Best Books, 2013, PW and Amazon Editors
The year-end best books lists are rolling in, beginning with PW‘s list of 101 (including a Top Ten) and Amazon’s ranked Top 100 (97 of which are adult, 2 YA and 1 picture book).
As we’ve come to expect, there’s little agreement between the lists. Just 5 nonfiction titles and 10 fiction titles were picked by both.
The National Book Awards winners will be announced next week. Only one nonfiction NBA finalist is on either best books list, George Packer’s The Unwinding, (Macmillan/FSG; Macmillan Audio), which is on both.
Among the NBA fiction finalists, just two titles get nods. George Saunders’ book of short stories, The Tenth of December, (Random House; BOT; Thorndike) is #7 on the Amazon editors list and on the PW list, but not in the Top Ten. On the other hand, McBride’s The Good Lord Bird, (Penguin/Riverhead; Dreamscape Audio; Thorndike) is on the PW Top Ten, but comes in at a middling #44 on Amazon’s list.
What about the Booker? Amazon picked all but one of the titles on the short list, while PW didn’t pick any of them, not even the winner, Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries, (Hachette/Little, Brown; Brilliance Audio).
As we have for several years, we will compile all the major lists into spreadsheets, convenient for checking against your collections, for creating displays, virtual and actual, and for placing end-of-the-year orders. You can dowload the adult lists below (and from the links at the right, under “Best Books, Spreadsheet”: