Attack of the Best Lists 2024: LibFaves 24

This post is part of my year end "Attack of the Best Lists" coverage. To see every post in my "Attack of the Best Lists 2024" coverage [and more backlist best of the year options] you can click here.

I have 2 more Attack of the Best Lists posts planned for 2024 today and Friday before returning on 12/30 and and 31 for RA for All specific end of the year posts-- my most popular posts on 12/30 and my personal best reads post on 12/31.

Today I have one of my favorite lists because it is created by librarians-- LibFaves24 (which moved to Bluesky this year). What is LibFaves? Well here is the simple explanation. Each year (except 2023) library people are asked to do a countdown of their 10 favorite Adult books published in 2024 with the TITLE in all caps, 1 per day. And they are asked to use the hashtag (this year it is #LibFaves24). For those who are interested, you can click here for a longer post where I invited my colleague Nanette Donohue to write about the history of the event.

It had been on Twitter for years, but as people have left that site, it had no home last year. But thankfully, the tradition was revived, led by my local colleague Jenna over on Bluesky. But every day there was a library worker minitor who gathered all of the mentions and built a huge spreadsheet to present a library worker faves list. 

To see this years' spreadsheet click here. Every book that was mentioned is gathered there. Also Jenna made the graphic on the left with the top titles. You can also click on that to get to the spreadsheet.

Since the spreadsheets from past years are not well cataloged anywhere, I wanted to also offer some backlist access. Please note, 2023 did not happen and I cannot find a 2021 list. If someone reading this knows where it is, please leave it in the comments and I will add it to this post:

• LibFaves22 final spreadsheet
• LibFaves20 final spreadsheet
• LibFaves19 final spreadsheet

Back to LibFaves24 though because I have a few thoughts I want to share; thoughts that I think speak to larger trends in the entirety of the book world this year:

• The top of the list has more marginalized voices than ever before. The entire spreadsheet has been getting more representative over time, but not as much at the tippy top.  Click through and look at the top 20 specifically.
• Genre titles are always popular, but it wasn't always all genres at the top. This year, we see a variety of genres at the top. Even Horror (Bury Your Gays) made it into the top 20 this year. Even Nonfiction was up very high. The variety of titles that got the most votes in general was as broad as I have seen it.
• No surprise that the consensus best book of the year, James, was also at the top for LibFaves. I mean, it excellent but it is also a book about a book. 
• I am not seeing as many obvious genre blends this year. I need to look at this a little more closely. Last year, there were so many books that were consciously using more than one genre and its tropes. This year, I see more of the more casual genre blending of year's past. I need to compare this to the checkout data and book selling data before I say anything about this. I can come up with a few reasons off the top of my head, but I will share them for the longer presentation I will be working on for Feb where I take all of the data and make larger comments.
• And finally, this year was the first where the conversation was held on Bluesky. People are slowing moving over there. Not as many people participated this year, but I am hoping more will in the future.

That's the library world's view of their favorite reads. RA for ALL will be off until 12/27, when I will be back with LitHub's comprehensive "best" coverage. 

I hope everyone enjoys their midweek day off.