• The Underappreciated of 2004 , Part I
• Original Poll

• The list continues with two fine nominations from Golden Rule Jones: Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s Television, put out by Dalkey Archive Press in November, and Barth Landor’s A Week in Winter, published by Permanent Press in February.

Anna Godbersen reviewed Television for Esquire.

Mr. Jones himself interviewed Barth Landor about A Week in Winter — the post also contains a link to Sam’s audio review of the novel on Chicago Public Radio; the novel’s publication home page quotes from the Kirkus and Publisher Weekly’s reviews, the latter of which compares the novel favorably to Gogol’s The Inspector General. Awesome.

• Maud Newton recommends Miljenko Jergovic’s Sarajevo Marlboro and, God bless her, provides her own links to information about the novel.

Sarajevo Marlboro, Maud points out, was “heralded last year by Aleksander Hemon in the BBC’s Sense of the City series.” Additional information can also be found here. Meanwhile, attentive fans of Ms. Newton will recall that Sarajevo Marlboro was included in a Newsday piece about her favorite novels of the year, which includes a host of other good titles.

• Reader Liz Younger suggested Samantha Hunt’s The Seas, writing that “it is truly one of the oddest, most startlingly beautiful books I read all year.” The novel was published by MacAdam/Cage in November.

Lenora Todaro reviewed the novel for The Village Voice; The Seas was also included in the paper’s list of its favorite 27 books of the year; as a result of this discussion, your friend CAAF, who has a thing for mermaids and ocean imagery, purchased The Seas last week as part of a skewed holiday shopping policy that can best be summarized as “one book for you, one book for me.” It looks freaking scrumptious.

• Old Hag commands that we all talk more about Lionel Shriver’s We Need To Talk About Kevin, which came out in paperback in ‘04.

The novel received a starred review from Booklist; the Onion A.V. Club’s review; this Observer article discusses how the book became an underground hit among feminists; Robert Birnbaum’s interview with Shriver.

• Reader Jeff Vandermeer praises Clare Dudman’s One Day the Ice Will Reveal All Its Dead, which was published by Viking Books in February. Jeff writes: “Brilliant novel about Alfred Wegener’s life–the guy who put forward the continental drift theory. Wegener was also an avid explorer, so the science is intermingled with the tale of his Arctic journeys. It’s a poignant and amazing novel. I dislike historical fiction for the most part. I loved this book.”

The book was included in a round up of first novels in The Seattle Times; and it received a spot in The New Yorker’s March 22 Briefly noted column (second one down).

• Robert Birnbaum and Dan Wickett joined me in championing Ron Rash’s new novel Saints at the River, published by Henry Holt & Company in August.

Anna Godbersen also reviewed this one for Esquire; Tingle Alley discovered Rash after attending this hurricane-beleaguered reading (many of my friends also highly recommend Rash’s first novel, One Foot in Eden).

• Tingle Alley prevailed on Gwenda Bond of Shaken & Stirred to name some genre novels that may have been overlooked this year. She obliged with Elizabeth Hand’s Mortal Love and Geoff Ryman’s Air: Or, Have Not Have, with the caveat that Mortal Love is not being marketed as genre.

Mortal Love was reviewed by Lawrence Norfolk in the Washington Post; the paper also excerpted Chapter One. I note that the novel also has the good sense to feature a stunning image of me on the cover (the shot was taken before all the ill effects of the drug and alcohol abuse set in, causing me to resemble a pre-Raphaelite James Spader).

Air was reviewed at SciFi.com by Claude Lalumière; July 2004 interview with Ryman; 253, Ryman’s interactive online novel. Ms. Bond promises a review of Air next week on her site, and this post will be updated then.

Gwenda also expresses hope that Sean Stewart’s Perfect Circle will find a larger audience. The novel, which was published by Small Beer Press this summer, received a starred review from Booklist; was reviewed favorably by Paul di Filippo in The Washington Post; and serialized in Salon (go here for Chapter 1).

• Also in the science fiction vein, Ed mentions that China Miéville’s The Iron Council, published by Del Rey Books in July, could do with some more love. Here is the novel’s Random House home page; The Mumpsimus review; the novel was also picked as a Powell’s staff favorite.

• Poll participants also named some titles that received great press early in 2004 but may have been forgotten by the end of the year. If you missed ’em, they’re worth checking out:

Jim Shepard’s Project X and Love and Hydrogen
(Daniel Torday’s Esquire review of Project X; a New York Times review by Stephen Metcalf of both titles)

Tom Perrotta’s Little Children
(New York Times review by Will Blythe; attentive fans of TMFTML will remember that he roused himself from his languor long enough to praise Little Children in his list of this year’s favorites over at Maud Newton)

Dan Chaon’s You Remind Me of Me
(Maud Newton post — sadly, Laura Demanski’s terrific review of the novel for the Chicago Tribune which Maud mentions no longer appears available online; San Francisco Chronicle review by David Hellman )

• While this list focuses mainly on fiction, we do have a couple nonfiction recommendations for you.

Jimmy Beck (who, if he heeds my New Year wishes, will start a blog) praises Last Mountain Dancer: Hard-Earned Lessons in Love, Loss, and Honky-Tonk Outlaw Life by Chuck Kinder, a memoir published by Carroll & Graf. Mr. Beck describes the book as “a weird kind of beatnik-pastiche look at him and his home state, West Virginia.”

Last Mountain Dancer was reviewed here by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Chuck Kinder was interviewed in 2001 by Dennis Loy Johnson of Moby Lives.

I’d also like to add Peter Turchi’s Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer into the mix. I haven’t finished it yet but so far it’s been a fascinating and original read. Turchi heads up the writing program at Warren Wilson College here in Asheville, but it was this review by The Mumpsimus that convinced me to get his book. Here is a recommendation by Margot Livesey in Ploughshares, and a Charlotte Observer review

Here they are, the books that readers thought deserved more love this year. There were a lot of great nominations, so many, in fact, that I’ve divided the presentation into two installments — these books have already had to fight for their share of the limelight; I didn’t want them to get lost in the shuffle here.

The book title links lead to Powell’s, with additional links to information following. An observation: While I found reviews of many of these titles at The Washington Post, The San Franciso Chronicle, and other publications, very few seem to have been covered by The New York Times Book Review. Huh. Who would have thought? They’re usually all over interesting new fiction.

• At the top of the list, with votes from these guys, is David Markson’ s Vanishing Point, released in February 2004.

Jennifer Howard’s positive review in Washington Post; a review in City Pages; MadInkBeard’s introduction to David Markson; and a lament from Return of the Reluctant about how little attention the book’s received. Group consensus on the novel as summed up by Derik B.: “Brilliant and moving.”

• In addition to his Markson vote, The Elegant Variation puts in a kind advance word for Mitch Cullin’s A Slight Trick of the Mind, which will be published next April by Doubleday. “Even though it isn’t due out for a few more months, [it] risks being overwhelmed by the Chabon juggernaut.” Said juggernaut being The Final Solution, which, like Cullin’s novel, takes Sherlock Holmes as a protagonist. TEV compares the two novels in this review, arguing that Cullin’s is the superior.

• Sarah Weinman nominates Adam Braver’s Divine Sarah, “a short novel about Sarah Bernhardt that I absolutely adored.”

Carolyn See’s review in Washington Post, which concludes, “Readers interested in the wars between life and art, art and commerce, inspiration and age, should be captivated by Adam Braver’s novel.”

• Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network votes for George Garrett’s Double Vision. It was put out by University of Alabama Press last summer.

Double Vision was Ploughshares’ Editors Corners pick for Winter 2004-05. The journal called the novel “a witty tour de force, marrying fact and fiction about a gifted generation of American writers.” Here’s the University of Alabama Press book page.

• Stephen Dixon’s Old Friends also comes in for some love from the group. The novel was published by Melville House this fall.

This Melville House press page has links to reviews of Old Friends in Village Voice, Los Angeles Times and other papers; a review by Rake’s Progress; mention by the illustrious Laura Lippman that she recently purchased a copy as a result of this discussion (see comments). Also, please note that Lizzie TOTALLY KNOWS Dixon.

• The Robert Birnbaum juggernaut weighs in with several suggestions of titles you may wish to catch up on:

Sailors on the Inward Sea by Lawrence Thornton (Philadelphia Inquirer review)

An Unfinished Life by Mark Spragg (Bookreporter.com review by Curtis Edmonds; Birnbaum interview with Jim Harrison that mentions An Unfinished Life)

The Bad Boy’s Wife by Karen Shepard (San Francisco Chronicle review by Brad Vice)

Prisoners of War by Steve Yarborough (San Francisco Chronicle review by Matt King)

The Rope Eater by Ben Jones (New York Times Books in Brief mention (scroll down); author interview with Birnbaum)

Inheritance by Lan Samantha Chang (interview with Birnbaum in which Chang discloses a youth spent in the wondrous city of Appleton, Wisconsin (no, I will never tire of that fact); “Hangzhou 1925,” an excerpt from the novel published in Ploughshares)

I’ll put together the results of the underappreciated in ‘04 poll tonight. In the meantime, as lit news is still sparse, and many still out of the office in a heartless display of stored-up vacation time, why not another poll? This time, inspired by the examples of Return of the Reluctant and ReadySteadyBlog (Dec. 16 entry), let’s do one on your most disappointing read of 2004. Nominees may include: Books that were critical darlings, or buzzed to the moon, or everyone else loved, that left you cold. Or a release by a favorite author that wasn’t up to snuff. Or a just plain very bad book. Whatever. Express your anguish and disappointment here.