our own "discoveries," books we picked up with a sense of duty and put down with a sigh of profound satisfaction. Some of them, like Lisa Belkin's "Show Me a Hero" and Mark Fritz's "Lost on Earth," went bafflingly unrecognized (in Belkin's case, even by Salon) when first published. Others, like Stewart O'Nan's "A Prayer for the Dying," weren't greeted with the kind of fanfare we passionately feel they deserve.

This, of course, was the year that J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" books took over the bestseller lists with greater tenacity than any student radical occupying a dean's office ever showed. We loved the "Harry Potter" books, too, and heartily recommend them to adults and children alike -- but you didn't really need us to tell you that, did you?

Each title on our 1999 list is one we wouldn't hesitate to press into the hands of skeptical friends and relatives with the fevered recommendation of bibliophiles everywhere: "You've got to read this." Some are chilling, some hilarious, others moving, but all of them had us spellbound, reluctantly looking up from their pages after hours of reading with the conviction that books like these are the reason we got into this daft line of work in the first place.

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