Amazon announced its Bestselling Books of 2014 package — including an overall top 20, combining print and kindle sales, along with separate top 100 lists for print books and ebooks. Remember, however, that these promoted lists are for new releases in 2014 only. To find the true “bestselling books of the year,” regardless of when published, you need to burrow into Amazon’s bestseller archives for print and ebooks: There it becomes clear that John Green’s The Fault In Our Stars was really their bestselling title of the year, claiming the No. 1 Kindle slot and No. 3 print book slot (after StrenghtsFinder 2.0 and […]
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Bradley Tops January Library Reads List, and More 2014 Best Ofs
Alan Bradley’s AS CHIMNEY SWEEPERS COME TO DUST, the latest in his Flavia de Luce mystery series, is the No. 1 pick for the January Library Reads list. The rest of the list recommends: The Rosie Effect, by Graeme Simsion The Magician’s Lie, by Greer Macallister The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins Golden Son: Book II of the Red Rising Trilogy by Pierce Brown The Dress Shop of Dreams by Menna van Praag The Bishop’s Wife, by Mette Ivie Harrison Vanessa and Her Sister, by Priya Parmar First Frost by Sarah Addison Allen Full Throttle by Julie Ann […]
Doerr and Hobbs Top iBooks Lists
There was another wave of “best books of the year” lists over the weekend — from Entertainment Weekly, the Boston Globe, Newsday, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the Guardian and others, with Apple’s iBooks Store posting their lists as well. Apple picked top 10s in ten categories, with Anthony Doerr’s All the the Light We Cannot See as their fiction favorite of the year, and Jeff Hobbs’s The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace as their favorite nonfiction book. Among their lists: Fiction All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr The Bone Clocks, David Mitchell Bark, Lorrie Moore […]
Notably, The Best of The Best Books of 2014, to Start
With a number of “best books of the year” lists landing this week, we are ready to begin our own tabulation of the consensus very best books of the year. As in the past, we aggregate a wealth of selective lists from a broad selection of sources to produce what always turns into a collection of indisputably worthy books. We have factored in 30 lists so far; going by previous results, we’ll have 50 to 60 “votes” counted by the end of the year. Our collection includes retailers (Amazon, BN, Indigo, Hudson News, Indie Next No. 1s); awards nominees; major […]
NYT Picks Doerr and More for Top 10
The New York Times Book Review editors picked their favorite books of the year, selecting a number of titles already on our early aggregated list of consensus “best of the year” books (and 3 NBA nominees): All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr Dept. of Speculation, by Jenny Offill Euphoria, by Lily King Family Life, by Akhil Sharma Redeployment, by Phil Klay Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, by Roz Chast On Immunity, by Eula Bliss Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life, by Hermione Lee The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, by Elizabeth Kolbert Thirteen Days In September, by […]
Time Adds YA to their Best of the Year Roster
Time magazine published their annual top 10 lists and added a third books list, covering young adult books: Top 10 YA 1. We Were Liars, E. Lockhart 2. Brown Girl Dreaming, Jacqueline Woodson 3. I’ll Give You the Sun, Jandy Nelson 4. Belzhar, Meg Wolitzer 5. Half a King, Joe Abercrombie 6. Althea & Oliver, Cristina Moracho 7. Skink—No Surrender, Carl Hiaasen 8. No One Else Can Have You, Kathleen Hale 9. The Retribution of Mara Dyer, Michelle Hodkin 10. This One Summer, Jillian Tamaki & Mariko Tamaki Top 10 Fiction 1. The Secret Place, Tana French 2. The Bone […]