Archive for the ‘Best Books 2012’ Category

New York Times Notable Books of 2012

Tuesday, November 27th, 2012

Selections of the year’s best books are rolling in. The latest; the New York Times Book Review‘s 100 Notable Books of 2012, which will be available in print this Sunday.

We’re particularly happy to see Wiley Cash’s debut novel, A Land More Kind Than Home, (Harper), as well as several other GalleyChat favorites, among the 50 fiction selections.

Kirkus has also posted their top 25 fiction picks.

Below are links to our Excel files of the major best books picks (you can also find them to the right, under the Best Books links),

2012 Adult Fiction

2012 Adult Nonfiction (includes poetry)

2012 Childrens and Young Adult

Children’s Best Books Spreadsheet Is Here!

Monday, November 26th, 2012

   

Several of the annual best books lists have appeared recently (see the links to the right). Again this year, we will collate the titles from various lists into one Excel file, with ISBNs, for your use in spending any left-over book funds.

First up is the 2012 — Childrens Best Books Collated, Excel File, with a total of 175 titles selected by Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, the Washington Post as well as the New York Times Book Review’s selection of the Best Illustrated Books [UPDATE: The list is up to 275 titles, now that we’ve added the Horn Book and SLJ picks].

As we’ve learned to expect, there’s very little concensus. Just two titles were picked by all four sources:

Wonder, R. J. Palacio, (RH/ Knopf BYR)

Son, Lois Lowry, (HMH)

Even the National Book Award finalists aren’t shoe-ins; the only one selected as a Best Book is Bomb: The Race to Build–and Steal–the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin (Macmillan/ Flash Point), a Washington Post pick. Even the winner, Goblin Secrets by William Alexander (S&S/ Margaret K. McElderry) wasn’t picked by any other source.

More best books lists are coming. As they appear, we will add the titles to the file.

Look for the collated spreadsheet for adult titles later this week.

Thanks to Edelweiss Tags and Custom Exports features, compiling the lists was much easier this year. Also, for the first time, we were able to include links to publisher descriptions of each title, which often include valuable selection information, such as views of interior pages (for instance the recently-release, This Moose Belongs to Me).

Huff Po 2012 Best Books

Wednesday, October 17th, 2012

Swimming Home by Deborah Levy (Bloomsbury USA), the Booker finalist that was published here on the very day of the announcement that another book won the prize, got recognized by the Huffington Post as one of the “Best Books of 2012 So Far,” describing it as “Short, simple and haunting.”

Neither the Booker winner, Bring Up the Bodies, nor any of the other titles from the longlist, makes the HuffPo’s list of 23.