Amazon named their Top Ten Books of 2011, with Chad Harbach’s debut novel THE ART OF FIELDING as their No. 1 pick. The etailer’s ever-expanding “Best of” lists now include breakouts for over 20 different categories, from Art & Photography to Teens. In 15 of those categories they have separate Kindle and print-editions lists. Also new for this year is a list of Top 10 Kindle Singles. Interestingly, as best we can tell, nearly all of the various selections for the year’s best books were issued by “legacy publishers.”
1. The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach (Little, Brown)
2. 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami (Knopf)
3. What It Is Like To Go To War, by Karl Marlantes (Atlantic Monthly Press)
4. The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides (FSG)
5. In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson (Crown)
6. Daughter of Smoke and Bone, by Laini Taylor (Little, Brown Young Readers)
7. Before I Go To Sleep, by SJ Watson (Harper)
8. Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster)
9. Lost in Shangri-la, by Mitchell Zuckoff (Harper)
10. The Tiger’s Wife, by Tea Obreht (Random House)
11. The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern (Doubleday)
12. Bossypants, by Tina Fey (Reagan Arthur Books)
13. Blood, Bones & Butter, by Gabrielle Hamilton (Random House)
14. We the Animals, by Justin Torres (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
15. Moonwalking with Einstein, by Joshua Foer (Penguin Press)
16. The Lover’s Dictionary, by David Levithan (FSG)
17. The Greater Journey, by David McCullough (Simon & Schuster)
18. Lost Memory of Skin, by Russell Banks (HarperCollins)
19. Maphead, by Ken Jennings (Scribner)
20. The Sisters Brothers, by Patrick DeWitt (HarperCollins)