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Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2024
Going to to a little longer one just one story today. My second favorite best of list just dropped (I won’t keep you in suspense: the NYT’s 100 Notable Books list is #1), and Everett is the cover, continuing James‘s romp through the early going of awards/best-of season. I had a reader email from someone inside the business saying James was going to sweep in a way we may never have seen anyone sweep before. The blurb for why James is one of the 10 Best Books of the Year from this PW list I think gets it exactly and succinctly right: “Everett has ascended to blockbuster status without leaving behind what makes him special.” Wish I had put it so well.
A couple of other reasons I appreciate the PW list so much.
First, their top 10 list is a mix of high-profile titles with lesser known works, fiction and non-fiction, and mixes of mediums and approaches. I don’t think may other people are going to have a graphic non-fiction book as one of their top 10.
Second, they cover kids books, with standalone categories for picture books, middle grade, and YA. A handful of other review outlets do this, especially in the library world, but not many. I know booksellers appreciate this mightily, but if you are buying for younger readers this is a heckuva place to look.
Third, the put their previous annual lists right at the top of these, which reminds/makes it simple to jump in the time machine to see what was cooking say seven years ago. Not having Pachinko as one of the ten best books of the year for example, now seems like a miss, even as it was one of the fiction picks. Anointing culture in real time is hard, people. Also some years are just stronger than others: 2017 was pretty light on titles that have endured, while 2010 is chock-full.
Fourth: no cutesy categories.
Fifth: I always find (or re-find) a few things I want to make sure I get to before flipping my reading calendar. Here are four I just TBR’ed: The Heart that Fed by Carl Sciacchitano, The Fast: The History, Science, Philosophy and Promise of Doing without by John Oakes, and Smoke Kings by Jahmal Mayfield, and The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki.
And just because I love them, one note: I don’t think collapsing science-fiction, fantasy, and horror into one category works anymore. The pull of romantasy in one direction and the rise of horror in another makes this feel less coherent than it once was. We get a fair number of comments here at BR about even mixing SF and F, which while having been long standard practice, I sort of agree with. The markets for those have grown and diversified enough that the handiness of lumping them together has been overtaken by the internal variety of this hydra-headed “genre.”
