Best Books 2021: Booklist's Stars Issue

This post is part of my year end "Attack of the Best Lists" coverage. To see every post in my "Best Books 2021" series you can use the best lists tag. 

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Each December Booklist magazine does an entire issue recapping every star review that appeared in the magazine over the course of the year. It is a great, consolidated resource to get a snapshot of the "best" books of the last year. It is all organized the same way that the magazine is, meaning it is intuitive to use as a resource.  For example, each star crime review is listed together in alphabetic order by author's last name while the same happens for each Arts & Leisure starred nonfiction, and so on.

The breadth of options and range of views on what makes something best are eye opening and cross formats, fiction, nonfiction, and all age levels. You can use the current issue to find titles in a number of genres tor nonfiction categories based upon your readers' tastes.

But the Editors are not simply regurgitating their year of work in this issue, leaving it to you to comb through all of the stars to find the brightest among them. Nope. They also have curated "Editor's Choices" within each subcategory of reviews and name a single "Top of the List" title for all of the major categories.

Because Booklist allows each reviewer to assign stars to their reviews [based on criteria we have all been trained to use to make this distinction], it is useful for the Editor's of each sections, the experts, to weigh in on the best of the best. This provides continuity and authority. 

Pick up the December 15th issue or peruse it online. But below I have re-posted the links to the highlights, including one of may favorite, annual, outside the box "best" lists-- the recommended reading lists from the 6 Andrew Carnegie Finalists.  

• Booklist Top of the List, 2021  • Booklist Editors' Choice, 2021  • High-Demand Reviews  • What Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction Finalists Want You to Read

And finally, don't forget, December 15th issues from previous years do the same thing. You can go back and use December 15, 2020 or 2019 to find some excellent suggestions for your patrons, ones they could not find on their own, suggestions that haven't lost their "best" status just because the calendar flipped over to a new year.