I've been looking over the responses to this meme because I'm curious as to what the rest of the book-reading blogosphere thinks is "good." Two top cited fiction books are J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows and Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. A number of people did not answer the second question because they did not read any non-fiction.
I haven't read any of Hosseini's work so I have no idea if he is actually any good as a writer, but both of the above books are "bestsellers." I wonder if people are nominating them for "best" because they've been hyped by critics and fans and have been bought by lots of people--so that if you say they are "best", no one's going to argue with you.
And I was disappointed with the non-non-fiction readers. I was hoping to find some interesting recommendations. Instead, people were like: "I only read one non-fiction book this year, so I guess I'll nominate it for best!"
Maybe people who actually read books don't do memes.
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I just watched the "Jungles" episode of Planet Earth. I was totally excited with the parasitic fungi (Cordyceps) segment. I first read about it in Mr. Bloomfield's Orchard (review) which only had some black and white line drawings to go on.
