A collection of Sheridan's favorites, organized in chapters such as high school reading, Southern, con artists. Sheridan is a librarian who has read across a vast range of genres, and while I wouldn't agree with many of her choices of the "best", she recommends Jim Thompson and I ended up with a long list of recommendations to track down, so I'm not complaining. ( )

My TBR list just doubled thanks to this book. Gina Sheridan is a librarian in MO and this is a carefully curated list of books in a book that she recommends people read. Divided into clever chapters (American't Dream, for example) she groups books with similar themes or genres or other like qualities - all audio, all with equally good movies, etc.) Then each book is extolled and briefly summarized, like only a librarian can do, hitting the high points, but giving nothing away. Best feature is the check list in the back so you can keep track of what you want to go back to. It was edifying to have read a number of her recs, but better still to have a new titles to seek out. ( )

Who among us can resist another list of book titles?

This list is quite personal, not particularly balanced or PC, which is nice for a change. It is heavily weighted on the side of current publishing, with 122 titles from the 21st century, 73 from the 20th century and only 6 from before that. I don't mind that at all, as the classics appear on so many other lists. Sheridan is doing a service for other readers by attempting to distill what is exceptional today, from her own reading. She breaks the 201 books out in charming subcategories. Chapter 1 is American't Dream - stories about trying and failing to get ahead in America. Her one page descriptors do their job, making you want to hunt up the books and read.

Quite a good resource for librarians. ( )