Amazon released their annual Best Books of the Year: Top 100 in Print list today (as well as a free and helpful Reader’s Guide), and numerous Millions favorites made the cut. Both George Saunders’s Tenth of December and Philipp Meyer’s The Son cracked the top 10. We reviewed both here and here, respectively. Other notable books boasting extensive Millions coverage include Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings (review), George Packer’s The Unwinding (review), Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries (review), Dave Eggers’s The Circle (review), James Salter’s All That Is (review), Karen Russell’s Vampires in the Lemon Grove (interview), Stuart Nadler’s Wise Men (review), Colum McCann’s TransAtlantic (review), and Colm Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary (review). Meanwhile, the top spot belongs to Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch.
The Best Books of the Year (2013)
The Best of the Best
Theoretically, it pays to get a novel on Amazon’s best seller list. In reality, though, a bestselling novel doesn’t make as much in cold hard cash as you’d think.
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A Bit Woody
Perhaps the best mashup of highbrow and lowbrow to grace the cultural ether in recent years is this innovative scratch-and-sniff guide to becoming a wine expert. The book, which is exactly what you think it is, declares that “not all oaks are created equal” and includes a diagram of “all the smells in the world.” (Related: literary tourism at Suttree’s High Gravity Beer Tavern.)
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A Roundtable (of Sorts) on Identity in Publishing
"You’re asking if the Race Memoir, the Gender Memoir, or the Sexuality Memoir will survive market trends. I don’t know, but if I put your question in context with Imani Perry’s idea then yes, it will endure. Will it always be 'trending'? No, but it will endure." Just one of many great lines from Kima Jones who, along with Terese Marie Mailhot, Meredith Talusan, Ijeoma Oluo, and Kathryn Belden, discusses the current upswing in books on gender and race for Buzzfeed.
Pick and Choose
Tim Waterstone (of the giant UK chain Waterstones) will soon launch a new platform that publishes shorter works. (Like several other companies, it’s been dubbed “the Spotify of books.”)
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Literary Lost
As Lost meanders towards its finale, the LA Times rounds up the plentiful literary influences that popped up during the show's run.
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Tuesday New Release Day: St. Aubyn, Erickson, Sendker, Mockingbird
This week sees the release of Edward St. Aubyn's final "Patrick Melrose novel," At Last. A new, omnibus edition of all the novels in the series is also out. Steve Erickson's new novel These Dreams of You is out, as is The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, a debut effort set in Burma by German novelist Jan-Philipp Sendker. This week also sees the release, on Blu-ray, of the 50th anniversary edition of To Kill a Mockingbird.
Tuesday New Release Day: Atwood; Waters; Turner; Robertson; Wineberg; Tierce; Shapiro; Darnielle
New this week: Stone Mattress: Nine Tales by Margaret Atwood; The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters; My Life as a Foreign Country by Brian Turner; Wallflowers by Eliza Robertson; On Bittersweet Place by Ronna Wineberg; Love Me Back by Merritt Tierce; In the Red by Elena Mauli Shapiro; and Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-half 2014 Book Preview.
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“A Imperfect Dad”
"As much as I claimed that I read for my own edification, it was a lie. The books I was most drawn to were those that were loved by someone in my life. Reading them, I thought, would teach me all I needed to know about them—nice and safe, from a distance. Reading them with one hand, it was easy to have the other keep them at arm’s length." Romy Sugden writes for The Oyster Review about trying to connect with her estranged father by reading John le Carré's A Perfect Spy.
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Completely predictable and wholly boring list.
I’ve heard a lot of good things about “The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt. To be honest I haven’t heard of the other books! Thanks for posting the review links too :) My contribution to the list would be the mainstream literary fiction masterpiece by author A.R. Taylor, “Sex, Rain, and Cold Fusion.” (http://www.lonecamel.com/the_book/). The link gives a good description of the book and some pages from the first chapter. This is one of the funniest novels I’ve ever read, and not only did it have me laughing throughout it had me hooked at page one. The main character, David Oster, is a genius with a complicated life full of sex, physics, and the endless search for some sort of meaning in his day to day routine. He moves from California to Washington leaving the sunshine and women behind for a new job that promises more money and more time researching the thing he loves most, underwater physics. Unfortunately, the new job brings nothing but chaos to David Oster’s already confusing life and he is thrown into a murder mystery thanks to his employer and his employer’s newly murdered wife. He also enters into a very demanding relationship himself and is pushed to his limits when he finds that his ocean studies must be put on hold so he can spend time figuring out the physics of horses performing on a basketball court. There are so many funny twists and turns. This novel needs to be added to the best books of 2013 for sure.