Critic's Choices for 2005

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Sunday, December 4, 2005

Nonfiction

The Year of Magical Thinking , by Joan Didion

The Coldest Winter , by Paula Fox

Defining the World , by Henry Hitchings

The Cardinal's Hat , by Mary Hollingsworth

The Edifice Complex , by Deyan Sudjic

The City of Falling Angels , by John Berendt

When All the World Was Young,

by Barbara Holland

Reading, Writing, and Leaving Home,

by Lynn Freed

Garlic and Sapphires , by Ruth Reichl

Fiction

Making It Up , by Penelope Lively

The Closers , by Michael Connelly

Never Let Me Go , by Kazuo Ishiguro

Carnivore Diet , by Julia Slavin

The Broker , by John Grisham

Find More Reviews and Features in Books

A pandemic waiting in the wings

Alan Sipress's superb and sobering "The Fatal Strain" details the shadowy progression of a virulent avian flu now moving across Asia.

Who do men say that I am?

Though too cursory to work as an intro to the Gospels, Mary Gordon's "Reading Jesus" should appeal to anyone who wants to wrestle with the problems and paradoxes of the New Testament.