What I'm Reading: Audiobook Reviews Round-Up

I talk about this in my training programs, but don't say it enough here, because I read and review books for my job it is not only hard to make time to read for fun, but also, and this is even more difficult, it is very hard to train my brain to just sit back and enjoy a story and not try to critique it as a professional reviewer.

Over the years I have worked very hard to figure out how to still enjoy reading. I have chronicled that journey for years through my Reading Resolutions post. If you want to read those, check out my first 2 posts of every year my using the drop down menus in the right gutter toward the bottom of every page.

But for those who want the short version, what I have learned is, if I listen to the books I want to read for fun my brain understands this. It doesn't try to be a critic. Reading with my ears is the trick my brain needs to enjoy a leisure read.

After I finish these audiobooks, I take notes in Goodreads. I do not write long formal reviews, but I do assign these titles 3 words. 

Today, I want to catch up with four audiobooks I have enjoyed recently by making them searchable here on the blog. I have listed them in the order in which I read them.

• Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
• Three Words That Describe This Book: Trad Wife Trope, satire, thriller frame
• We Burned So Bright by TJ Klune
• Three Words That Describe This Book: end of the world, character centered, heartbreakingly beautiful
• Vigil by George Saunders
• Three Words That Describe This Book: full cast audio, gripping, contemplation of what it means to live a life
  
• The Ending Writes Itself by Evelyn Clarke
• Three Words That Describe This Book: book about publishing industry, intricately plotted mystery, multiple points of view

Using Awards Lists As a RA Tool: Nobel Prize Edition

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.

 

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2025 is awarded to the Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai, “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art”.

From the announcement page: 

László Krasznahorkai is a great epic writer in the Central European tradition that extends through Kafka to Thomas Bernhard, and is characterised by absurdism and grotesque excess. But there are more strings to his bow, and he also looks to the East in adopting a more contemplative, finely calibrated tone.

Press release
Biobibliography

Krasznahorkai is an author whose books you almost certainly already own. He is not an obscure and his books are extremely easy to suggest to fans of the weird and/or apocalyptic. This choice should come as no surprise as we are living in difficult times and books like Krasznahorkai's ring a little more true.

But that is about this particular award winner. The reason I have these posts about using awards lists as a RA tool, is to write about how to use awards to help readers. In this case though, we have an award that does not include a long list, and I am sure some of you are asking why I posted this under that series.

Great question. Thanks for asking. 

It is because the list of past winners is a wonderful resource to dig into, especially for fans of world literature. 

You could make an excellent display of past winners and readalikes for them. There is a great landing page of the Literature Prize here. You can also make online lists where you highlight each author, their work, and other things to try. 

And because the list is international, you can use it outside of the time when the prize is awarded. Make lists and displays that focus on the author's country of origin and use it as a springboard to offer more reading options.

Or simply use the announcement of the Nobel Prize as a chance to put up a display of books in translation, include Kang's books, and add an interactive element asking your patrons their favorite books in translation. (remember to go here to learn how to use conversation starters to fill your displays)

Using Awards Lists As a RA Tool: National Book Award Edition

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. 

All thought out this past week, the National Book Foundation released their long lists for the National Book Award, one list per day, ending with Fiction this morning. Along with my usual reminder to use these lists and their backlists especially to help patrons in a variety of ways, I want to point out the breadth of categories for this award.

Because it has categories in Fiction, Nonfiction, Translated Literature, Poetry, and Young People's literature, the National Book Award can help an extremely wide range of readers by default. 

As a resource, these longlists are extremely useful because of the work put in by the (human) staff at the National Book Foundation. Each category has an entire page that summarizes all of the nominees, even drawing connections between titles. These pages not only give us the longlist titles but also put them in context. This is work that cannot be replaced by AI and I am so grateful for it each and every year.

They also cap off each article for each category with a statement about the number of books that were considered and who the judges for that category are. Here are the direct links to those pages for 2025:

• Fiction
• Nonfiction
• Translated Literature
• Poetry
• Young People's Literature

However, it is not just the range of categories, the nominees in these long lists are also among the most accesible of titles nominated for major awards. The fiction and nonfiction titles, as usual, are solid suggestions for a general audience, they are NOT overly literary or obtuse. And as usual the translated titles are excellent options, especially as interest in translated titles grow and our resources are not keeping up. 

From top to bottom, the books listed here (click honorees at the top of the page to reveal the lists) should be owned by every public library and handed out frequently to general readers.

Backlist access of nominees and winners is very easily accessible and pleasant to browse, here as well. Of course, because of the breadth of titles always considered, this backlist access is extremely helpful for displays and suggestions all year long. 

Use the links above to explore the National Book Foundations' excellent web presence and make sure you have all of these titles in your collections.

Using Awards List As a RA Tool: Joyce Carol Oates Prize

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.  

I love awards that are both general and specific. I know that sounds impossible but hear me out. The Shirley Jackson Award (for which I serve on the Advisory Board) is exactly this, but so is today's example--  The Joyce Carol Oates Prize:

The Joyce Carol Oates Prize is named in honor of the preeminent author, and our colleague. In the past, Joyce served as Simpson Project Writer-in-Residence, and today she sits on the New Literary Project Board of Directors as an honorary member. NewLit gratefully acknowledges her inspiring, lifelong impact as peerless teacher and writer, an author beloved and admired by legions of students, writers, and readers around the country and the world. She embodies the Project’s most deeply held commitments to literature and literacy, arts and education, in order to enhance the lives of students, readers, and writers across generations and diverse communities.

The Joyce Carol Oates Prize annually honors a mid-career fiction writer whose work speaks to the mission and vision of New Literary Project. This prize is awarded not in recognition of a book, but for an author: an already emerged and still emerging author of national consequence—short stories and/or novels—at the relatively middle stage of a burgeoning career. By mid-career we mean an author who has published at least two notable books of fiction, and who has yet to receive capstone recognition such as a Pulitzer or a MacArthur. Otherwise, there are no age, geographic, or stylistic restrictions. The winner receives a $50,000 award to encourage and support forthcoming work. The Prize is a working prize, in the sense that each year the winner is in brief fall residence (seven to ten days) at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Bay Area, where they may give public readings and talks, teach classes, and make appearances.

An application process is announced in the fall of every year, after which a distinguished jury considers an assembled longlist. Eventually, jurors hand up the names of finalists to the New Literary Project Board, which ultimately decides upon the Prize.

I bolded the proof of my comments above, but to be clear here-- this award is "general" in that if is for any author from anywhere, at any age, and not a particular book but it is "specific" in the parameter-- it is an author they define as "emerging" and that has very specific parameters (listed above). 

As an award for those of us in the library both the current JCO nominees AND the past winners and nominees are an amazing resource for displays, collection development, and suggestions (see the link in the header of this post for more details).

First, take a look at this year's longlist here. There are 32(!) authors you know, whose books you have, and they are probably languishing on the shelf, just waiting to be matched with their best reader. I love how many nominees we get with this award

Second move to the current finalists (use the link to "meet" them as well):

Jennine Capó Crucet, North Carolina, Say Hello to My Little Friend (Simon & Schuster)

Sarah Manguso, California, Liars (Hogarth)

Julia Phillips, New York, Bear (Hogarth)

Morgan Talty, Maine, Fire Exit (Tin House)

Willy Vlautin, Oregon, The Horse (Harper) 

I know for a fact that just about every library has the Talty, Vlautin, and Philips books if not all 5. These are well known, but not super famous names. Just like the award notes. Go out right now and check these 5 authors to make sure you have their titles and if you have time-- go check all 32 on the longlist as well.

Which leads to, fourth, the past winners are HUGE names now. The JCO Prize identifies authors who mainstream audiences would love if they only they had a chance to shine admit the thousands of books published each year. Just look at this list:

2024 Prize Winner Ben Fountain

2023 Prize Winner Manuel Muñoz

2022 Prize Winner Lauren Groff

2021 Prize Winner Danielle Evans

2020 Prize Winner Daniel Mason

2019 Prize Winner Laila Lalami

2018 Prize Winner Anthony Marra

2017 Prize Winner T. Geronimo Johnson

Every. Single. Author. They are names you know, your patrons ask for, and you pre-order without a second thought. Would they be as well known without the JCO Prize. Probably not. More on the backlist below but first one last point.

Fifth, look at the lists mentioned above. Note how there or no "genre" guardrails on this award. Again, this is part of the "general" nature of this award. These authors are exploring many genres with their works and I love to see it. 

Finally, as promised, let's take a deeper look at the backlist of anyone who has ever been on one of the JCO Prize longlists, let alone won. Click here to get ALL of that info with a single click. The backlist here is easy to access. On the main page for the JCO Prize, they have the current year and then you scroll down to see past winners with a link to the finalists and the longlist honorees all in one place.

But the backlist for this prize is even more helpful than your average backlist access (as I referred to above) because of the fact that this list goes out of its way to award those who are emerging, who have NOT been singled out for an award. Therefore, it is by default, diverse. The number of well reviewed, nominated for prizes, critically acclaimed but not winners, midlist authors who are from historically marginalized communities is huge. I think Morgan Talty is a great example this year. His short story book and novel have been on MANY best lists. For instance, when I was on the Andrew Carnegie Award Committee he was one of our finalists. 

Now take a winner from the past (listed above)-- Laila Lalami. She won in 2019 and right now, as I am writing this post, she has one of the hottest new releases in all of fiction. Do not underestimate how much winning the JCO prize lifted her visibility and moved her into the "need to know" sphere of authors. Just look at the March 2025 LibraryReads flyer to see what I mean. And do a google search for The Dream Hotel and click the "news" tab to see the wide and plentiful coverage this novel is getting.

The JCO Prize-- winners, finalist, and longlist-- is a great resource to find a diverse list of authors who you and your readers might not be as aware of, but they are all writers whose work is perfect for a public library collection, and books you almost certainly have.

They are also books that despite being awesome reads, may have gotten lost in the shuffle. Don't just shrug about it. Do something to highlight them. Turn the last few years of longlist authors (there are repeats) into a display. Call it "Emerging Authors" or even something like "Great Reads You Don't Know About....Yet." This display idea follows my #1 rule about displays-- Promote Books Patrons Will Not Find Without Your Help. This is where we show our worth and make the biggest impression on our readers. 

What I'm Reading: Becky's Best Books That I Read in 2024

For the eighth year in a row, I am doing my best books that I read during this calendar year in a category list rather than in some kind of ranked order, Why? Because why I loved these particular books matters more to me than the order in which I would place them. How I interacted with them, how they affected me, how they stayed with me over the course of the calendar year, this is what is most important because it is why they are my on personal "Best" list.

Some of the categories are the same from year to year, others change. This is because the books I read each year create their own experiences and categories to me personally and I want to capture that experience along with the titles. I am not a robot, I am a human reader, even if reading and suggesting titles is my job. In order to remind myself [and all of you] of the joy in what we are paid to do, I strive to create a year end best list that captures, celebrates, and acknowledges that.

By this time, lots of people have already weighed in with critically acclaimed "best" lists for weeks now, but I always wait to post this until end the year here on RA for All. I am keeping that tradition both because I like traditions, but also for ease of retrieving this list and other from years' past. To find any o fly year's best read lists, from any year, all you have to do is click on the year in the right gutter on the blog scroll down). It brings up every post for that year in reverse chronological order, meaning that the last post of the year is first. Always the librarian, I am sharing my favorite reads AND cataloging them in an easy to retrieve way. 

I also wait to post this because my list is about my reflections on myself as a readers over the last 12 months. It is not just another best list. This is a list that is personal to me, my tastes, and my weird quirks. I need time and quiet to really think about it. I spent that time while I was off last week.

You can also use this post to help other readers, yes, but because it is so specific to me, it is actually better used by you as a conversation starter. (Click here for my post about turning conversation starters into displays) For example, you can ask people "What is the most fun you had reading a book this year?" or "What title was the biggest surprise to you?" Those are questions readers can answer much more quickly and easily than "What was your favorite book of 2024?" And these are the types of questions that engender dialog.

The categories I have listed here provide great conversation starters to offer to your patrons. You can even use my answers to keep the conversation going by saying, "I was thinking about this question because I read another library workers list and got the idea."

The point of my "Best" list is to both offer books that I loved this year, while also presenting an example of a regular reader view of a "Best" list.

Below you will find my list of the14  best books I experienced in 2024 (regardless of publication year) in 15 categories created by me. It is an arbitrary amount, but so what? It's my list of what mattered to me the most this year so I get to decide how I present it. Each title links to a longer review which will explain why it is the "best" book for that category.

Some general comments about my list this year:

• I read a lot of stellar novellas. I also love how these books can be enjoyed in one or 2 sittings. This led me to add a category not for novella, but rather, best one sitting read.
• I listened to more mysteries than I have in year's past. I binged the Shady Hollow series in its entirety as well. But, I did not make "Best Mystery" a category. I realize that after I made my first pass at this list. However, I did include mysteries in my list below as well. This said a lot to me about my reading habits. One things I have learned about myself as a reader this year is that I LOVE mysteries on audio, way more than in print and on the whole, way more than other genres in audio. 
• I read both James and Dr. No by Percival Everett in 2024 and while I loved James, I adored Dr. No. It is the only book to appear in 2 categories.  
• And of course-- Horror is everywhere on this list because for me as a reader, it fits in more categories than its genre. While I know that is unique to me as a reader, I wonder if that is true for you and a different genre. I am sure it is for many of your readers. If they have a favorite genre, they loved the books they loved for reasons that go beyond their genre classification. This is important to remember as we help readers.

I'll be back on January 6, 2025 with Part 1 of my Reader Resolutions-- an assessment of how I did on 2024's goals. Have a safe and Happy New Year.

Now what you have been waiting for.....my list with links to my reviews and my three words!

Becky's Best Books I read in 2024

Best Feel Good Read: The entire Shady Hollow mystery series-- all on audio (anthropomorphic animals, great world building, each book an homage to a specific mystery subgenre or trope) 

Book That Stayed With Me All Year: This one was easy because of that ending-- I Was Teenaged Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones (strong sense of place, dark humor, engaging narration)

Book That I Am Recommending to Everyone I Know: Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton (SF-Mystery hybrid, band of survivors, race against time)

Best Debut: This Wretched Valley by Jenny Kiefer (Survival Horror, unrelenting tension, rock climbing frame)

The Most Fun I Had Reading a Book: Dr. No by Percival Everett, specifically on audio which is what made it so fun; details in the review link (heavily sardonic, great unease, open ending)

Best Audio: Also Dr. No

Best One Sitting Read: Coup de Grâce by Sofia Ajram (liminal space, horror of mental illness, brutal yet beautiful)

Best Book From 2023 Best Lists That I Read in 2024: Linghun by Ai Jiang which won the Bram Stoker Award for best novella (Haunting, Original, Character Driven)

Best Surprise: The Queen by Nick Cutter (visceral, gripping, genetically altered wasps)

Best Speculative Fiction: Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil by Ananda Lima (alluring, stories within stories, unforgettable)

Best Horror: Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay (cursed film, disturbing, immersive) 

• [See also this post and this post for my thoughts on the Best Horror of 2024]

Best Historical Fiction: Eynhallow by Tim McGregor (Strong Sense of Place, atmospheric unease, strong narrative voice)

Best Collection: This Skin Was Once Mine and other Disturbances by Eric LaRocca (claustrophobic, disturbing, mesmerizing)

Best Nonfiction: Horror For Weenies: Everything You Need to Know About the Films You Are Too Scared To Watch by Emily C. Hughes (expertly crafted, informative, accessible)

Best Under the Radar Read: Cranberry Cove by Hailey Piper (immersive, compelling, haunted hotel)

Attack of the Best Lists 2024: Library Journal

 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.

Since I took last week off, there are MANY best book lists to catch up on this week. Today we will begin with one that released this morning! And it is one I played a small part in-- Library Journal's Best Books 2024!

FIND GREAT BOOKS EVERYWHERE

Reading is a resource. It creates community and connections; fuels joy, revelation, and immersion; is company for a quiet afternoon or a quick break; and underpins a life of endless discovery, imagination, learning, and illumination. We celebrate the wondrous activity of reading with this list of 144 titles, books that delighted LJ reviewers, columnists, and editors. These works made us put them down and think—and pick them up again at any free moment. The books on this list drove conversations at work, with friends, with the barista, the dog walker, and the dentist. They are the books that make us happy to be readers. We hope you find these great reads on your library shelves and in your communities, and we hope you find more great reads every day in the year to come.

Illustration by Susanna Harrison

I am very happy to have been part of the team who looked at the year that was and prioritized the reading experience of these titles as we weighed their status as best. It is a refreshing way to look at the "best" tag. As I went through the Horror selection experience over a couple of meetings with my editor and list mate, Melissa DeWild, the conversations we had about all of the titles we considered was enlightening. 

Please note, this is the LJ Best Horror list. It it is similar to, but not exactly, my personal Horror Best List for 2024. As we look at the genre, only titles that got a star in the Horror category in LJ can be considered. 

The experience of working on this list is very fulfilling. Plus, I had the pleasure of writing all the annotations for the Horror list.

But back to the entire Best Books 2024 portal, I hope you all take away more from these lists than merely which titles are included and which excluded, and rather use them as a jumping off point to consider your own "bests"- both yours and your patrons. Prioritizing the reading experience is such a helpful way to think about which books rise to the top. 

Below are the categories, linked to the lists. Each category is offered as a web page  that you can post and share with your patrons more easily. And there is a bonus category of "Captivating Covers" this year again as well.  [Reminder, we can judge books by their covers]

But first, here are the links to the 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019 lists

Again, here is the portal page link, but you can also use the category links below.

• Crime Fiction
• Horror 
• Literary Fiction
• Pop Fiction
• Romance
• SF/Fantasy
• Nonfiction
• Life+Style
• Graphic Novels 
• Poetry

Using Awards Lists As a RA Tool: National Book Awards Edition

Last week the National Book Foundation released their long lists for the National Book Award. Along with my usual reminder to use these lists and their backlists especially to help patrons in a variety of ways, I want to point out the breadth of categories for this award.

Because it has categories in Fiction, Nonfiction, Translated Literature, Poetry, and Young People's literature, the National Book Award can help an extremely wide range of readers by default. 

As a resource, these longlists are extremely useful because of the work put in by the staff at the National Book Foundation. Each category has an entire page that summarizes all of the nominees, even drawing connections between titles. They also cap off each article for each category with a statement about the number of books that were considered and who the judges for that category are. Here are the direct links to those pages for 2024:

• Fiction
• Nonfiction
• Translated Literature
• Poetry
• Young People's Literature

However, it is not just the range of categories, the nominees in these long lists are also among the most accesible of titles nominated for major awards. The fiction and nonfiction titles, as usual, are solid suggestions for a general audience, they are NOT overly literary or obtuse. And as usual the translated titles are excellent options, especially as interest in translated titles grow and our resources are not keeping up. 

From top to bottom, the books listed here should be owned by every public library and handed out frequently to general readers.

Backlist access of nominees and winners is very easily accessible and pleasant to browse, here as well. Of course, because of the breadth of titles always considered, this backlist access is extremely helpful for displays and suggestions all year long. 

Use the links above to explore the National Book Foundations' excellent web presence.

Using Awards Lists As a RA Tool: Kirkus Prize Edition

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.  

What is the Kirkus Prize. From their website FAQ:

The Kirkus Prize is one of the richest literary awards in the world, with a prize of $50,000 bestowed annually to authors of fiction, nonfiction, and young readers’ literature. It was created to celebrate the decades of discerning, thoughtful criticism Kirkus Reviews has contributed to both the publishing industry and readers at large. Books that earn the Kirkus star with publication dates between Nov. 1, 2023 to Oct. 31, 2024 (see FAQ for exceptions), are automatically nominated for the 2024 Kirkus Prize. Six finalists in each of three categories will be announced in August. Three winners will be announced at the Kirkus Prize ceremony on Oct. 16, 2023.

Here is their full announcement of the finalists which inlaces information about the judges. I have an edited version for brevity and emphasis below.

The finalists for the 2024 Kirkus Prize have been revealed, with 18 books contending for one of the richest annual literary awards in the world. 

The fiction shortlist is composed of Jennine Capó Crucet’s Say Hello to My Little Friend, Louise Erdrich’s The Mighty Red, Percival Everett’s James, Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song, Richard Powers’ Playground, and Rufi Thorpe’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles. 

The finalists for the nonfiction prize are Steve Coll’s The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the CIA, and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq; Adam Higginbogtham’s Challenger: A True Story of Heroism And Disaster on the Edge of Space; Tessa Hulls’ Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir; Olivia Laing’s The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise; Shefali Luthra’s Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America; and Carvell Wallace’s Another Word for Love: A Memoir.    

The young readers’ literature category is divided into three subcategories featuring two books each. In picture books, the finalists are We Who Produce Pearls, written by Joanna Ho and illustrated by Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, and There Was a Party for Langston, written by Jason Reynolds and illustrated by Jerome Pumphrey and Jarrett Pumphrey. 

Making the middle-grade list are Safiyyah’s War by Hiba Noor Khan and Shark Teeth by Sherri Winston, while the young adult finalists are Gather by Kenneth M. Cadow and Bright Red Fruit by Safia Elhillo.

The winners of this year’s awards will be announced at an in-person ceremony at the Tribeca Rooftop in New York on Oct. 16, 2024, which will be livestreamed on Kirkus’ YouTube channel at 7:30 p.m. Eastern. 

Click here for the Kirkus Prize homepage. 

This award pulls double duty as a resource both as an award list AND a year end best list. And it is one the the earliest best lists as well.

Also, like the best of both of these categories of resources, the Kirkus Prize is best used as a resource when you consider  the backlist  of nominees and winners in your suggestions and displays. 

On the main page for all of Kirkus you have super easy access to every nominee and winner going back to 2014. On the banner across the top of every page, there is a tab for "Kirkus Prize" which opens a drop down menu to give you those choices by year. All with little effort. That is extremely helpful for us.

 Here is the link to the 2022 page, for example. You can easily pick those nominees from 2 years ago and use them today as a proven, winning suggestion.

Also, as you can see above, this award considers fiction, nonfiction, YA, MG, and picture books. All ages. As I have written about on this blog many times, Intergeneration Displays are a key marketing tool to SHOW your patrons that there is something for them as they walk in...all of them. I also write about how some libraries do not allow them to put books for all ages on one display and to them, I point you to these links which reference Cuyahoga Library (a major system) and their PLA presentation about how and why they create these displays. If it works for them, you can do it too. 

Finally, as it says above, any book that Kirkus gave a star is considered. [You can go to their FAQ page for more detail into the considerations for this prize.] That being stated, how useful this award is to you and your patrons only goes so far as you find Kirkus useful. 

Love or hate Kirkus reviews, the fact that they give the judges every STARRED review book as their starting point for their work makes a lot of sense. It is way less arbitrary than other major awards (and I say this as someone who has served on the ACM in the past)

But each year I have found it to be a reliable resource to help readers who are looking for a very general list of  "the best" of the year, general sure bets, or just " a good read."

Using Awards Lists As a RA Tool: The Booker Prize Edition

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.   

The Booker Prize Longlist was recently announced. What is the Booker Prize? From their About Page:

The Booker Prize is the leading literary award in the English speaking world, and has brought recognition, reward and readership to outstanding fiction for over five decades

Each year, the prize is awarded to what is, in the opinion of the judges, the best sustained work of fiction written in English and published in the UK and Ireland. It is a prize that transforms the winner’s career. 

Go here to access the titles, details about every book, information about the judges. And on the main page, there are even more articles about this year's longlist. I will also post them at the bottom of this post. 

But even with the regular. display, backlist, and collection development advice I give for every award (access above), The Book Prize is an award you need to know about for a variety of reasons, reasons which give you even more options to serve your patrons.

First, these books are always among the top books written in English every year, which means this year and past year's lists make for reliable suggestions to your curious readers. The backlist is also very easy to access. In fact, they call it The Booker Library and it is bearable in every imaginable way. 

Second, these titles (2024 or any year in the recent past) tend to be on the "readable side." What do I mean with that? What I mean is that they tend to pick excellent titles of high literary merit that are readable for a general adult audience. These are critically acclaimed, literary fiction titles that you can give out to a wide swath of readers with confidence. This year's longlist is a great example as Tommy Orange's Wandering Stars in on the list. It is a popular book with library patrons. I have read it as well and have suggested itwith confidence to many readers.

Third, the Booker Prize has a history of identifying authors worth you time early in their careers, sometimes earlier than they get singled out for other major awards. This year is no exception. Let's look at it from both sides of the equation. First, an author who is on the longlist this year, who had his mainstream breakout this year, but who has been nominated before, Percival Everett. He is on the longlist for James this year, but he was a finalist for The Trees previously. Use this link from the Booker Library to read more about Everett. Second, and the other side of the equation, the Booker often singles out debuts and this year is no exception with 3 debut novels on the list.

Fourth, this award list serves as a readalike for itself. Not all awards can do this, but I have used this award list as a suggestion engine for readers who have enjoyed any book that has appeared on the longlists. In fact, back in the early days of the 2000s, I offered a "Holds Without Hassle" program at my library, and not only did we allow them to pick authors for that list, but we also had a few awards they could select. This award (called the Man Booked back in the day) was one of the most popular choices. People wanted the winner put on automatic hold and then after reading it, we helped them find the other nominated titles. I have seen this work in action, even with the books being about widely different topics and from a range of authors.  

Fifth, and this is how my readers first found out about this award in the first place, these titles make excellent book discussion choices. Again, there is a very helpful Booker Library, where you can find books by author, title, or even pick a prize year. And to make it even easier for you, they have Reading Guides designed specifically for libraries. Using the backlist from 2-5 years ago is a great resource for winning discussion titles.

And finally, the judges. I have talked about this before, but look at that list of judges from this year or past years. Take this year for example-- click here and scroll down. You can do this for any prize year. Go to the Book Library page by year and you will get a page that looks very much like the 2024 page with all of the judging info. The judges themselves are excellent options for displays, suggestions, and purchases if you don't own their books. You can also use the judges list as one of my 5 Resources You Cannot Live Without-- Author Recs of Other Authors. Recently, I wrote about how that works in relation to the NYT Best Books of the Century discussion.

I am sure there are even more reasons why this award is a great resource for you to help your readers. Click through for all of the details and information and decide how you can best use this list for your library. The site is really a treasure trove of resources, suggestions, and lists all year long. Here is the most basic info-- the titles on the long list:

Longlist

Wandering Stars

Wild Houses

Held

Creation Lake

This Strange Eventful History

Playground

Enlightenment

Orbital

James

The Safekeep

My Friends

Stone Yard Devotional

Headshot

And also from the website, this statement about the longlist overall, which contains some interesting statistics and observations:

The judges’ selection includes: 

• Strong new voices – including three debut novels – alongside international bestselling authors and six writers previously nominated for the prize
• The first Dutch and first Native American authors to be longlisted, the first Australian in eight years, one British-Libyan writer, and authors from Canada, the UK, Ireland and the US 
• A strong showing of Americans displays a range of experience, from a first-time novelist to the author of more than 20 novels
• Blackly comic page-turners, multigenerational epics, meditations on the pain of exile – plus a crime caper, a spy thriller, an unflinching account of girls’ boxing and a reimagining of a 19th-century classic
• Eight women and five men 
• The first nomination for Pan Macmillan imprint Mantle, and four nominations for Jonathan Cape, in the imprint’s first longlisting since 2019
• ‘Works of fiction that inhabit ideas by making us care deeply about people and their predicaments,’ according to Chair of judges Edmund de Waal, who adds that these are works that have ‘made a space in our hearts and that we want to see find a place in the reading lives of many others’