People, USA Today Top Ten
Two major Top Ten Books lists landed today — People magazine’s (not available yet online) and USA Today’s.
Neither includes E.L. James’s trilogy, but both feature the author (USA Today as “Author of the Year,” People as “Game Changer”). USA Today says, in a version of, “at least they are reading,” that James’s series “has proven that the novel — whether in print or e-book pixels — remains a heavyweight in the boxing ring of popular entertainment.” People calls the series a “soft-porn phenom.”
Both top ten lists include Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, and Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers, but that is where similarities end.
People is one of the few to not include Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies, which has been the year’s big winner, both in sales and the number of best books picks (see below).
People‘s #1 pick, Alice Munro’s Dear Life, has appeared on many longer lists, but is not on any other top ten. The same is true of USA Today‘s top pick, Flight Behavior, by Barbara Kingsolver.
After the jump, the titles on each list, with notes on titles that received other top ten picks to date (LJ‘s list is due some time today).
People — Top Ten Books
Five fiction, five nonfiction
1) Dear Life, Alice Munro, (RH/Knopf, short stories)
2) This Is How You Lose Her, Juno Diaz, (Penguin/Riverhead, fiction) — #10 on Time magazine Top Ten Fiction
3) The Age of Miracles, Karen Thompson Walker, (Random House, fiction)
4) Wild, Cheryl Strayed, (RH/Knopf, memoir) — #6 on Time magazine Top Ten Nonfiction
5) Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn, (RH/Crown, fiction) — #4 on USA Today‘s Top Ten
6) Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo, (Random House, nonfiction) — #10 on USA Today‘s Top Ten; one of five nonfiction titles on the NYT Book Reviews 10 Best Books; one of five nonfiction titles on the Washington Post’s 10 Best Books
7) Quiet, Susan Cain, (RH/Crown, nonfiction)
8) Bruce, Peter Ames Carlin. (Simon & Schuster, biography)
9) How Children Succeed, Paul Tough, (HMH, nonfiction)
10) Where’d You Go, Bernadette, Maria Semple, (Hachette/Little Brown, fiction) — one of Entertainment Weekly’s Top Ten Fiction
USA Today — Top Ten Picks
Seven fiction, three nonfiction
1. Flight Behavior, Barbara Kingsolver (Harper, fiction)
2. Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel (Macmillan/Holt, fiction) — Time magazine’s #2 pick for the year in fiction; one of Entertainment Weekly s Top Ten Fiction; one of five fiction titles on the NYT Book Reviews 10 Best Books; one of five fiction titles on the Washington Post’s 10 Best Books and one of five fiction titles on Publishers Weekly‘s Top Ten.
3. Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama, Alison Bechdel (HMH, memoir/graphic novel) — #5 on Time magazine Top Ten Nonfiction
4. Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn, (RH/Crown) — #5 on People magazine’s Top Ten
5. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce, (Random House, fiction)
6. The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy, David Nasaw, (Penguin Press, non-fiction) — one of five nonfiction titles on the NYT Book Reviews 10 Best Books
7. The Fault in Our Stars, John Green, (Penguin/Dutton, fiction for ages 14 and up) — Time magazine’s #1 pick for the year in fiction and one of Entertainment Weekly s Top Ten Fiction
8. What It Was, George Pelecanos (Hachette/ Little Brown/Reagan Arthur, fiction)
9. Canada, Richard Ford (HarperCollins/Ecco, fiction) — one of five fiction titles on the Washington Post’s 10 Best Books
10. Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo, (Random House, nonfiction) — #6 on People‘s Top Ten and one of five nonfiction titles on the NYT Book Reviews 10 Best Books