Forty-nine down, three more book sections to go in 2004 -- not enough time to catch up on all those books we missed reading this year, I'm afraid.

To give us some credit, more than 200 titles, including children's books, found critical mention in the newspaper in the past 11 months.

But I do have a few regrets about those that were either ignored or otherwise shortchanged. I mean to get them off my chest before 2005 slinks in, so bear with me:

The Anonymous Five

These five works of fiction by relative unknowns were nominated for the National Book Award:

"The News From Paraguay" by Lily Tuck, which won the prize; "Madeleine Is Sleeping" by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum; "Our Kind: A Novel in Stories" by Kate Walbert; "Ideas of Heaven" by Joan Silber; and "Florida" by Christine Schutt.

They were overlooked largely for the same reason that they were overlooked around the country -- their relative obscurity among the thousands of titles arriving at offices daily. Two of the five were debuts, two were second novels, and Tuck had published three before her NBA winner.

It's tough going for literary fiction in these days of Dan Brown, James Patterson, the Kellermans and the other million-seller popular authors.

It was also a year when Philip Roth, John Updike, T.C. Boyle, Russell Banks, Anne Tyler, Tom Wolfe, John Barth and Alice Munro produced fiction. (Joyce Carol Oates did, too, but she does every year.)

The competition for attention was tough and the logical approach was to go with the big names.

Yet the Anonymous Five did end up in the spotlight and will find readers.

We're Working on It Department

"Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell" by Susanna Clarke. This English novel was the sleeper hit of the year and it's been attended to. The problem is, it's so bloody long. Bear with us.

"Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson. Her second novel in 20 years will be reviewed next week.

"Bring Your Legs With You" by Darrell Spencer. The winner of this year's Drue Heinz Prize for Fiction will learn his critical assessment next week, too.

"The Godfather Returns" by Mark Winegardner. The author won the competition to continue Mario Puzo's mob family saga. We have the verdict and will get it to you in the weeks ahead

We missed the boat on ...

... these popular titles:

"The Dark Tower Volume VII" by Stephen King.

"Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation" by Lynne Truss.

"The Stone That the Builder Refused" by Madison Smartt Bell.

Too many biographies

We were moved but passed on these life stories:

"Memories Are Made of This: Dean Martin Through His Daughter's Eyes" by Deana Martin with Wendy Holden

"Tallulah! The Life and Times of a Leading Lady" by Joel Lobenthal.

"Wodehouse: A Life" by Robert McCrum.

Book editor's perogative

While "I Am Charlotte Simmons" by Tom Wolfe is reviewed today, I chose not to review the third novel by the 74-year-old celebrity author.

Why, you ask, did the book editor pass on the fiction publishing event of the year? It's not that I didn't have good intentions.

I lugged the weighty tome (that's in pounds, not content) home, where it anchored the coffee table securely to the floor for a few days.

Every now and then, I would open it, try a few pages, then grapple with the constant question:

Is Wolfe's moralistic take on contemporary college life worth all the time it would take to get through this overstuffed novel?

His discovery: College students have sex, drink and don't study. What a revelation! I passed.

Now I'm regret free, at least in the books department.

Another missed opportunity, reported by PG staffer Peter B. King:

After my review of Gene Lees' biography of Johnny Mercer ran in the PG last Sunday, I got an e-mail from Philip Furia, the author of another biography of Mercer, "Skylark: The Life and Times of Johnny Mercer" (St. Martin's), published last year.

Furia, a Pittsburgh native, wants the hometown folks to know that his Mercer book has just been released in paperback.

The author grew up in Duquesne and West Mifflin and teaches in the Department of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He's also written bios of Irving Berlin and Ira Gershwin.