Best of

The votes are all in and we’re ready to celebrate the consensus very best books of 2022, based on a broad collection of lists. Hernan Diaz’s Trust emerged as both novel of the year and overall book of the year, with Gabrielle Zevin and Celeste Ng’s novels close behind. Ed Yong’s An Immense World led from start to finish as the top nonfiction book of the year, though by a modest margin, with a number of other titles close behind. The big publishers dominated the lists as usual, with nine titles from PRH — but Canada’s Drawn & Quarterly makes […]

Right on schedule, with many more listmakers weighing in, the favorites have separated into two pretty clear lists of top fiction and nonfiction. While many years see very clear top picks from start to finish, this year a number of titles sit together at or near the top of the voting, and the following titles are closely bunched as well, so these positions are likely to continue to shift. For now, Hernan Diaz and Celeste Ng are tied for the lead as both the favorite novel and best book of the year. The Best of the Best Books of 2022: […]

It’s that time: Every year we aggregate selective lists from all over — newspapers, reviewers, booksellers, librarians, book clubs, major awards and more — to provide the ultimate consensus on the year’s very best books, which always results in a terrific set of lists. Last year The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers and Empire of Pain, by Patrick Radden Keefe shared the top honor as the best books of the year. For now it’s still early in the “list season,” with about 33 votes in so far, and the leading picks are all tightly packed, though […]

Barnes & Noble announced their 10 best books of the year so far. (For what it’s worth, a year ago only one of their mid-year “so far” picks — Crying in H Mart, by Michelle Zauner — also made it onto the chain’s best books of the year lists in December.): Book Lovers, by Emily Henry Book of Night, by Holly Black The Candy House, by Jennifer Egan Daughter of the Moon Goddess, by Sue Lynn Tan The Hacienda, by Isabel Cañas I Will Die in a Foreign Land, by Kalani Pickhart Lessons in Chemistry, by Bonnie Garmus To Paradise, […]

Our apologies: Friday’s list celebrating the very best books of 2021 got an important credit wrong. Honoree Fanonne Jeffers’ novel of the year The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois was edited by Erin Wicks and published by Harper.

Per our earlier counts, it came down to the wire in tabulating the consensus very best books of 2021 and fittingly, works of nonfiction and fiction tied for Book(s) of the Year: The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers and Empire of Pain, by Patrick Radden Keefe shared the top honor. And books by Kazuo Ishiguro, Colson Whitehead, and Michelle Zauner all followed so closely (just two votes behind) that you can consider them almost equally lauded. As usual, here are out top 10s for the year — based on 63 “votes” from a variety of […]