Monday Miscellany: More Best Books Lists

The Best Books of 2013

Book-selling giant Amazon of course has lots of best books lists. Check out these categories:

  • Editors’ Top 20 Picks
  • Top 20 Customer Favorites
  • arts & photography
  • audiobooks
  • biographies & memoirs
  • business & investing
  • children’s books
  • comics & graphic novels
  • cookbooks & food writing
  • crafts, home, & garden
  • gift picks
  • history
  • humor & entertainment
  • literature & fiction
  • mystery, thriller, & suspense
  • nonfiction
  • romance
  • science
  • science fiction & fantasy
  • sports & outdoors
  • teen & young adult

Vogue’s Guide to 2013’s Best Films, Books, Music, Art, Theater, and TV

The year’s best books, chosen by Megan O’Grady.

The ThinkProgress Year In Culture: The Best — And Worst — Books Of 2013

Doesn’t it just make sense that a best books list should be accompanied by a worst books list? This article contains some thought-provoking statements, and I feel validated in my judgment of a book that I was unable to stick with for its duration.

Need A Read? Here Are Maureen Corrigan’s Favorite Books Of 2013

From NPR’s Maureen Corrigan, who begins this way:

First, a word about this list: It’s honestly just a fluke that my best books rundown for 2013 is so gender-biased. I didn’t deliberately set out this year to read so many terrific books by women.

Not a problem at all, methinks.

My Favorite Books of 2013

Lucas Wittmann of The Daily Beast says, “Of course, I read, enjoyed, and admired the same books that everyone else did—Donna Tartt, George Packer and so on—but my list also reflects a few less applauded or less well-known books.” His idiosyncratic categories include best American history, best company, best debut, best life, best global history, best laugh, best book that everyone loved, best adventure, best revival, please give them their due, best book by an author who published another book this year, and best journalism.

Best Fiction of the Year

Seán Sheehan lists his choices for Irish Left Review.

THE BEST BOOKS AND NON-BOOKS OF 2013

Author Justin Taylor offers an unconventional list that includes “Three Older Books I Got Around to Reading for the First Time this Year and Am Putting on This List Because I Loved Them, So There.”

Reading gratitudes for the year

Also unconventional is Karen Tay’s offering in her Reading is Bliss column for the New Zealand publication Stuff:

I thought what might be quite lovely to do (said in a very English lady-of-the-manor upper crusty accent), is to name a random list of reading gratitudes. These are the things that make me thankful to be a reader and writer, and that makes reading such a pleasure.

Our 2013 Best Books of the Year

From ShelfAwareness: “Our 2013 Best Books of the Year feature 10 fiction, 10 nonfiction and 10 children’s titles.”

IR’s Best Indie Books for 2013

From IndieReader, a “list of the best indie titles of 2013.”

No Literary Horse Race, Just Books We Like

Let us be the first to tell you: These are quirky lists. They’re supposed to be. These are our favorite books of the year, so please don’t confuse them with 10 Bests, because we can’t make lists like those. For one thing, all of us — Michiko Kakutani, Dwight Garner and I [Janet Maslin] — read so many books on assignment that we don’t have the leeway to be comprehensive. For another, we’ve listed books that we liked as much as we admired. That’s where the quirks come in.

Worst Books of 2013: Fiction!

Finally, to keep your reading and critical skills sharp, peruse this list by Steve Donoghue for Open Letters Monthly.

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