RB: How do you decide-- one of the notices said something about your "fiction being thought by other means."

CO: I think that was John Leonard [in the New York Times].

RB: I was more interested in how you decided that you were going to write a fiction or an essay.

CO: That's more than a question, that's an insight, because if you are going to do thought and write about ideas overtly as ideas, you should write an essay. Or a sermon or a tract. If it's going to be didactic, it's going to be intellectual. But you write a novel, you have to use your head, as Philip Roth said in a wonderful interview in the Guardian--they asked him to define novel writing and he said it's problem-solving. So in that sense your intellect is incorporated into it. But it's basically chaotic imagination. So that you don't know what's going to happen next. If you are going to write an essay you make discoveries--you know, mental, conceptual discoveries, as you write an essay, but at the same time, you have something in your head to begin with. Say you are going to write an essay on Henry James, you know that. You know it's on Henry James. You have something to start with. But in a novel you have nothing. You don't know where you are going.

• Editors' Picks of 2004, abebooks.com
• Best Books of 2004: Top 10 Editors' Picks: Literature & Fiction, Amazon.com
• Best Books of 2004: Top 50 Editors' Picks, Amazon.com
• "Books of the Year," The Atlantic Monthly
• "Books of the year", The Australian
• Top 50 Staff Favorites, Barnes&Noble
• Best of 2004: Hardcover Fiction, Borders
• "Best fiction books of the year," The Boston Globe
• "Holiday Books/Fiction," The Charlotte Observer
• "Best fiction 2004," The CS Monitor
• "Serious fiction was the best fiction this year," The Detroit Free Press
• "Books of the year 2004: Feet up, volume down," The Economist
• "2004's best books," The Journal News
• "The Star's 100 Noteworthy Books of 2004," The Kansas City Star
• "The best of 2004: fiction books reviewed," The Independent
• "The Books editor's Top 10," The Mercury News
• "The year's top fiction," The Mercury News
• "Christmas Books" (Our critics choose their books of the year), New Statesman
• 100 Notable Books of the Year," The New York Times
• "The 10 Best Books of 2004," The New York Times
• "Books of the year," The Observer
• "High fives: our pick of 2004," The Observer
• Holiday Gift Book Recommendations, Prarie Lights Books
• "The Best Books of 2004," Publishers Weekly
• Richard and Judy Best Read 2005 Shortlist
• "From elves to shelves: Our critics' holiday list of great reads would fill a sleigh," Rocky Mountain News
• "The top 10 books of the year," Salon
• The year's finest: Best Books of 2004," The San Fransisco Chronicle
• "Best books 2004: A year enriched by gifted writers," The Seattle Times
• "Our critic's Top 10 of 2004," The Seattle Times
• Literary Scrooges, wake up!", The St.Louis Post-Dispatch
• "Books," The Sunday Times
• "Best fiction," The Telegraph
• "Top Shelf: Our 27 favorite books of the year," Village Voice
• "Book World Raves," The Washington Post
• "Jonathan Yardley's Favorites," The Washington Post

Title/ Author / Number of "Best of" Appearances


The Plot Against America: A Novel, Philip Roth 23

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke 20

The Master, Colm Toibin 17

The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst 16

Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell 14

Gilead, Marilynne Robinson 12

Snow, Orhan Pamuk 12

Runaway: Stories, Alice Munro 11

Aloft, Chang-rae Lee 10

The Falls, Joyce Carol Oates 9

The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon9

The Jane Austen Book Club, Karen Joy Fowler 8

Heir to the Glimmering World, Cynthia Ozick 8

The Egyptologist, Arthur Phillips 8

The Darling, Russell Banks 7

The Dew Breaker, Edwidge Danticat 7

The Last Crossing, Guy Vanderhaeghe7

Case Histories, Kate Atkinson 6

The Inner Circle, T. Coraghessan Boyle 6

War Trash, Ha Jin 6

A Bit on the Side, William Trevor 6

Natasha and Other Stories, David Bezmozgis 5

Birds Without Wings, Louis de Bernieres 5

Crossing California, Adam Langer 5

Little Children, Tom Perrotta 5

The Amateur Marriage, Anne Tyler 5

Sweet Land Stories, E.L. Doctorow 4

An Unfinished Season, Ward Just 4

Transmission, Hari Kunzru 4

Bandbox, Thomas Mallon 4

The Man in My Basement, Walter Mosley 4

The Double, Jose Saramago 4

The Finishing School, Muriel Spark 4

Villages, John Updike 4

Oblivion: Stories, David Foster Wallace 4

I Am Charlotte Simmons, Tom Wolfe 4

Harbor, Lorraine Adams 3

Wake Up, Sir!, Jonathan Ames 3

Maps for Lost Lovers, Nadeem Aslam 3

The Lemon Table, Julian Barnes 3

The Rules of Engagement, Anita Brookner 3

Little Black Book of Stories, A.S. Byatt 3

The Final Solution: A Story of Detection, Michael Chabon 3

You Remind Me of Me, Dan Chaon 3

Heaven Lake, John Dalton 3

The Birth of Venus, Sarah Dunant 3

Dark Voyage, Alan Furst 3

The Confessions of Max Tivoli, Andrew Sean Greer 3

Eventide, Kent Haruf 3

Skinny Dip, Carl Hiassen 3

Snakepit, Moses Isegawa 3

The Dark Tower, Stephen King 3

The Hamilton Case, Michelle de Kretser 3

Absolute Friends, John Le Carre 3

An Evening of Long Goodbyes, Paul Murray 3

Magic Seeds, V. S Naipaul 3

Wolves Eat Dogs, Martin Cruz Smith 3

Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction, Sue Townsend 3

Our Kind, Kate Walbert 3

Buying a Fishing Rod for My Father, Gao Xingjian 3

Number of "Best of 2004" Appearances by the NBA Fiction Finalists:

Florida, Christine Schutt 0

The News From Paraguay, Lily Tuck *WINNER* 0

Madeleine Is Sleeping, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum 2

Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories, Joan Silber 2

Our Kind : A Novel in Stories, Kate Walbert 3

Number of "Best of 2004" Appearances by the Man Booker Shortlist:

Bitter Fruit, Achmat Dangor 0

The Electric Michelangelo, Sarah Hall 2

I'll Go to Bed at Noon, Gerard Woodward 2

Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell 14

The Line of Beauty Alan Hollinghurst *WINNER* 16

The Master, Colm Toibin 17

2004 Fiction Title Themes:

QUEENS (The Red Queen, Margaret Drabble 1; Pushkin and the Queen of Spades, Alice Randall 1; Queen of Dreams, by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni 2; The Queen of the South, Arturo Perez-Reverte 1)

BIRDS (Flying Crows, Jim Lehrer 1; Birds Without Wings, Louis de Bernieres 5; The Swallows of Kabul, Yasmina Khadra 2; The London Pigeon Wars, Patrick Neale 1)

WOLVES (Wolves Eat Dogs, Martin Cruz Smith 3; The Work of Wolves, Kent Meyers 1; Ordinary Wolves, Seth Kantner 1)

MR NOUN (Mr Starlight, Laurie Graham 2; Mr. Paradise, Elmore Leonard 1; Mr. Dynamite, Meredith Brosna 1)

Papers & Magazines In Which The Plot Against America Didn't Appear:

"Holiday Books/Fiction," The Charlotte Observer

"Serious fiction was the best fiction this year," The Detroit Free Press.

"The top 10 books of the year," Salon

"Top Shelf: Our 27 favorite books of the year," Village Voice

"Best books 2004: A year enriched by gifted writers," The Seattle Times

"Our critic's Top 10 of 2004," The Seattle Times

Papers & Magazines In Which I Am Charlotte Simmons Did Appear:

100 Notable Books of the Year," The New York Times

Literary Scrooges, wake up!", The St.Louis Post-Dispatch

Also Appearing on The St.Louis Post-Dispatch's List:

Grant Comes East by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen (St. Martin's, 404 pages, $24.95). Even harsh critics of Gingrich's politics must salute him for "Grant Comes East," a dandy novel No. 2 in a three-part alternative history about a Confederate victory at Gettysburg in 1863.

Publishers' "Best of" Appearances, Tallied:

• Random House, Inc. 106
  • Knopf 78
    • Knopf 68
    • Pantheon 10
  • Random House 35
  • Ballantine 3
• Penguin Group 56
  • Viking 16
  • Riverhead 15
  • Penguin 9
  • Putnam 8
  • Dutton 4
• Bloomsbury 36
• Houghton Mifflin 35
• Simon & Schuster, Inc. 32
  • Scribner 29
  • S&S 3
• Farrar, Straus & Giroux 24
• HarperCollins Publishers 23
  • HarperCollins 11
  • Ecco 9
  • Fourth Estate 3
• Time Warner 20
  • Little, Brown 20
• Grove/Atlantic 7
• St. Martins 5
• Harcourt 4