January 6

Three Percent has announced the 25 book longlist for its annual Best Translated Fiction award. Clicking on any of the titles brings you to a description. There are some great-sounding books here. Since the literary world can't highlight its best work through festivals the way that the film world can, the many international prizes serve that function and are followed intensely by book enthusiasts:

http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/index.php?id=2431

January Magazine has a detailed Best Fiction of 2009 list:

http://januarymagazine.com/2009/12/best-books-of-2009-fiction.html

As well as a Best Crime Fiction list in two parts:

http://januarymagazine.com/2009/12/best-books-of-2009-crime-fiction-part-i.html

http://januarymagazine.com/2009/12/best-books-of-2009-crime-fiction-part.html

Tales from the Reading Room offers a very nice review of Curtis Sittenfeld's acclaimed novel American Wife, based loosely on the Bush family:

http://litlove.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/american-wife/

Among notables born on this date are French artist Gustave Dore; composers Alexander Scriabin (Russia), Giuseppe Martucci (Italy), and Max Bruch (Germany); poet Carl Sandburg; cowboy silent film star Tom Mix; novelists Wright Morris, E.L. Doctorow, and Juan Goytisolo (Spain); bluegrass banjo player Earl Scruggs; Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd; folk singer Sandy Denny; British comedian Rowan Atkinson; Argentine political writer Jacobo Timerman; and film directors Anthony Minghella and John Singleton. The Nebraska-born Wright Morris (1910-1998) was the subject of my senior essay in American Studies at Yale; author of about twenty excellent novels and many other books, an accomplished and important photographer as well as novelist, he gets less attention than he ought to these days. He is overdue for revival and awaits a biography, but of course plenty of creators go through a period of comparable non-appreciation.