Monday Miscellany: Best Books Round-Up

The lists of best books for 2013 are accumulating quickly. Here are some that I’ve found so far.

The 10 Best Books of 2013

Courtesy of The New York Times, the five best works of fiction and of nonfiction.

Best Books of 2013

Goodreads readers have spoken. See their top choices for the year in these categories: fiction, mystery and thriller, historical fiction, fantasy, paranormal fantasy, science fiction, romance, horror, memoir and autobiography, history and biography, nonfiction, food and cookbooks, humor, graphic novels and comics, poetry, young adult fiction, young adult fantasy, middle grade and children’s, and picture books.

100 Notable Books of 2013

The year’s notable fiction, poetry and nonfiction, selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review.

31 of the best titles of 2013

I like what Mary Ann Gwinn, book editor of The Seattle Times, has to say about these annual lists:

Best-books lists are, shall we say, in the eye of the beholder? Squishy? Subjective?

Case in point: Two titans of the publishing world, the trade journals Publishers’ Weekly and Library Journal, issued their best-books lists in November. Each named 10 “best books.” One book made both lists, a debut novel called “A Constellation of Vital Phenomona” by Anthony Marra. Pretty swell for first-time novelist Marra, but not much of a consensus!

Nevertheless, on our books page we spend all year dividing the wheat from the chaff, the sheep from the goats, the gold from the dross, so here’s the final sort — Seattle Times reviewers’ nominations for the Best Books of 2013. Thirty-one in all, 15 fiction, 16 nonfiction.

Adam Woog’s 10 best mysteries of 2013

Writing for the aforementioned Seattle Times, Adam Woog chooses the year’s best mysteries:

2013 has been a stellar year for crime fiction. The increasing trend toward settings in foreign locations (besides that old standby, Great Britain) is especially noticeable.

The best memoirs of 2013

This just happened to be the page that I came across first of the U.K. Guardian‘s lists. You’ll find links to the rest of the series on the page.

Scotland’s writers choose their best books of 2013

Scottish writers including Kate Atkinson, Christopher Brookmyre, John Burnside and Janice Galloway, pick out “the crème de la crème of 2013’s books.”

Love to read? Here’s our list of top 20 books of 2013

From Australia’s Herald Sun: “we’ve selected our favourite ones in 20 categories as a guide for your Christmas shopping.”

Buffett, Slim, Greenspan, El-Erian, Lew Pick Best Books of 2013

A list of “responses to the annual Bloomberg News survey, which asked CEOs, investors, current and former policy makers, economists and academics to name their favorite books of 2013.”

The best literary spats of 2013

OK, so this isn’t actually a “best books” list. But it is just too good to pass up: “From Bret Easton Ellis’s denouncement of Alice Munro to the Team Nigella backlash, John Dugdale looks back on the writers’ rows of the year.”

 

 

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