Best of 2014 From NYT Critics Kakutani, Maslin, Garner

Publishers Lunch

The New York Times' daily critics Michiko Kakutani, Janet Maslin, and Dwight Garner each chose their 10 favorite books of 2014. As usual, there is little intersection between these 30 titles and the NYT Book Review's official "10 Best" list. Also as is often the case, Kakutani picks are the most aligned with that 10 Best: She concurs on Klay, Chast, and Kolbert (and Garner is in sync on Lee):

Kakutani
Redeployment, Phil Klay
Little Failure, Gary Shteyngart
A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James
Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Roz Chast
Duty, Robert M. Gates
The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert
The Dog, Jack Livings
Lila, Marilynne Robinson
Not That Kind of Girl, Lena Dunham
All Our Names, Dinaw Mengestu

Maslin
Factory Man, Beth Macy
We Are Not Ourselves, Matthew Thomas
To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, Joshua Ferris
Flash Boys, Michael Lewis
Something Rich and Strange, Ron Rash
The Innovators, Walter Isaacson
The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, Jeff Hobbs
Foreign Gods, Inc., Okey Ndibe
Being Mortal, Atul Gawande
Fourth of July Creek, Smith Henderson

Garner
Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life, Hermoine Lee
Art in America: 1945-1970, edited by Jed Perl
The Empathy Exams, Leslie Jamison
10:04, Ben Lerner
How to Build a Girl, Caitlin Moran
My Struggle, Book Three, Karl Ove Knausgaard
I'll Take You There, Greg Kot
Slant Six, Erin Belieu
Preparations for the Next Life, Atticus Lish
Every Day is for the Thief, Teju Cole