Best of

From year to year it’s always hard to tell how Barnes & Noble will name their top books of the year, but for now, the BN Review editors have highlighted 10 “books we think represent this year with particular significance — whether for their urgent attention to the moment we share, their fresh and illuminating point of view, or their achievement in breaking through the cacaphony with a singular voice.” (Separately, the BN Teen blog has picked 25 top YA books.) Blackass, by A. Igoni Barrett Here Comes the Sun, by Nicole Dennis-Benn Imagine Me Gone, by Adam Haslett Mercury, by Margot […]

Library Reads selected Ruth Ware’s THE WOMAN IN CABIN 10 as its “Favorite of Favorites” for 2016. The rest of their year-end list, in ranked order, features: Commonwealth, by Ann Patchett My Name is Lucy Barton, by Elizabeth Strout The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend, by Katarina Bivald A Great Reckoning, by Louise Penny The Nest, by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney Salt to the Sea, by Ruta Sepetys The Summer Before the War, by Helen Simonson Lilac Girls, by Martha Hall Kelly Truly Madly Guilty, by Liane Moriarty Separately, the Seattle Times book critics have weighed in with their best books […]

The NYT Book Review’s editors announced their top ten books of 2016 (with individual lists from the newspaper’s critics still to come), as usual picking a mix of expected and unexpected titles. In fiction, there is Colson Whitehead’s National Book Award winner and already the clear, consensus “book of the year” leader in our annual aggregated listings, The Underground Railroad, plus: The Association of Small Bombs, by Karan Mahajan The North Water, by Ian McGuire The Vegetarian, by Han Kang War and Turpentine, by Stefan Hertmans The nonfiction list includes consensus top title Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, plus: At the Existentialist […]

In advance of picking their top 10, the New York Times Book Review editors listed their 100 notable books of 2016. Joining the notables are a number of other lists, including top 10s from Newsday and Glamour magazine, five top novels from Kevin Nguyen for GQ, and the Telegraph‘s top 50 books of the year in the UK.

As we’ve suggested previously, it’s pretty clear already that Colson Whitehead’s novel The Underground Railroad is the consensus “book of the year,” and the Washington Post’s just-published 10 best only adds to the case. Their full list: Fiction Commonwealth, Ann Patchett News of the World, Paulette Jiles Swing Time, Zadie Smith The Trespasser, Tana French The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead Nonfiction Evicted, Matthew Desmond The Gene, Siddartha Mukherjee The Return, Hisham Matar Rogue Heroes, Ben Macintyre Secondhand Time, Svetlana Alexievich As usual, the paper’s full “best books” package includes extensive lists of notable fiction and nonfiction. Oprah Winfrey’s O Magazine has […]