A Selection of the Year's Best Books

THE BLACK PRINCE by Iris Murdoch. The indiscreet charms of the British bourgeoisie done to a neo-gothic turn.

BURR by Gore Vidal. A clever recreation of the checkered career of that brilliant failure, archplotter and decamped Vice President, Aaron Burr.

FALLING by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer. The blunt but quietly humorous story of a New York girl who lifts herself out of depression by her own pantyhose.

GRAVITY'S RAINBOW by Thomas Pynchon. A brilliantly executed, difficult dervish of a novel, more or less centered on World War II, that includes just about everything of importance in the loony modern world.

THE HONORARY CONSUL by Graham Greene. A sodden but mysteriously blessed British diplomat is mistakenly kidnaped by guerrillas in the master's latest tragicomedy.

NINETY-TWO IN THE SHADE by Thomas McGuane. A Hemingwayesque tale about a young Key West fishing guide's appointment with love and death.

OTHER MEN'S DAUGHTERS by Richard G. Stern. The fine and touching tale of a 42-year-old Harvard professor who loses his family and starts a new life after an affair with a pretty student.

PEOPLE WILL ALWAYS BE KIND by Wilfrid Sheed. A shrewd, stunning but badly balanced book. Part 1 is a blunt yet clever memoir of growing up as a crippled Catholic boy during World War II. Part 2 concerns the enigmatic politician the boy becomes.

THE SUMMER BEFORE THE DARK by Doris Lessing. An intelligent woman's guide to the apocalypse of aging makes a low-key but powerful novel.

THE WORLD OF APPLES by John Cheever. The Bullfinch of the U.S. middle class effects some unsettling awakenings from the American Dream (short stories).

NONFICTION

AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM (1850-1915) by Kevin Starr. A rich and thoughtful history of what happened after everybody went West.

BURIED ALIVE by Myra Friedman. The sad biography of rock star Janis Joplin, told with notable honesty by her friend and publicist.

THE CONSCIOUS BRAIN by Steven Rose. A 35-year-old British biology professor entertainingly and clearly explains the brain and its functions. The best book of its kind yet written.

ECONOMICS AND THE PUBLIC PURPOSE by John Kenneth Galbraith. That genial superstar of liberal economics discourses upon new priorities, the need for some kind of socialism and the place of women in a consumer society.

THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. The most lucid account yet on the empurpling of that man in the White House.

THE LIVING PRESIDENCY by Emmet John Hughes. Also in the year of Watergate, a sophisticated and timely primer of how Executive power broadened from precedent to President.

MACAULAY: THE MAKING OF AN HISTORIAN by John Clive. A readable account of the life and times of Victorian England's most convoluted and sonorous stylist.

O'NEILL: SON AND ARTIST by Louis Sheaffer. A fairminded, thorough biography of America's greatest playwright (Volume II).

THE SOVEREIGN STATE OF ITT by Anthony Sampson. A lively, controversial vivisection of a startlingly omnivorous multinational corporation.

WALKING THE DEAD DIAMOND RIVER by Edward Hoagland. The idea and the reality of the vanishing wilderness are played against each other in this fine and thoughtfully crafted collection of essays on the nature of men and beasts.

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