Ultimate Aggregated Best Lists: #LibFaves20 and LitHub

As I alerted you to here, the annual #LibFaves Twitter event happened over the last 10 days. I participated, yes, but why I participate has nothing to do with me. It has to do with the compound interest of all of us library workers working together to create an aggregated best list.

Aggregated best lists are a better resource for us, the library workers who serve the entire public. Why? Because they take multiple perspectives, multiple opinions, and then put them together into one huge list. These aggregated lists more accurately reflect what is "best" because more voices are considered.

The #LibFaves final list of titles is an excellent example. Here is access to the spreadsheet of every single title that was mentioned by library workers from all over the country, listed in order by the number of times it was mentioned. And to the left is a screen shot of the top 10. I love this top 10 because it is made up of library worker favorites and look at how diverse it is both in genre and who wrote the books. Three of my personal favorites are here too.

This top 10 and the entire list, is a best list that can serve every reader.

And don't forget the backlist of #LibFaves aggregated lists. Best books from past years are still great suggestions because the books didn't lose their "best" designation, and if your patron hasn't read them, they are new to them. I made it easier for you to access them all. Click here and pull up a clickable list of past year's #LibFaves results.

But that is only a library worker generated aggregated best list. And while awesome, what about all the very public and major media outlet best lists? How do we get a sense of what is the best of those best lists? The answer: Lit Hub. For the fourth year in a row, they have made the Ultimate Best of 2020 List for us, and surprise, surprise [note sarcasm] the top book is the same as the #LibFaves list.

This list is made by assessing a slew of the most prestigious best lists [which they both list and link directly to at the end of the piece, so that alone is an excellent resource]. Again, it is listed in order by how many lists included the title, and again, since it is aggregated, this list is more diverse and inclusive than any single list.

Past access to Lit Hub's "ultimate" lists is here.

Sorry [not sorry] about exploding your TBR. But be like me. I always acknowledge that there are some "best" books I won't get to in the year they were on the lists, so instead I pick 1 or 2 and put them at the top of my TBR for the next year. I even have a category in my annual person best list that addresses that. Here is last year's example:

Books from 2018 Best Lists That I read in 2019: Severance by Ling Ma [Fiction]; The Rise 

Have a great weekend.