I am continually boggled by all the good books in the world. How can you ever possibly hope to read anything more than the tiniest sliver of the best literature every year? This overwhelming bounty is brought home by skimming a bunch of "best books of 2011" lists. It's astounding how little these lists overlap. 

 

Therefore - I figured - the books that appear on multiple lists must be REALLY good. And after conducting a semi-exhaustive and not-at-all-scientific survey, here they are:

 

Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding: A Novel

This book is listed in the top 3 of just about every list that I found, including the New York Times and Amazon. Wow, I bet it's good! 

Too bad it's about baseball, a subject on which I have less than no interest. I am the opposite of interested in baseball. It's like asking a straight guy to read a book about, I don't know, makeup or menstruation or something. It's just not going to happen, but I wish all the book's other readers well.

 

Haruki Murakami, IQ84

I haven't read very much about this book, because I really want to read it, and I hate spoilers. So don't spoil it for me, okay? This is the 1,000-plus word magnum opus by Japanese juggernaut Murakami, who I have been reading faithfully ever since I ran across a copy of "Hard Boiled Wonderland" in the early 1990s.

 

Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

This book was optioned for a movie by the Twilight folks before it was even published. I'll be honest with you, I read about 20 pages and had to give it up. It out-Gaimans Gaiman, and was just a little bit too rich for my blood.

 

Tina Fey, Bossypants

This title is found on just about any "reader submitted" list of best books of the year, including the Goodreads Choice Awards and Amazon's Best Sellers. 

 

Whenever possible, I recommend that people listen to the audiobook version, because Tina Fey reads it herself. The only thing funnier than reading Tina Fey's memoir is listening to Tina Fey read Tina Fey's memoir.

 

Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs

 

For a little while, it seemed like everyone I knew was reading this surprisingly timely biography. And it turns out that the best cure for the desire to publicly lionize Steve Jobs was to read about what an incredible jerk he was. I appreciate it for the way it helped to douse some of the candlelight vigils and other expressions of bizarrely consumerist grief.