Best of

Apple’s iTunes Rewind has published their annual lists of favorite downloads. They pick Tea Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife as best novel; Michael Lewis’s Boomerang as best nonfiction; Ruta Sepetys’ Between Shades of Gray as best teen novel; and Jaqueline Kennedy as their best enhanced book. The lists (which you will have to fire up through iTunes) also include their bestselling ebooks for the year. Among their Top 10s: Fiction The Tiger’s Wife, Tea Obreht 1Q84, Haruki Murakami Once Upon A River, Bonnie Jo Campbell Ten Thousand Saints, Eleanor Henderson The Prague Cemetery, Umberto Eco The Paris Wife, Paula McLain The Hottest […]

The last couple of days have brought a number of prominent Best of 2011 lists. They include Salon’s top 10 (divided into separate nonfiction and fiction posts), Slate’s critics’ 17 favorite books, more short NPR lists, from Lynn Neary for book clubs , and “5 books that stick” from Heller McAlpin, and GQ’s best books. Here’s the full Washington Post top 10, to spare you the advertising video that will play as soon as you visit the link: Fiction 1Q84, Haruki Murakami An Atlas of Impossible Longing, Anuradha Roy State of Wonder, Ann Patchett Doc, Mary Doria Russell Once Upon a River, Bonnie Jo […]

GoodReads.com members have picked Veronica Roth’s YA debut DIVERGENT as their Favorite Book of 2011, with over 10,000 votes (and 50 percent of members who read the book were 25 or older). Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 was the fiction favorite, and Alexandra Robbins’ The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth was the nonfiction selection. In all the honors span 22 categories this year. Other winners included Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs (history & biography); Stephen King’s 11/22/63 (science fiction); Tina Fey’s Bossypants (humor); and Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife (historical fiction). In other lists, the Kansas City Star picked their top 11 books of […]

A number of new lists of the best books of 2011 have been issued, including a number of lists from Barnes & Noble, Esquire’s top 10 (with particular nods to Amy Waldman’s The Submission and Ron Suskind’s Confidence Men), along with lists from the likes of BookPage and NY Magazine, which runs recommendations from others rather than their own critics. We’re continuing to compile our omnibus Best of the Best of 2011 lists, where the consensus fiction favorites have solidified considerably, even as the nonfiction list remains wide open. From 19 consolidated sources so far: The Top 10 of 2011: […]

The NYT Book Review has posted their top 10 books of the year, along with top 10 lists from the newspaper’s three book critics. As usual, there’s a very small amount of overlap between Kakutani and Maslin’s favorite books and TBR’s Top 10. For the third straight year, Dwight Garner’s nonfiction choices have no intersection at all with the TBR’s favorites.) Book Review Top 10: Fiction THE ART OF FIELDING, by Chad Harbach (MK) TEN THOUSAND SAINTS, by Eleanor Henderson 11/22/63, by STEPHEN KING THE TIGER’S WIFE, by Téa Obreht (MK) SWAMPLANDIA!, by Karen Russell (JM) Fiction ARGUABLY, by Christopher […]

Library Journal announced their top ten books of 2011, the consensus picks of their review editors. The list includes two of the NBA fiction finalists: Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty by Andrew Bolton and others (text) & Sølve Sundsbø (photogs.) (Metropolitan Museum of Art) Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War by Tony Horwitz (Holt) Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones (Algonquin) 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami (Knopf) The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht (Random) The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka (Knopf) The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips (Random) The Better Angels of Our Nature: […]