Merry Christmas readers! This month I took a look at my favorite books of the year, and I asked myself the question: why did I read each one? Did I choose them because of ARCs, challenges (and if so, which ones), because they received an award, or because of positive reviews? I wanted to identify which strategies resulted in reading the best books.
First, I identified 30 of my favorite books of the year. It’s an arbitrary number but I wanted enough books to have a good cross-section:
Fourteen books were read for challenges:
- Read Harder: 6 books (An American Marriage, Killers of the Flower Moon, American Like Me, Elizabeth is Missing, Girls Burn Brighter, A Wrinkle in Time)
- Nonfiction: 5 books (Becoming, Just Mercy, Killers of the Flower Moon, Lafayette and the Somewhat United States, American Like Me)
- Around the World: 4 books (What We Were Promised, Who is Vera Kelly, An Untamed State, Girls Burn Brighter)
- TBR Pile Challenge: 3 books (We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, After Atlas, An Untamed State)
I didn’t include challenges here that didn’t really influence what I read. For example, I’m in a few science fiction/fantasy challenges but that’s because I know I’d read science fiction and fantasy anyway. Same with classics challenges. With the challenges listed here, I actively chose books that would meet them.
I received 9 of the 30 as ARCs: Happiness, Girls Burn Brighter, The Red Word, The Vain Conversation, Heads of the Colored People, What We Were Promised, Transcription, Empire of Sand, and Who is Vera Kelly?
I read 8 because they were award winners or longlist nominees:
- Women’s Prize: 4 books (Sing, Unburied, Sing; Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine; Home Fire; and The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock)
- National Book Award: 3 books (Sing, Unburied, Sing; An American Marriage; Heads of the Colored People)
- Nebula or Hugo: 2 books (All Systems Red, Amberlough)
- Pulitzer: Less
- Man Booker: 1 book (Home Fire)
Fifteen of the 30 were released this year, which is higher than I expected. Seventeen were by authors of color or LGBT authors. A whopping 24 were by authors I’d never read before.
What does this tell me? I can see that my best reading came from four challenges, and those were pretty even, so all four challenges are ones I plan to continue with next year. Other challenges, like Finishing the Series and Back to the Classics, didn’t result in my best reading this year, so may not be worth continuing.
This year I took a different approach to ARCs, and I think it paid off. For the most part, I only requested books on NetGalley that I saw on a list of most anticipated upcoming book releases. There were a few misfires, like Gun Love, but most of the ARCs I read were ones I really liked.
It’s also interesting that many of my favorite books came from the Women’s Prize longlist and the National Book Award longlist. I tend to read fewer of the Man Booker Prize nominees, but often they are books that are a bit too experimental for me or ones I didn’t love (Exit West, for example).
It was interesting to think about why I choose the books I read, and which choices resulted in my favorite books this year. It would be interesting to look at my least favorite books of the year, and see how those compare. I’ll do a deeper analysis at the end of the year of all the books I read.
What were some of your favorite books this year, and why did you read them?
