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The New York Times has just unveiled its selections of the year’s best books. I’m looking forward to reading Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke, which also won this year’s National Book Award. Roberto Bolano has received tremendous posthumous acclaim, so I’ll be buying his book as well. I don’t like reading hardcovers, so I’ll just have to wait until they are released in paperback before I can get at them.

Update: The editor of the excellent NYT’s book blog, Paper Cuts, explains the process of how the top ten books were chosen. Seems like a fair and democratic process (albeit inevitably subjective!):

…the arguments can get intense, in a big way. The Book Review’s top editors choose the 10 from the list of 100 Notable Books we compile each year. First we read and re-read, for many weeks. We sit in a room and argue it out, first to pick those 100 … and then, more agonizingly, to whittle it down to the 10. Frequently, one of us would hand a book to a colleague and say: “Here, go read X again overnight and tell me it’s not better than Y.” Not all of my personal X’s made this list - but then, all of no one’s did. I am happy about some of the dark horses here, like the funny, flinty “Little Heathens.” Where did *that* come from? What a joy.

– Dwight Garner