The National Book Critics Circle has just announced its second-annual list of great reads, as determined by its corps of critics and authors. The Good Reads—Winter List is headed by Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke for fiction and New Yorker music critic Alex Ross' collection of essays, The Rest Is Noise, for nonfiction. The fiction winners are:

Fiction

1. Tree of Smoke, by Denis Johnson (FSG)

2. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz (Riverhead)

3. Diary of a Bad Year, by J.M. Coetzee (Viking)

4. People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks (Viking)

5. Zeroville, by Steve Erickson (Europa)

For more winners, see the Critics Circle website at www.bookcritics.org or check www.metroactive.com.

Nonfiction

1. The Rest Is Noise, by Alex Ross (FSG)

2. Brother, I'm Dying, by Edwidge Danticat (Knopf)

3. In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan (Penguin Press)

4. Musicophilia, by Oliver Sacks (Knopf)

5. The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein (Metropolitan) Poetry

Poetry

1. Elegy, by Mary Jo Bang (Graywolf)

2. Time and Materials, by Robert Hass (Ecco)*

3. Gulf Music, by Robert Pinsky (FSG)*

4. The Collected Poems, 1956-1998, by Zbigniew Herbert (Ecco)

5. Sharp Teeth, by Toby Barlow (Harper)

For more winners, see the Critics Circle website at www.bookcritics.org.

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