In case you haven’t noticed, Americans love lists—especially at this time of year. Richest people lists, best gifts lists and, in the book world, of course, bestseller lists and year-end roundup lists. We at PW are no exception: as you’ll see in our year-end issue (Dec. 31), we’re reprising our best-of-the-Web reviews in print and we’re also starting a new annual feature: editor’s picks, our individual, personal favorites. There’s just something about a bulleted, quantifiable (“10 Best,” “50 Cheapest” and so on), edited compendium of choices that makes life much more manageable. And if book lists also help with gift-giving (read: book sales), so much the better.

I applaud the National Book Critics Circle (of which I am a not particularly active member) for coming up with the idea of launching a recommended list of books, which the organization will disseminate on a monthly basis. According to NBCC’s president, critic John Freeman, the lists—for fiction, nonfiction and poetry—will be an alternative to bestseller lists. “My hope,” said Freeman, “was to create a list to show what people are recommending to each other... which is how books really travel.”

So far, so good: word of mouth is how books do travel, as proven by the hard-to-quantify but powerful world of American book clubs. And it’s great that the NBCC, which was so vocal in lamenting the consolidation and demise of traditional review outlets last year (for an appreciation of their efforts, see p. 26), is being more proactive in the service of books. But I can’t help it: I found the inaugural lists disappointing, particularly in fiction, which lauded this year’s usual suspects: Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke, Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, Philip Roth’s Exit Ghost and Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses have all been widely (and generally glowingly) reviewed. Talk about preaching to the choir: don’t most of the people who’d look to an organization like NBCC already know that these books are important? One of the NBCC’s (and other groups’) biggest fears about the book review consolidation was that there’d be fewer opportunities for the smaller, less ceremoniously published book to get noticed—but I find few surprises, few “discoveries” here.

I’m not saying that the NBCC, or its distinguished panel of reviewers and authors including Cynthia Ozick and John Updike, should “dumb down” its taste. I’m not suggesting that they pick titles for their shock value. (Updike extolling A Thousand Splendid Suns? I doubt it.) But I can’t help wishing that the group took more liberties with its pool of candidates. Was Amy Bloom’s Away or Stef Penney’s The Tenderness of Wolves not in the running? What about Brock Clarke’s well-reviewed and successful but not-yet-a-blockbuster An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England? And why not consider paperbacks, which is really how books travel? (My pick: Jenna Blum’s Those Who Save Us.)

Book selecting and reviewing, like publishing as a whole, is supposed to be all about disparate voices.

So, dear NBCC, let us hear more.

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