This is my annual community service to book-bloggers – a list of the books that appear most frequently on the 56 lists that I listed on Best Books of 2019 – A List of Lists.
Presenting the 2019 Commonly-Agreed-by-the-People-Who-Publish-Best-of-2019-Book-Lists-Before-December-31 top 50 books.
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Books that made seven lists –
Wild Game by Adrienne Brodeur
Mrs Everything by Jennifer Weiner
The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo
Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
The World Doesn’t Require You by Rion Scott
Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow
Red White and Royal Blue by Casey Mcquiston
The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell
Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett
Once More We Saw Stars by Jason Greene
Thick by Tressie Cottom
The Institute by Stephen King
Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry
How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
Books that made eight lists –
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb
All This Could Be Yours by Jami Attenberg
Good Talk by Mira Jacob
Spring by Ali Smith
The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells
Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams
Furious Hours by Casey Cep
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
Books that made nine lists –
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Bowlaway by Elizabeth McCracken
The Other Americans by Laila Lalami
Orange World and Other Stories by Karen Russell
Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson
Lot by Bryan Washington
The Collected Schizophrenias by Esme Wang
How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones
Books that made ten lists –
City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert
American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson
Books that made 11 lists –
Grand Union by Zadie Smith
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
Lanny by Max Porter
Books that made 12 or 13 lists –
The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy
Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn
Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
The Need by Helen Phillips
Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi
Exhalation by Tony Chiang
Books that made 14 or 15 lists –
The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Women Talking by Miriam Toews
Inland by Téa Obreht
She Said by Jodi Kantor
Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman
Books that made 16, 17 or 18 lists –
Know My Name by Chanel Miller
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
In the Dream House by Carmen Machado
Underland by Robert Macfarlane
Red At the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James
The Yellow House by Sarah Broom
Say Nothing by Patrick Keefe
Books that made 19, 20 or 21 lists
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
Girl Woman Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Three Women by Lisa Taddeo
The Topeka School by Ben Lerner
Books that made 22-29 lists –
Olive Again by Elizabeth Strout
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
Trust Exercise by Susan Choi
Normal People by Sally Rooney
Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Books that made 30 or 31 lists –
Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
I’ve read seven (Gottleib; Gilbert; Reid; Oyeyemi; Atwood; Taddeo; Rooney); have another seven in the TBR stack (Jami Attenberg; Zadie Smith; Sarah Broom; Patrick Keefe; Ben Lerner; Bernardine Evaristo, Ann Patchett) and I am busting to read another ten (Adrienne Brodeur; Jason Greene; Esme Wang; Deborah Levy; Nicole Dennis-Benn; Jodi Kantor; Chanel Miller; Elizabeth Strout; Jia Tolentino; Taffy Brodesser-Akner).
Do you agree with the critics – will any of these titles make your ‘Best of 2019’ list?