For some reason, the production of ‘best of’ lists seems to start earlier in the USA than Australia. Both the New York Times and Salon have given their top tens for 2008, which are duly listed below.

The NYT list goes like this:

FICTION

DANGEROUS LAUGHTER: Thirteen Stories By Steven Millhauser.
MERCY By Toni Morrison.
NETHERLAND By Joseph O’Neill.
2666 By Roberto Bolaño. Translated by Natasha Wimmer.
UNACCUSTOMED EARTH By Jhumpa Lahiri.

NONFICTION

THE DARK SIDE: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals By Jane Mayer.
THE FOREVER WAR By Dexter Filkins.
NOTHING TO BE FRIGHTENED OF By Julian Barnes.
THIS REPUBLIC OF SUFFERING Death and the American Civil War By Drew Gilpin Faust.
THE WORLD IS WHAT IT IS The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul By Patrick French.
Alfred A. Knopf, $30.

Salon‘s version runs:

FICTION

2666 by Roberto Bolaño
A Person of Interest by Susan Choi
The Likeness by Tana French
Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen
The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher

NONFICTION

Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark Harris
The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale
Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are by Rob Walker
The Suicide Index: Putting My Father’s Death in Order by Joan Wickersham