Using Awards Lists As a RA Tool: RUSA Books and Media Awards and Bonus, YALSA Alex Awards

 This is part of my ongoing series on using Awards Lists as a RA tool. Click here for all posts in the series in reverse chronological order. Click here for the first post which outlines the details how to use awards lists as a RA tool. 

On Sunday,  RUSA presented their Books and Media Awards, including the most prestigious prize The Andrew Carnegie  Medal for Excellence in Fiction and  Nonfiction. Below are the individual links for the lists a winners with the ACM titles singled out. For each award I will also explain what it is for, but note, these are all the best and most readable titles for a general adult audience. 

I cannot stress enough how important these awards are to us as we help our patrons. These books were picked as excellent by our peers-- people who do the job of connecting books with readers through the public library. I have served on the ACM committee and have many friends who have served on all of the others below. These choices are from a consensus of people who understand readers and what they are looking for in their leisure reads. This is not a popularity contest. These books represent proven winners. And as such, you can trust all of these books to appeal to your patrons. You should own them and add them proudly to displays and lists for years to come. 

Please go to the excellent RUSA Book and Media website which has a link for each award with the current winners displayed and very easy backlist access. That backlist access is here, but please note, you need to use the links below for Sunday's winners until they update the main page.

First up, The Andrew Carnegie  Medal for Excellence in Fiction and  Nonfiction. The Carnegie Awards, established in 2012, serve as a guide to help adults select quality reading material. They are the first single-book awards for adult books given by ALA and reflect the expert judgment and insight of library professionals and booksellers who work closely with adult readers.Please go to the ACM website for the finalists, long list, and backlist, but the 2025 winners are: 

Fiction:
Percival Everett
James
(Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC)

In an astounding riposte, Everett rewrites Huckleberry Finn as the liberation narrative of the enslaved man Huck befriends. Determined to rescue his wife and daughter, James takes the story in a completely different direction than the original, exemplifying the relentless courage and moral clarity of an honorable man with nothing to lose.

Nonfiction:
Kevin Fedarko
A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon
(Scribner)

Centering his own lifelong relationship with the Grand Canyon, from reading about it as a child through his time as a clumsy canoe guide, Fedarko shares his canyon-spanning hike, replete with steps, missteps, and arguments along the way. He particularly inspires in detailing the ancestral history of the land and some of the Indigenous individuals who continue to fight against overdevelopment and ever-booming tourism.

All the other awards are for multiple titles.

• 2025 Notable Books: An annual best-of list composed of  titles written for adult readers and published in the US including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. 26 titles this year.
• 2025 Sophie Brody Medal Winner and Honor Books: Given to encourage, recognize and commend outstanding achievement in Jewish literature. Works for adults published in the United States in the preceding year are eligible for the award.
• 2025 Listen List: Outstanding Audiobook Narration: This year’s committee evaluated 257 titles with a total listening time of more than 2,724 hours. The final deliberation produced a list of 12 winners. This award highlights extraordinary narrators and listening experiences that merit special attention by a general adult audience and the librarians who advise them. Each of the 12 winners has three "listen-alike" as well.[Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay made the list!]
• The 2025 Reading List: An annual best-of list comprised of eight different fiction genres for adult readers. Winning titles are also presented with readalikes. A shortlist of honor titles, up to 4 per genre was also announced. This year the committee chair said that while the books came from every genre, there was a common theme uniting this comfortable and cozy titles-- found family. I do love how one committee does all of the genres because of outcomes like this-- a theme across all for he reading. The genres are: Adrenaline, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Horror, Mystery, Relationship Fiction, Romance, Science Fiction. [The Horror winner was Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle.]

Again, please peruse all of the winners from last night here. And explore the rich and easily searchable backlist of titles here. That excellent and easily searchable database of current and past winners will be updated later this week. It is a site you should have bookmarked at all times because there are many choices for a broad adult audience.

Finally, on Monday morning as part of the Youth Media Awards, the Alex Awards, identifying the 20 best adult books for teens were announced. Here is the link to the list of all of the Youth award winners including the Alex award titles.

Yes this award is given to adult books with the idea that they are good for a teen audience, but I have used this award for years to identify high interest titles that I can use as sure best for adults. The Alex Award is also always more genre fiction friendly than general adult awards meaning I have a wider range of titles than typical "literary" awards. 

The Alex Award winners, past and present [use that backlist] are one of my go-to resources for "sure bet" titles for my adult patrons anytime. These are titles I know will be compelling and interesting. Click here  to access the backlist. Put all of the winners on display. You don't have to identify them as "for teens," just  make it a library worker award winners themed display. Put up these titles, past titles, and other titles by the winning authors as simply, "Sure Bets." The resulting display will be diverse in every way by default.

Back to the 2025 award specifically. It is not on the homepage yet, but again,here is the full list. One of my favorite books of the year made the list-- I Was a Teenaged Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones. You can click here to read my STAR review of this amazing title about a male-female teenaged friendship and of course, a tale that upends the Slasher Genre as we thought we knew it.

That's the end of this long but helpful post. Congrats to all the books and authors who got awards from the library world over the last few days and a big thank you to the library workers who volunteered their time to serve on these committees. As someone who has been on the ACM, I know how hard this work is, but I also know how rewarding it can be as well.

Tomorrow, we will take a short break from awards lists with a guest post about "unshelving" your collections.