Salon Book Award

Given by Salon.com

153 Works 637,431 Books 19,937 Reviews ½ 3.9
From Salon.com 1996 (the first year of the award_): These are the books we'd wholeheartedly recommend to our friends, books we'd clear our social calendar to finish, books we returned to eagerly show more even when we could barely focus our eyes on a page. They remind us of why we fell in love with reading and why we keep at it in a world that's simultaneously cluttered with mediocre books and increasingly indifferent to the written word. This, ultimately, was our criterion -- despite the fact that, like most list-makers and award-givers, we felt vague, ambient pressures to make "representative" choices and tip our hats to titles that seemed eminently worthy, if not much fun. As online journalists, we're just a click away from our readers' feedback, a fact which gave us even more impetus to choose what we truly loved, rather than to cover our butts ideologically. show less
Categories:
All, Fiction (44), Nonfiction (46), No Category (63)
Years:
All, 2011 (10), 2010 (11), 2009 (10), 2008 (9), 2007 (10), 2006 (12), 2005 (11), 2004 (10), 2003 (10), 2001 (10), 2000 (10), 1999 (10), 1998 (10), 1997 (10), 1996 (10)
WorkCategoryYear
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
Fiction2011
Pym by Mat Johnson
Fiction2011
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
Fiction2011
The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips
Fiction2011
The Pale King by David Foster Wallace
Fiction2011
Townie by Andre III Dubus
Nonfiction2011
Love and Capital by Mary Gabriel
Nonfiction2011
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick
Nonfiction2011
Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie
Nonfiction2011
Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II by Mitchell Zuckoff
Nonfiction2011
Room by Emma Donoghue
Fiction2010
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Fiction2010
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
Fiction2010
Faithful Place by Tana French
Fiction2010
Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
Fiction2010
The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman
Nonfiction2010
I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay by John Lanchester
Nonfiction2010
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis
Nonfiction2010
Let the Swords Encircle Me: Iran--A Journey Behind the Headlines by Scott Peterson
Nonfiction2010
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Nonfiction2010
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
Nonfiction2010
The Children's Book by A. S. Byatt
Fiction2009
Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon
Fiction2009
Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem
Fiction2009
Love in Infant Monkeys: Stories by Lydia Millet
Fiction2009
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
Fiction2009
Somewhere Towards the End: A Memoir by Diana Athill
Nonfiction2009
Columbine by Dave Cullen
Nonfiction2009
The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
Nonfiction2009
Tall Man: The Death of Doomadgee by Chloe Hooper
Nonfiction2009
A New Literary History of America by Greil Marcus
Nonfiction2009
2666 by Roberto Bolaño
2008
A Person of Interest by Susan Choi
2008
The Likeness by Tana French
2008
Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen
2008
Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark Harris
2008
The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher
2008
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale
2008
Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are by Rob Walker
2008
The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order by Joan Wickersham
2008
The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam (Vintage Departures) by Tom Bissell
2007
The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
2007
Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra
2007
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
2007
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
2007
The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved by Judith Freeman
2007
Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations by Georgina Howell
2007
Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
2007
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner
2007
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
2007
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
2006
Sweet and Low: A Family Story by Rich Cohen
2006
What Is the What by Dave Eggers
2006
Twilight of the Superheroes: Stories by Deborah Eisenberg
2006
A Disorder Peculiar to the Country: A Novel by Ken Kalfus
2006
The Family that Couldn't Sleep by D.T. Max
2006
The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn
2006
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
2006
James Tiptree Jr: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips
2006
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
2006
Wizard of the Crow by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
2006
The Amalgamation Polka by Stephen Wright
2006
Tulia by Nate Blakeslee
2005
Veronica by Mary Gaitskill
2005
Them: A Memoir of Parents by Francine du Plessix Gray
2005
Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke by Peter Guralnick
2005
Times Like These by Rachel Ingalls
2005
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
2005
Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link
2005
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
2005
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
2005
The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq by George Packer
2005
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
2005
Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
2004
Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age by Kevin Boyle
2004
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
2004
Happy Baby by Stephen Elliott
2004
Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale by Gillian Gill
2004
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
2004
American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies by Michael W. Kauffman
2004
Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival by Dean King
2004
Snow by Orhan Pamuk
2004
The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David K. Shipler
2004
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
2003
Any Human Heart by William Boyd
2003
Drop City by T. C. Boyle
2003
American Woman by Susan Choi
2003
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
2003
I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company: A Novel of Lewis and Clark by Brian Hall
2003
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
2003
Property by Valerie Martin
2003
The Bug by Ellen Ullman
2003
Old School by Tobias Wolff
2003
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
Fiction2001
Stranger Things Happen: Stories by Kelly Link
Fiction2001
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Fiction2001
Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald
Fiction2001
John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead
Fiction2001
Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America by Lily Burana
Nonfiction2001
Wittgenstein's Poker : The Story of a Ten-minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers by David Edmonds
Nonfiction2001
Borrowed Finery by Paula Fox
Nonfiction2001
Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
Nonfiction2001
John Adams by David McCullough
Nonfiction2001
Being Dead by Jim Crace
Fiction2000
The Name of the World by Denis Johnson
Fiction2000
Lying Awake by Mark Salzman
Fiction2000
Abe by Richard Slotkin
Fiction2000
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Fiction2000
An American Story by Debra J. Dickerson
Nonfiction2000
The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams by Nasdijj
Nonfiction2000
The Boxer Rebellion: The Dramatic Story of China's War on Foreigners that Shook the World in the Summer of 1900 by Diana Preston
Nonfiction2000
The Social Lives of Dogs by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Nonfiction2000
Pilate: The Biography of an Invented Man by Ann Wroe
Nonfiction2000
Plainsong by Kent Haruf
Fiction1999
Original Bliss: Stories by A. L. Kennedy
Fiction1999
Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
Fiction1999
A Prayer for the Dying by Stewart O'Nan
Fiction1999
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Fiction1999
Show Me A Hero by Lisa Belkin
Nonfiction1999
Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War by Mark Bowden
Nonfiction1999
Lost on Earth: Nomads of the New World by Mark Fritz
Nonfiction1999
Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick
Nonfiction1999
Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman
Nonfiction1999
The Voyage of the Narwhal by Andrea Barrett
Fiction1998
Thirst by Ken Kalfus
Fiction1998
Birds of America: Stories by Lorrie Moore
Fiction1998
Starting Out in the Evening by Brian Morton
Fiction1998
Blindness by José Saramago
Fiction1998
We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch
Nonfiction1998
At Home with the Marquis de Sade: A Life by Francine du Plessix Gray
Nonfiction1998
A Slant of Sun: One Child's Courage by Beth Kephart
Nonfiction1998
A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash by Sylvia Nasar
Nonfiction1998
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester
Nonfiction1998
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
Fiction1997
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
Fiction1997
Because They Wanted to: Stories by Mary Gaitskill
Fiction1997
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
Fiction1997
How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton
Nonfiction1997
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman
Nonfiction1997
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer
Nonfiction1997
Echoes of a Native Land: Two Centuries of a Russian Village by Serge Schmemann
Nonfiction1997
Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents by Ellen Ullman
Nonfiction1997
Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
1997
The Family Markowitz by Allegra Goodman
Fiction1996
Reader's Block by David Markson
Fiction1996
The Giant's House by Elizabeth McCracken
Fiction1996
The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie
Fiction1996
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Fiction1996
My Dark Places by James Ellroy
Nonfiction1996
The Shadow Man by Mary Gordon
Nonfiction1996
The Temple Bombing by Melissa Fay Greene
Nonfiction1996
The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War by Paul Hendrickson
Nonfiction1996
Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
Nonfiction1996

Tags

20th century(1,844) 21st century(2,089) alternate history(1,448) American(2,186) American history(1,680) American literature(1,989) audiobook(1,535) autism(2,460) autobiography(1,456) biography(8,981) book club(1,570) British(1,918) coming of age(1,285) contemporary(1,647) contemporary fiction(2,222) crime(1,838) ebook(2,286) England(3,098) family(2,653) fantasy(5,186) fiction(51,991) food(1,819) goodreads(1,609) graphic novel(1,223) historical(1,355) historical fiction(4,343) history(10,761) Ireland(1,970) Kindle(2,167) library(1,229) literary fiction(1,724) literature(4,244) magic(1,477) memoir(4,440) murder(1,311) mystery(5,639) non-fiction(17,244) novel(8,299) own(2,797) owned(1,249) read(7,023) Roman(1,246) science(2,914) science fiction(3,831) short stories(1,406) signed(1,225) to-read(33,626) unread(3,472) usa(2,055) wwii(1,646)

Top Members

alo1224 (94 works), mffowler (91), emaestra (88), alaskabookworm (87), KelMunger (87), johnpkane (84), bookmountain (81), davidabrams (81), angstrat (77), JVermillion (77), cabegley (76), fledglingphoenix (75), GrettelTBR (75), RLNunezKPL (74), Dureo (73), SleepySheep (73), gwendolyndawson (72), Kaethe (72), KrisR (71), kamintra (70), Dan_Park (68), erohwedd (67), PaulCranswick (67), e-zReader (66), meyerson (66), hivetrick (64), pdebolt (64), Serrana (64), MARizzo72 (63), sangreal (63), uscer (63), wesmrlnd (63), arubabookwoman (62), jasbro (62), ShanLand (62), DagoLA (61), IamAleem (61), js31550 (61), kurtau (61), Olivert12000 (61), bookjones (60), jonmower (60), michaelg16 (60), benitastrnad (59), Keelz09 (59), Larou (59), SoschaF (59), cait815 (58), Caroline_McElwee (58), elkiedee (58), GeigerLibrary (58), mick745 (58), nancyewhite (58), nbsp (58), rdurie (58), sandrikoti (58), cataloga (57), gbelik (57), dablackwood (56), danielmmiranda (56), kiwidoc (56), agille37 (55), EmScape (55), ForrestFamily (55), FurfuralAndVanillin (55), hayduke (55), lscan2 (55), msf59 (55), phoebekw (55), deftnerd (54), etbm2003 (54), ginger.hewitt (54), mjlivi (54), nate48281 (54), weird_O (54), WestBranch (54), azimrin (53), buriedinprint (53), Connie-D (53), katiekrug (53), nkearns4951 (53), Sterling4589 (53), thewordygecko (53), Anietzerck (52), badube (52), cctesttc1 (52), DanteAshton (52), dawnlovesbooks (52), GSLulos (52), LouisBranning (52), Rivaton (52), stephmo (52), vicwong (52), Alsek (51), bridgitshearth (51), gaeta1 (51), ginaruiz (51), HarvReviewer (51), lesliecp (51), linlef (51), Robert_Musil (51), steevohenderson (51), Themis-Athena (51), tootstorm (51), boookywooky (50), Clio12 (50), ELiz_M (50), HadriantheBlind (50), JWhitsitt (50), Lepophagus (50), lmgrim (50), nelsam (50), parasolofdoom (50), Phyllis.Mann (50), Yardape (50), agmlll (49), bhowell (49), dpeace (49), dperry (49), framji (49), MaikoKirana (49), narbgr01 (49), nicoelston (49), pagesturned (49), PaperboundPeregrine (49), reelbigschmidt (49), shearrob (49), SlateLibrary (49), sycoraxpine (49), Teresa40 (49), TheBookJunky (49), twomoredays (49), aabdelrahmanm (48), bragan (48), Citizenjoyce (48), cns1000 (48), Donna828 (48), eastlake_uk (48), pc1951 (48), slpwhitehead (48), Smiler69 (48), SuzyK222 (48), VisibleGhost (48), Whisper1 (48), wm3395 (48), Castlelass (47), HeatherMoss (47), kristiederuiter (47), LadyDita (47), Oryphany (47), TangledPages (47), vernonlee (47), Yells (47), augustgarage (46), CalebLiu82 (46), Dorritt (46), Dyrfinna (46), iluvvideo (46), jennmaine (46), joedoone (46), Lidbud (46), mattcompton (46), megansbooklist (46), mucker28 (46), Sandydog1 (46), shvizdos (46), theeclecticreview (46), Bookish59 (45), booksatasteal (45), K1ckaha (45), torcrot (45)