Hudson Booksellers released their annual lists of top books, picking Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See as their “book of the year.” Rounding out their top 10 for fiction are: Under the Wide and Starry Sky, Nancy Horan Wolf in White, John Darnielle Stone Mattress, Margaret Atwood Bird Box, Josh Malerman The Bone Clocks, David Mitchell The Paying Guests, Sarah Waters The Crane Wife, Patrick Ness Still Life with Bread Crumbs, Anna Quindlen The Martian, Andrew Weir Their other top picks are: Nonfiction New Life, No Instructions, Gail Caldwell Internal Medicine, Terrence Holt The Human Age, Diane Ackerman […]
Best of
PW’s Top 10 Books
PW published their annual list of the 10 best books of the year, a selection that includes three works in translation: Nonfiction On Immunity: An Inoculation, Eula Biss (Graywolf) Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David, Lawrence Wright (Knopf) Limonov, Emmanuel Carrère, trans. by John Lambert (Farrar, Straus) The Empathy Exams, Leslie Jamison (Graywolf) Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free Héctor Tobar (Farrar, Straus) Fiction The Corpse Exhibition, Hassan Blasim, trans. by Jonathan Wright (Penguin) Those Who Leave and Those Who […]
Advance Look: NYT’s Top 10 Picture Books for 2014, and Goodread’s It Book Search
The New York Times Book Review announced its list of the year’s 10 Best Illustrated Children’s Books, though they will not be featured in print until the November 19 issue. Their picks are: Draw!, written and illustrated by Raul Colon (Simon & Schuster) Shackleton’s Journey, written and illustrated by William Grill (Flying Eye Books) The Promise, written by Nicola Davies, illustrated by Laura Carlin (Candlewick Press) Where’s Mommy?, written by Beverly Donofrio, illustrated by Barbara McClintock (Schwartz & Wade) Haiti, My Country, written by Haitian schoolchildren, illustrated by Roge (Fifth House Publishers) Time for Bed, Fred, written and illustrated by Yasmeen Ismail […]
An Early Start to the “Best of” Lists
It’s hard to believe, but the “best books of 2014” lists have already started. Perhaps looking to get the jump on PW — which always likes to go early at the beginning of November — Library Journal has posted their reviewers’ top 10, along with “more of the best” and various focused lists. (But they are saving the annotated printed version for their December issue.) And Canada’s dominant bookseller Indigo has also made their choices already. LJ‘s top ten: An Untamed State, Roxane Gay No Place To Hide, Glenn Greenwald Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World […]
The Book(s) of the Year
With picks aggregated from a total of 58 sources in all, the clear consensus for the 2013 “book of the year” has ended in…a tie. George Saunders’ TENTH OF DECEMBER and Donna Tartt’s THE GOLDFINCH stood well above all others in the final count, each garnering 25 picks. (That ties them with the votes for Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies a year ago, but leaves them short of the 2012 book of the year, Katherine Boo’s Behind The Beautiful Forevers, which made 29 different lists.) Not only did those two works of fiction tie for the top honors, but […]
The Updated Top 10 Books of the Year
Usually we don’t consider our tabulation of the year’s best books over until the beginning of January since the lists keep coming until then. But here is our latest weekly update of the Best of the Best of 2013, to fuel some final holiday shopping ideas. As often happens, the list continues to clarify itself, with George Saunders and Donna Tartt pulling away from the pack — still in a tie for “book of the year” honors. (Sheri Fink, George Packer and Jesmyn Ward are still in close competition for the top nonfiction book of the year.) This count includes […]