THE BEST READS OF 1999

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

NOVELS
Disgrace / J.M. Coetzee
Being Dead / Jim Crace
Fasting, Feasting / Anita Desai
Headlong / Michael Frayn
Plainsong / Kent Haruf
Fruit of the Lemon / Andrea Levy
No Great Mischief / Alistair Macleod
Our Fathers / Andrew O'Hagan
The Romantics / Pankaj Mishra
An Equal Music / Vikram Seth
White Teeth / Zadie Smith
The Map of Love / Ahdaf Soueif
The Blackwater Lightship / Colm Tóibín
Music and Silence / Rose Tremain

STORIES
For the Relief of Unbearable Urges / Nathan Englander
Interpreter of Maladies / Jhumpa Lahiri
Close Range / Annie Proulx

POETRY
Beowulf / Seamus Heaney

NONFICTION
Reading the Holocaust / Inga Clendinnen
Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette / Judith Thurman
The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and the Belief / James Wood