Lists!

It’s mid-December and that means there are lots of lists coming out. Last year, I made an exhaustive spreadsheet of all of the major journals’ best-of lists to show you what made multiple lists and which ones we’d reviewed. This year, I’m . . . not going to do that. Instead, just a few thoughts. But first, the lists:

• Library Journal has a top ten list, plus additional favorites, here
• Booklist has a favorite book from a variety of genres, followed by an extensive list of all their starred reviews, here
• Kirkus‘s list appears to be simply all of their starred reviews
• And PW, like LJ has a top ten, plus more extensive lists broken out by category

You want thoughts? One of the books that seems to be getting the most attention in Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings, which made both the top ten lists. It is on our list of books to review, but we haven’t gotten to it yet, so we may just have to try to fit it in soon. And I was very pleased to see Lorrie Moore’s story collection, Bark, get some recognition. It was a book which we wanted to review here, but didn’t feel had quite the teen appeal for this blog.

Other than that, many of our favorites this year were recognized on one or more lists, including All The Light We Cannot See, which seems to be shaping up as one of the year’s favorites; Everything I Never Told You; and The Southern Reach trilogy, which everyone seems to have loved as much as me.

Take a look at all these lists and tell us what we should be reading as the year draws to a close.

Filed under: Best of 2014