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Best Of Updates
Booklist has published its Best of 2013 list, and Kirkus has put up its Best Nonfiction list, so we can finally wrap up our look at the major journals’ take on the best books of the year. In the fiction category, there are no big surprises since last we spoke, although interestingly, most of the titles that moved up to two lists were books that we reviewed here. I’m especially excited to see Jenni Fagan’s Panopticon get the attention I think it very much deserves–indeed, it is the only title from this blog’s Best of 2013 list to be recognized on more than one Best Of list.
The nonfiction titles we hadn’t previously looked at. Two of the books to make three lists were reviewed here, but only two more on the much longer list of books that made two lists. In all, we reviewed 6 of the 24 fiction titles to make two or more lists, and 4 of the 21 nonfiction titles, for right around 25% of all the books listed below. Not bad, considering how many of them lack any obvious teen appeal. I could go on and on about all of this data for a long time, but for now, I’ll simply present my compiled list of the Best of 2013, according to library review journals.
Fiction
Four Lists:
- Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
- A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
Three Lists:
- Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon (Kirkus, LJ, and PW)
- The Good Lord Bird by James McBride (Booklist, Kirkus, and PW)
- The Woman Who Lost Her Soul by Bob Shacochis (Booklist, Kirkus, and LJ)
Two lists:
- Blind Man’s Garden by Nadeem Aslam (Kirkus and PW)
- Archangel by Andrea Barrett (Booklist and Kirkus)
- Claire of the Sea Light by Edwidge Dandicat (LJ and PW)
- The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson (Kirkus and PW)
- The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner (Kirkus and PW)
- A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki (Booklist and Kirkus)
- Harvest by Jim Crace (Kirkus and LJ)
- Panopticon by Jenni Fagan (Booklist and LJ)
- Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert (Booklist and PW)
- Schroder by Amity Gage (Kirkus and PW)
- How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid (Kirkus and PW)
- And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini (Booklist and LJ)
- Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri (Booklist and Kirkus)
- Someone by Alice McDermott (Kirkus and PW)
- Son by Philipp Meyer (Kirkus and LJ)
- Submergence by JM Ledgard (LJ and PW)
- Tenth of December by George Saunders (Kirkus and PW)
- The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (Booklist and Kirkus)
- Night Film by Marisha Pessl (Booklist and Kirkus)
Nonfiction
Three Lists:
- Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink (Booklist, LJ, and Kirkus)
- Thank You for Your Science by David Finkel (Booklist, PW, and Kirkus)
- A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout (Booklist, PW, and Kirkus)
- The Unwinding by George Packer (Booklist, PW, and Kirkus)
Two Lists:
- To the End of June by Cris Beam (Booklist and PW)
- Mortal Sins by Michael D’Antonio (PW and Kirkus)
- Searchers by Glenn Frankel (LJ and Kirkus)
- The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin (Booklist and Kirkus)
- Johnny Cash by Robert Hilburn (PW and Kirkus)
- Dreadful Deceit by Jacqueline Jones (PW and Kirkus)
- Lost Girls by Robert Kolker (PW and Kirkus)
- Book of Ages by Jill Lepore (Booklist and Kirkus)
- How to Create the Perfect Wife by Wendy Moore (LJ and Kirkus)
- Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss (PW and Kirkus)
- Gulp by Mary Roach (Booklist and PW)
- The Great War by Joe Sacco (Booklist and Kirkus)
- Last Train to Zona Verde by Paul Theroux (Booklist and Kirkus)
- The Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward (PW and Kirkus)
- Fosse by Sam Wasson (PW and Kirkus)
- Ebony and Ivy by Craig Wilder (Booklist and Kirkus)
- Going Clear by Lawrence Wright (PW and Kirkus)
Filed under: Best Books, Best of 2013
About Mark Flowers
Mark Flowers is the Young Adult Librarian at the John F. Kennedy Library in Vallejo, CA. He reviews for a variety of library journals and blogs and recently contributed a chapter to The Complete Summer Reading Program Manual: From Planning to Evaluation (YALSA, 2012). Contact him via Twitter @droogmark
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