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The year is winding to a close, but the news just keeps coming! Here are the most-read stories from this week of Today in Books, complete with commentary.
The People Have Spoken
Goodreads has announced the winners of the 2023 Goodreads Choice Awards. As Jeff O'Nealnoted in this newsletter when voting opened, the list is generally a reflection of the books that have been read by the most people, which doesn’t make it terribly useful or interesting. Also not terribly useful? Goodreads’ insistence on defining any novel set in the past as historical fiction. Yellowface is terrific, but it’s hard to imagine it would have won Best Fiction if The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store or The Covenant of Water—both hugely popular and well-reviewed—had been appropriately categorized. On the upside, very glad to see Matthew Desmond’s Poverty, By America take home the trophy for nonfiction. That’s one that should be read and discussed as widely as possible. Interesting to compare and contrast this list with the Book Marks round-up of the year’s best-reviewed fiction.
Don’t Judge a Book
Oh, how I needed a reminder that it’s not all brightly colored illustrated covers all the time (looking at you, contemporary romance)! The New York Times has rounded up the best book covers of 2023, and I’m pretty surprised that Yellowface didn’t make the list. Can we go ahead and agree that Knife is the one to beat for 2024? I mean…
New Year, Who Dis
Publishers Weekly, which beat everyone else in book media to the punch by releasing their Best of 2023 list before we’d even seen Halloween, has now put out their Spring 2024 preview. With nearly 700 titles, the list is a bountiful start to 2024 bookticipation even if it unhelpfully omits January releases for reasons that I assume have to do with how the publishing industry defines seasons. At the top of my list is James by Percival Everett, a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from Jim’s perspective (ICYMI, Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure is the basis for the new film American Fiction) and tech journalist Kara Swisher’s dishy memoir, Burn Book.
Bluesky Smiling at Me
So you’re done with the social media platform formerly known as Twitter but not ready to ditch the socials altogether? Maybe give Bluesky a try. Here are some authors and bookish accounts to get you started. You can even follow The Book Riot Podcast.