20 Best Books of 2011

This is the book I've been evangelizing for all year, and will continue to reread and talk up for the foreseeable future. Lidia Yuknavitch's brilliant memoir The Chronology of Water completely explodes the genre of the grief/addiction/abuse memoir, eradicates all the cliches, and is a stunning floating experimental piece that takes the metaphor of swimming (Yuknavitch was a competitive, nearly Olympic swimmer) to invent a new language and form for this genre, or really for prose writing in general. It's ecstatic and devastating and visceral and just read it, please, it may be impossible for a blurb like this to do it justice. - Hannah

China Mieville is one of the best fantasy writers working today, but for this book he turns his attention to a thoroughly science fiction story of aliens and space travel. The book is set in a small human outpost on the edge of a strikingly alien city inhabited by creatures who speak with two mouths and are incapable of speaking untruths. Like all good sci fi, however, it is grounded in bigger questions, like the nature of language and the value of metaphor. Mieville's philosophical bent is harnessed into an exciting tale of cross-species exchange and political rebellion filled with exotic creatures and daring characters (human and otherwise). - Ross

This is the only book on Moroccan cooking that you will ever need. Never been intrigued by the food of Morocco? You will be. This is a beautiful and utterly comprehensive guide to an exotic and delicious cuisine. There's a debate in the food world about the value of authenticity over innovation; Paula Wolfert wants to hear no part of that. This book is extremely exacting, unapologetically authentic, and thoroughly detailed, but each recipe is an absolute winner. Unlike her first cookbook, the landmark Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco, this one is filled with pictures, one for almost every recipe. - Ross

This book is staggering. It is a seriously thorough and wildly readable account of humanity's worst historical moments. It is not for the faint of heart. Expect to read about: death, death, more death, cannibalism, and pyramids of severed heads. Matthew White, a librarian by profession, is committed, in the broadly humanist sort of way that all librarians are, to the accuracy and accessibility of information. Having undertaken an internet project to collect historical maps and statistics, he became troubled by the fact that the death counts of atrocities are often mis-estimated for political or ideological reasons, and so he wrote this book as an attempt to set the record straight, or at least straighter. As you read The Great Big Book, and the raw weight of humanity's awesome horribleness bears down on you, you realize what White has created here: a passionate act of witnessing, a testimony to the suffering of millions, a serious scholarly inquiry into who perpetrates atrocities against whom and how and why they do it, and a bold challenge to the human race to do better. - Dana

A different kind of narrative . It's about writer whose stories generally concludes with him beheading his main female characters. he's approach by a female who tells him he needs to develop a different ending to his stories & tries to proceed to help him in this endeavor. The twist to this is that we don't know if his muse is just his imagination or actually a real person as it is told thru a variety of vignettes. If you like interesting & quirky this is a story that you will truly enjoy. - Cheryl

Poignant, painful, and unforgettably personal, Goldman’s book teaches us to see his wife and their short life together through his eyes. This is an obsessive almost-biography, an autopsy of a beautiful marriage, and above all, a pitch-perfect love song by an enormously talented writer. I’ve rarely read a more affecting or powerful book. No one writes this well. - Jeff

Well-written historical narrative of how Lucretius' ancient poem The Nature of Things was rescued by Poggio Bracciolini, a Renaissance humanist (and sort-of book dealer) who realized the importance of a manuscript he "hunted". Steven Greenblatt writes wonderfully, bringing both Lucretius' world and Bracciolini's story to life. Reads much like a historical novel, in the best sense of that phrase. (Grab a copy of the Lucretius also if you really want to get the whole picture.) - Laura

This book makes common household appliances into foreign and enigmatic objects with long histories and big footprints. While Thwaites raises serious questions about sustainability, his real focus ends up being on the inscrutability of the global supply chain. Between the mild existential angst brought about by too much contemplation of the source of things, the botched but cavalier attempts to smelt at home, and the long transcripts of phone calls with confused customer service representatives at BP from whom he tries to purchase one single barrel of oil, the overall effect is charming and a little dark. Thwaites has no solutions to our environmental crisis, but he is willing to play with the problems. - Dana

This is a biography of one of the more influential playwrights in the 1980's. She was popular during this time but not much was known about her personally. Julie Salamon gives us some insight on her personal life but also the influence that her family had on her body of work. I found the book very engaging. If you're a fan of the theater or not you will find the story of Wendy entertaining & engaging. - Cheryl

If I must compare I'd say Octavia Butler meets Chinua Achebe in this spellbinding literary masterpiece, but in all honesty Nnedi Okorafor is in a class of her own. This is a quest novel at the very least; it is fantasy that echoes many actual horrors of our history and present. The protagonist, Onyesonwu, is proud, stubborn, dangerous, and prone to anger, yet she is the most refreshing, kind, admirable heroine you will read of and you will find yourself rooting for her despite her faults. - Dormowa