Best of

Year-end letter time continues with Random House ceo Markus Dohle’s missive to staff, in which he highlights “another successful year” for the company at a time of “enduring change and challenges for our industry.” He points to a culture and organization that’s more “collaborative, team-oriented, flexible, efficient, and agile” and allows Random House staffers to implement strategies more effectively. “In short, we aren’t reacting to change, we are driving it.” Dohle called Random House’s continuing success “all the more impressive in light of the prevailing weak economy.” He highlighted “hundreds” of bestsellers in the US, UK, Germany, and Spain including […]

It’s year-end letter time, and Simon & Schuster ceo Carolyn Reidy wrote to employees on Friday, celebrating that the company “is poised to deliver excellent financial results including significant growth in profits over our 2010 levels.” One key has been “opportunity titles” that “were not originally in the budget” for this year but have gone on to comprise four of their ten bestselling titles: STEVE JOBS by Walter Isaacson, A STOLEN LIFE by Jaycee Dugard, THE 17 DAY DIET by Mike Moreno, and GABBY by Gabrielle Giffords and Mark Kelly Reidy acknowledges one of the year’s significant developments, as well […]

With more lists rolling in–the WSJ, People and Entertainment Weekly among them–the consensus best of the best of 2011 list is acquiring real shape and clarity. As always happens, both the fiction and nonfiction lists have neatly produced two clear groups of top 10 picks. Continuing the pattern from the beginning of this year’s voting, the top novels are acquiring far more votes, with fiction claiming 7 of the top 8 slots overall. Tea Obreht’s THE TIGER’S WIFE remains the runaway pick for book of the year. We’re still waiting on lists from a few major sources, including USA Today […]

Kobo named about 30 titles as their ebooks of the year: Fiction The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt 1Q84, Haruki Murakami Ten Thousand Saints, Eleanor Henderson The Free World, David Bezmozgis When She Woke, Hillary Jordan The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern The Art of Fielding, Chad Harbach The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes Touch, Alexi Zentner Snowball Dragonfly Jew, Stuart Ross Blood Red Road, Moira Young Monoceros, Suzette Mayr Caribou Island, By David Vann The Illumination, Kevin Brockmeier The Stranger’s Child, Alan Hollinghurst The Submission, Amy Waldman Ready Player, One Ernest Cline State of Wonder, Ann Patchett The Fates Will […]

We take a short break from the Best of the Year lists to jump to January, with the new Indie Next List. Naomi Benaron’s novel is the fourth Algonquin book in a year to claim the booksellers’ monthly No. 1 slot–preceded by Hillary Jordan’s When She Woke (October); Tayari Jones’ Silver Sparrow (June); and Jonathan Evison’s West of Here (February). Running the Rift: A Novel, by Naomi Benaron The Orphan Master’s Son: A Novel, by Adam Johnson American Dervish: A Novel, by Ayad Akhtar The Invisible Ones: A Novel, by Stef Penney The Journal of Best Practices: A Memoir of […]

We already listed the Washington Post‘s Top 10 books of the year, but their Sunday special section also lists their 50 notable fiction and nonfiction picks, along with their favorite kids books, photobooks, and more. The New Yorker‘s critics share their favorites of the year, about 40 books in all. The Seattle Times asked reviewers to “nominate the best book published in 2011 they reviewed for us, and the best book published in the past year that they read but didn’t review.” That yields 21 works of fiction and 11 nonfiction titles. The top vote-getters were The Sense of an Ending by […]