Critical Mass, the National Book Critics Circle's blog, has a regular feature it calls Good Reads. It surveys the membership as well as some eminent authors to come up with a list of top choices in fiction, nonfiction and poetry among the current books. Their current picks are these:
Fiction
1. Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke (Farrar Straus & Giroux)
2. Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead)
3. J.M. Coetzee, Diary of a Bad Year (Viking)
4. Geraldine Brooks, People of the Book (Viking)
5. Steve Erickson, Zeroville (Europa)
Nonfiction
1. The Rest Is Noise, by Alex Ross (FSG)
2. Brother, I’m Dying, by Edwidge Danticat (Knopf)
3. In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan (Penguin Press)
4. Musicophilia, by Oliver Sacks (Knopf)*
5. The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein (Metropolitan)*
Poetry
1. Elegy, by Mary Jo Bang (Graywolf)
2. Time and Materials, by Robert Hass (Ecco)*
3. Gulf Music, by Robert Pinsky (FSG)*
4. The Collected Poems, 1956–1998, by Zbigniew Herbert (Ecco)
5. Sharp Teeth, by Toby Barlow (Harper)
*There was a tie for fourth in nonfiction, and for second in poetry
I can endorse the list, even though I've read only one of the titles (Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food). My own choices, which didn't make the final cut, were:
Fiction
The Commoner, by John Burnham Schwartz (Talese/Doubleday) -- My review of this fine novel should be up next weekend.
Nonfiction
Coal River, by Michael Shnayerson (Farrar, Straus) -- See here for my review.
Sadly, like most people, I know nothing about contemporary poetry.