All-the-Best-Books Compilation for 2012
Posted by: Neil Hollands
I’ve released the first edition of my All-the-Best-Books Compilation (ABBC) for 2012. It compiles mentions of books in best-of-the-year lists and awards from 66 different sources into one spreadsheet with 12 different fiction and nonfiction categories, showing how many times each book was mentioned and which sources mentioned each. You can learn more about the methodology for the ABBC and download the spreadsheet for your own use at my other blogging home, Williamsburg Regional Library’s Blogging for a Good Book. http://bfgb.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/all-the-best-books-compilation-abbc-2012-first-edition/
Please share this link with others in the book world! As far as I’m aware, while other sites may link to more book lists (Largehearted Boy has the most extensive list I know), this is the largest compilation of results into a usable table.
Further editions of the ABBC will follow as I compile about 60 more sources into the results, although enough are in place to give the general idea for the pecking order for 2012. The compilation is usually finalized in late March. I’ll write more about results in each category on both blogs over coming weeks, on this blog evaluating the top titles for their likely utility as book group selections.
For today, here are the most frequently mentioned titles from all 66 compiled sources in all categories to date, those with 15 or more mentions to date:
35 mentions
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, by Katherine Boo
34 mentions
Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn
31 mentions
Bring Up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel
This Is How You Lose Her, by Junot Diaz
28 mentions
Wild: from Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, by Cheryl Strayed
27 mentions
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, by Ben Fountain
24 mentions
Building Stories, by Chris Ware
22 mentions
The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green
21 mentions
Canada, by Richard Ford
19 mentions
Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter
The Round House, by Louise Erdrich
18 mentions
The Orphan Master’s Son, by Adam Johnson
Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, by Robert A. Caro
17 mentions
Where’d You Go, Bernadette, by Maria Semple
The Yellow Birds, by Kevin Young
16 mentions
The Age of Miracles, by Karen Thompson Walker
Telegraph Avenue, by Michael Chabon
15 mentions
Code Name Verity, by Elizabeth Wein
Dear Life: Stories, by Alice Munro
I’ll delve deeper into the lists in particular categories in future posts.
