Five books set on New Year’s Eve (and Day)

Jeff Somers is the author of Lifers, the Avery Cates series from Orbit Books, Chum from Tyrus Books, and We Are Not Good People from Pocket/Gallery. He has published over thirty short stories as well.

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Somers tagged five memorable books set on New Year’s Eve (and Day), including:

Bridget Jones’s Diary, by Helen Fielding

Let’s not dismiss this book—it’s a modern classic of its genre, and it’s easy to forget what a phenomenon it was back in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It’s also a book that begins on New Year’s Day and dives enthusiastically into one of the great inner monologues of modern literature, as Bridget worries, records, and contemplates the proper method of making and keeping resolutions almost from the book’s very first moment. Read it if you’re worried about breaking your New Year’s resolutions—it will remind that ultimately it probably doesn’t matter, as long as you enjoy the debacle.

Read about the other books on the list.

Bridget Jones's Diary also appears on Rebecca Jane Stokes's top eight list of books perfect for reality TV fiends, Melissa Albert list of six of the worst fictional characters to sit next to on a plane, Allegra Frazier's list of five top diary novels, Gigi Levangie Grazer's list of six favorite books that became movies, Caryn James's top five list of recent novels that channel classics, Sean O'Hagan's list of the ten best fictional hangovers in print, film and song, Christina Koning's list of the best of chick-lit, and a list of eight books for the broken-hearted.

Also see John Mullan's ten most notable New Years in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue