Top Books of 2011: Lists Compared
Best book lists abound, but are they comparing apples to oranges?
Many top ten (or whatever number) book lists are a collaboration between several people, says Lev Grossman in Time.
Often the lists are comparing apples and oranges. "There are apples-to-oranges problems: how do you compare the moody, seedy greatness of a Kate Atkinson novel with a cerebral wreck like David Foster Wallace’s posthumous The Pale King (which so far, to my surprise, I’ve seen on exactly zero top 10 lists)," said Grossman.
In the end, these book lists at least give an idea of what's being read, and provide choices of what I might want to read. In that vein, Burke Patch presents a comparison of three 'top book' lists for 2011.
The books listed by Fairfax County Public Library are based on the number of times the titels were borrowed during 2011. That is not an exact science. The library does not purchase the same number of copies of each book, and some books on the list were published before -- sometimes years versus weeks -- before others, giving them more opportunity to circulate. (Thus, the year of publication has been provided.)
In addition, the library listed fiction and nonfiction separately, but on this chart we've combined them, listing the five nonfiction titles after the 10 fiction titles. That means this list is not in order of top circulation, but simply a list of the top 15 circulated adult books of 2011.
The Huffington Post and Publisher's Weekly lists feature books published in 2011. The choices were made by several people. ("Bossypants" by Tina Fey is the only book which made all three lists.)
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Fairfax County Public Library |
The Huffington Post |
Publisher’s Weekly |
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The Confession |
Steve Jobs |
The Marriage Plot |
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Hell’s Corner |
The Tiger's Wife |
The Devil All the Time |
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The Help |
Press Here |
State of Wonder |
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The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest |
Pulphead |
After the Apocalypse |
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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo |
Bossypants |
Bossypants |
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Sing You Home |
The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore |
Catherine the Great |
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Toys: A novel |
The Night Circus |
There but for the |
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The Reversal: a Novel |
Missed Connections |
Hemingway's Boat |
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Safe Haven |
Swamplandia! |
One Day I Will Write About This Place |
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Port Mortuary |
The Sense of an Ending |
Arguably: Essays |
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Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption |
Salvage the Bones |
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Cleopatra: A Life |
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Bossypants |
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Little Princes: One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal |
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In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin |
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In the end, 'Best Books' lists don't mean best for all time. "The novel is a highly corrupt medium, after all — in the end the vast majority of them simply aren’t that great, and are destined to be forgotten," said Grossman. "How many years really see the publication of 10 novels that are actually great?"
In answer to his own question, Grossman suggests 1925: Albertine disparue (Proust); An American Tragedy (Dreiser);The Counterfeiters (Gide); Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Anita Loos); The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald); The Making of Americans (Stein); Manhattan Transfer (Dos Passos); Mrs. Dalloway (Woolf); The Professor’s House (Cather); The Trial (Kafka). "It was a very good year," he said.
Editor's Note: Other 'Best Book' lists:
Amazon.com: The Best Books of 2011
Time's Top 10 Fiction Books 2011
Time's Top 10 Nonfiction Books 2011
USA Today's 10 Books We Loved Reading in 2011
The All-TIME 100 Nonfiction Books
The 10 Best Books of the 2000s
What is your 'top' book choice for 2011? What's your 'must read' for 2012?
Susan Larson
8:40 am on Sunday, January 1, 2012
Julie on Facebook said, "Room, Hunger Games series, The Help, and War Horse were my favorites this year."