With the understanding that it’s necessarily subjective and selective, here is a list of the best books we reviewed in 1993. And while it may go without saying, we’ll say it anyway-books rank high among those gifts that keep on giving.
Fiction
The Shipping News, by E. Annie Proulx (Scribners, $20). Winner of the National Book Award and the Tribune’s Heartland Prize, Proulx’s tale of an endearingly oafish newspaperman’s adventures in Newfoundland is at once very funny and very moving.
The Oxford Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle (Oxford University Press, $99). This 9-volume, abundantly annotated boxed set is the definitive edition of the Holmes tales.
Operation Wandering Soul, by Richard Powers (Morrow, $23). In a decayed, near-future Los Angeles, a young doctor’s buried memories are stirred as he treats children in a hospital emergency room.
The Night Manager, by John le Carre (Knopf, $24). Le Carre is more action-oriented than usual in this tale of one man’s revenge against an international arms dealer.
The Plum in the Golden Vase, translated by David Tod Roy (Princeton University Press, $29.95). A vivid, unexpurgated translation gives us access to this 16th Century Chinese tale of rampant appetites-the world’s third great novel, after “The Tale of Genji” and “Don Quixote.”
Feather Crowns, by Bobbie Ann Mason (HarperCollins, $23). After giving birth to quintuplets in Kentucky at the turn of the century, a young woman undergoes a spiritual transformation.
The Life and Times of Captain N., by Douglas Glover (Knopf, $21). Re-imagining the nation’s birth, Glover portrays two men and a woman whose lives are turned upside down during the Revolutionary War.
Nobody’s Fool, by Richard Russo (Random House, $25). In an impoverished town in upstate New York, a man caught in the social undertow refuses to go under.
Strip Tease, by Carl Hiaasen (Knopf, $21). Blend a good-hearted stripper, her vicious ex-husband, a sleazy congressman and several other Miami-based grotesques and you’ve got a unique recipe for crime fiction.
Poor Things, Alasdair Gray (Harcourt Brace, $21.95). Gray sends up the cult of innocence in this densely plotted tale of modern man’s intellectual follies.
The Man Who Was Late, by Louis Begley (Knopf, $21). Trying to evade his childhood memories of the Holocaust, a New York financier lives a life of tragic denial.
The Pugilist at Rest, by Thom Jones (Little, Brown, $18.95). In Jones’ short stories, men and women try to come to grips with three of life’s key ordeals: war, sex and disease.
Mystery Ride, by Robert Boswell (Knopf, $22). A couple who came together in the ’70s and fell apart in the ’80s confront their fates on an Iowa farm.
Foxfire, by Joyce Carol Oates (Dutton, $21). Oates, in typically tough-minded form, takes us inside a 1950s “girl gang.”
The Oracle at Stoneleigh Court, by Peter Taylor (Knopf, $22). A modern master of irony is on view in the title novella, 11 stories and three one-act plays.
The Road to Wellville, by T.C. Boyle (Viking, $22.50). Boyle skewers all sorts of American obsessions in this serio-comic tale of a Battle Creek, Mich., health spa in the early 1900s.
Sweet William, by John Hawkes (Simon & Schuster, $20). Meet Hawkes’ Everyman hero, who happens to be a horse.
A Lesson Before Dying, By Ernest J. Gaines (Knopf, $21). Railroaded to the electric chair, a young Mississippian struggles to die with dignity.
The Robber Bride, by Margaret Atwood (Doubleday, $23.50). Evil stalks the landscape as three friends deal with a malicious homewrecker whom they had believed to be dead.
Save Me, Joe Louis, by Madison Smartt Bell (Harcourt Brace, $23.95). Insight and compassion mark Bell’s tale of a trio of social outcasts.
The Collected Stories, by John McGahern (Knopf, $24). Full of lonely men, the short fiction of Ireland’s McGahern has a melancholy power.
Strange Pilgrims, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Knopf, $21). Marquez shapes into a cohesive unit 12 short stories about cultural dissonance.
Van Gogh’s Room at Arles, by Stanley Elkin (Hyperion, $22.95). Three novellas from a master of skewed wit depict a world that is out of joint.
Theory of War, by Joan Brady (Knopf, $21). This historical novel is based on the life of Brady’s grandfather, who at age 4 was sold as an indentured servant to a Kansas tobacco farmer shortly after the Civil War.
The Little Town Where Time Stood Still, by Bohumil Hrabal (Pantheon, $23). The gifts of a major Czech writer are evident in two off-the-wall novellas.
Nonfiction
Old Friends, by Tracy Kidder (Houghton Mifflin, $22.95). Kidder empathetically traces the patterns of life, death and friendship in a nursing home.
All Our Yesterdays, by James Oliver Robertson and Janet C. Robertson (HarperCollins, $30). A cache of diaries and documents allows two historians to trace the lives of a Connecticut family back to the 1790s.
President Kennedy, by Richard Reeves (Simon & Schuster, $30). Reeves presents a cool, compelling portrait of JFK the politician.
Upon This Rock, by Samuel Freedman (HarperCollins, $22.50). A black church in Brooklyn and its heroic pastor wage a tough fight against the trials of urban poverty.
The Debate on the Constitution, edited by Bernard Baylin (Library of America, two volumes, $35 each). This vast collection of documents pertaining to the fight over what kind of Constitution the U.S. ought to have offers unprecedented historical insights.
The Complete Lyrics of Ira Gershwin (Knopf, $45). Gershwin’s elegant, self-effacing art gets its due.
Theirs Was the Kingdom, by John Heidenry (Norton, $29.95). Heidenry tells the story of one of America’s cultural institutions, the Reader’s Digest.
The Sixties, Edmund Wilson (Farrar Straus Giroux, $35). The last journal of this famous man of letters is as absorbing as its predecessors.
The Letters of William S. Burroughs (Viking, $25). The correspondence of the author of “Naked Lunch” is as remarkable as any of his fiction.
Crusade, by Rick Atkinson (Houghton Mifflin, $24.95). An unflattering portrait of Gen. Schwarzkopf stands at the center of this behind-the-scenes account of the Persian Gulf War.
Henry James: Collected Travel Writings (Library of America, two volumes, $35 each). James’ never-ending analysis of the world and its inhabitants culminates in his “The American Scene.”
Life for Me Ain’t Been No Crystal Stair, by Susan Sheehan (Pantheon, $21). Sheehan explores the life and the environment of a pregnant 14-year-old who lives in the Bronx.
Before Night Falls, by Reinaldo Arenas (Viking, $25). The late Cuban novelist who suffered at the hands of Castro’s regime left behind this powerful autobiography.
Philip Larkin, by Andrew Motion (Farrar Straus Giroux, $35) and Selected Letters of Philip Larkin (Farrar Straus Giroux, $35). Modern England’s bard of regret is captured in a biography and in his letters.
The Balkan Express, by Slaveneka Drakulic (Norton, $19.95). A Croatian journalist and novelist paints a grim portrait of her war-torn land.
Days of Grace, by Arthur Ashe and Arnold Rampersad (Knopf, $24). The late tennis star and humanitarian leaves behind this account of his life and times.
Bad Science, by Gary Taubes (Random House, $25). Taubes looks at the fuss over cold fusion and concludes that all is not well in the house of science.
Diary, Volume Three, by Witold Gombrowicz (Northwestern University Press, $29.95, $12.95 paper). Exiled from his native Poland, Gombrowicz is a fierce debunker and an intense elegist.
Ornette Coleman, by John Litweiler (Morrow, $23). This is a insightful critical biography of the saxophonist-composer who redefined jazz.
H.L. Mencken: My Life as Author and Editor (Knopf, $30). Mencken specified that this autobiography remain sealed for 35 years after his death, and now we have it-uncensored, vigorous and very opinionated.
Gilgamesh, by David Ferry (Farrar Straus Giroux, $15). Ferry’s version of this ancient creation epic leaves one with the feeling that first things are being witnessed for the first time.
One Zero Charlie, by Laurence Gonzales (Simon & Schuster, $20). The world of grass-roots aviation is portrayed in fond detail.
Natural Opium, by Diane Johnson (Knopf, $21). A traveler who exceeds the limits of travel writing, Johnson finds much to respond to in Switzerland, the Great Barrier Reef, South Africa and other places.
The Last Panda, by George B. Schaller (University of Chicago Press, $24.95). Field biologist Schaller’s account of the years he spent in the remote panda preserves of southwest China argues for the preservation of the panda in the wild.
Meetings With Time, by Carl Dennis (Viking, $21). Dennis’ often witty, storytelling verse is obsessed with questions of civic virtue.
