My pick for the book of the year:
John Updike’s Endpoint is a final burst of fluency from the New England master. Who else could spin a charming poem out of a trip to Best Buy to buy a new computer? “Brave world! The geeks in matching shirts/ talked gigabytes to girls with blue tattoos.” Updike’s lyric gift carried him to the end. His words meet death both obliquely and directly. Read this book late in the evening, with a stiff drink by your side. Then marvel at Updike’s metaphors, like the one about Payne Stewart’s swing: “its aftermath shimmered in the air: dragonfly wings.” Or at his cold-palmed observations, as when studying the departure gate for Florida: “Now, agèd, average, dullish, lame, and halt/ we claim our due, our fun doom in the sun.” And at his gentle knocks on your soul: “Birthday, death day—what day is not both?”
Michael Agger 
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