During the end of December 2019 and all during January, lots of websites and podcasts (what should I read next, buzz feed), newspapers (The New York Times, The Washington Post), magazines (The Atlantic, Vanity Fair), NPR, and a good number of credible institutions and people came up with their best book lists for the year. It seems that everyone wants to get on the bandwagon and salute their favorite reads of the last year of the 20-teens.
Best of year selections are not necessarily best sellers, so some of these books may not be on your radar. On The Smithsonian’s list you will find Christine Thompson’s “Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia,” which considers who first settled the remote islands in the Pacific. The Guardian, Britain’s leading daily newspaper, chose “The Porpoise” by Mark Haddon as well as “The Second Sleep” by Robert Harris to be on its best-of-the-year recommendations, neither of which is a runaway seller, but which are both really interesting reads.
Nancy Pearl, a steadfast proponent of reading, is probably the most famous librarian in America and a most eclectic reader, an author, literary critic and commentator for NPR. While you won’t find Danielle Steel’s latest on Pearl’s list, you will find “Rabbits for Food” by Binnie Kirshenbaum and “Out of Darkness, Shining Light” by Petina Gappah.
Voracious reader former President Barack Obama, a lifelong champion of books, came up with 19 volumes that he enjoyed during 2019. They include the novels “Lost Children Archive” by Valeria Luiselli and “Trust Exercise” by Susan Choi (which also won the National Book Award) and nonfiction titles “Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland” by Patrick Radden Keefe and “Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee” by Casey Cep.
Some lists are weightier than other, but there is little argument that The New York Times creates the most prestigious collection of best books of 2019. The following list is a diverse one, but it does reflect the tastes of American readers and aligns pretty closely with arrays by other U.S. newspapers or magazines. Here are the NYT’s winners (The first five are fiction, and the last five nonfiction.):
When it comes to the books which were most often checked out in libraries, the list is different. While some of the books are new, others are a year or so old, because readers have been on their waiting lists for months or are just getting around to tackling them. Then there are authors who have a faithful following. Fans pounce upon everything written by writers such as Lee Child, David Baldacci, Janet Evanovich and Harlen Coben, so they are always popular.
At the Signal Mountain Library, the ten most checked out books of 2019 are:
Patrons frequently ask us for suggestions of what to read, and these books listed here are some that you might want to try. All the above titles, except for two volumes, are in our collection here at the Library. We will also be adding new books every two weeks, some of which we know we’ll see on 2020’s best reads assemblages. So please visit us often and be sure to let us know if there are books that you’d like to read that we don’t have, and we will do our best to get them for you.
Here’s to the next eleven months of happy and enlightening reading!
Best of year selections are not necessarily best sellers, so some of these books may not be on your radar. On The Smithsonian’s list you will find Christine Thompson’s “Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia,” which considers who first settled the remote islands in the Pacific. The Guardian, Britain’s leading daily newspaper, chose “The Porpoise” by Mark Haddon as well as “The Second Sleep” by Robert Harris to be on its best-of-the-year recommendations, neither of which is a runaway seller, but which are both really interesting reads.
Nancy Pearl, a steadfast proponent of reading, is probably the most famous librarian in America and a most eclectic reader, an author, literary critic and commentator for NPR. While you won’t find Danielle Steel’s latest on Pearl’s list, you will find “Rabbits for Food” by Binnie Kirshenbaum and “Out of Darkness, Shining Light” by Petina Gappah.
Voracious reader former President Barack Obama, a lifelong champion of books, came up with 19 volumes that he enjoyed during 2019. They include the novels “Lost Children Archive” by Valeria Luiselli and “Trust Exercise” by Susan Choi (which also won the National Book Award) and nonfiction titles “Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland” by Patrick Radden Keefe and “Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee” by Casey Cep.
Some lists are weightier than other, but there is little argument that The New York Times creates the most prestigious collection of best books of 2019. The following list is a diverse one, but it does reflect the tastes of American readers and aligns pretty closely with arrays by other U.S. newspapers or magazines. Here are the NYT’s winners (The first five are fiction, and the last five nonfiction.):
- “Disappearing Earth” by Julia Phillips
- “The Topeka School” by Ben Lerner
- “Exhalation: Stories” by Ted Chiang
- “Lost Children Archive” by Valeria Luiselli
- “Night Boar to Tangier” by Kevin Barry
- “Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland” by Patrick Radden Keefe
- “The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age” by Leo Damrosch
- “The Yellow House’ by Sarah M. Broom
- “No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know about Domestic Violence Can Kill Us” by Rachel Louise Snyder
- “Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster” by Adam Higginbotham
When it comes to the books which were most often checked out in libraries, the list is different. While some of the books are new, others are a year or so old, because readers have been on their waiting lists for months or are just getting around to tackling them. Then there are authors who have a faithful following. Fans pounce upon everything written by writers such as Lee Child, David Baldacci, Janet Evanovich and Harlen Coben, so they are always popular.
At the Signal Mountain Library, the ten most checked out books of 2019 are:
- “Where the Crawdad Sings” by Delia Owens
- “The Silent Patient” by Alex Michaelides
- “Past Tense” by Lee Child
- “Educated” by Tara Westover
- “Long Road to Mercy” by David Baldacci
- “Wolf Pack” by C. J. Box
- “Neon Prey” by John Sanford
- “Run Away” by Harlen Coben
- “Nine Perfect Strangers” by Liane Moriarty
- “Look Alive 25” by Janet Evanovich
- “Becoming” by Michelle Obama
- “Educated: A Memoir” by Tara Westover
- “Little Fires Everywhere” by Celeste Ng
- A Spark of Light by Jodi Picoult
- “Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens
- “Pachinko” by Min Jin Lee
- “Circe” by Madeline Miller
- “Nine Perfect Strangers” by Liane Moriarty
- “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup” by John Carreyrou
- “Milkman” by Anna Burns
Patrons frequently ask us for suggestions of what to read, and these books listed here are some that you might want to try. All the above titles, except for two volumes, are in our collection here at the Library. We will also be adding new books every two weeks, some of which we know we’ll see on 2020’s best reads assemblages. So please visit us often and be sure to let us know if there are books that you’d like to read that we don’t have, and we will do our best to get them for you.
Here’s to the next eleven months of happy and enlightening reading!
RSS Feed