Attack of the Best Lists 2025: Library Journal's Universe of Reads to Remember

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 2025" coverage [and more backlist best of the year options] you can click here. 

This year, the Editors at Library Journal did their Best list a little differently and thought about the books that fit in the widest range of libraries. From the Best Books 2025 landing page:

A Universe of Reads to Remember 

Selecting the best books of the year is an undertaking of great pleasure, as remembering wonderful reads is its own lovely pastime. Our list of 100 Editors’ Picks of 2025 highlights titles we never tired of reading, rereading, talking about, or mulling over. We also gather all the LJ-starred titles published this year. These are the works our reviewers highlighted as worthy of LJ's highest accolade, books that deserve shelf space in the widest range of libraries. Taken together, the lists contain over 800 titles, encompassing a constellation of great reads that can generate inspiration, conjure cozy moods, enthrall with densely plotted puzzles, and transport readers to entirely new worlds.

The categories to explore here are:

• Editors' Picks of the Year: Each editor picked books from the categories they edit. And their picks are described in a narrative form which I think gives you much more information than the former title-annotation format. In fact, this format gives you great talking points for all 100 of these titles even if you have not read them or even heard of them.
• Stellar Selections: every book that has been given a star in 2025 ion all adult categories (nearly 800 titles).
• Best Covers: Because people choose books based on covers all the time. More on that and how to use it to help readers by me here (multiple posts).
• Find Great Reads with LJ: a new, interactive category that allows you to explore books by topic and use conversation starters to help readers:
• In the mood to amble through some great titles? Explore a range of entry points to the 2025 universe of best books, designed to support discovery and browsing.
• Searching for Books Everyone Is Talking About?
• Give Me A Find of the Year
• Searching for Books by Award Winners?
• Help, Its My Time To Pick the Book Club Title!
• Looking for a Cozy-Comfort Read?
• More Romantasy? Yes, Please!
• Eek! Looking For a Scary Story?
• The Lives of Writers
• For the Birds!
• Need a Woman Knight in Shining Armor?

Click here to explore the 2025 LJ Universe of Best Books.

And use these links for the past 5 years of best: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, and 2020 because if you patron has never read these recent best books, they are still BEST, have a better chance to be currently on the shelf, and most importantly, new to them.

Remember...BEST HAS NO EXPIRATION DATE, especially when you look back 5 years max. 

[Ed note: Yes I know some best title don't hold up over time, but all rules have exceptions. When you use the last 5 years as a guide, you are pretty safe in making best suggestions.]

Attack of the Best Lists 2025: Audiobooks Edition

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 2025" coverage [and more backlist best of the year options] you can click here. 

Today I have Audio specific 2025 best lists from Audible and AudioFile Magazine.

Both are separated into useful categories/genres and include extra appeal information in their reviews, most importantly, comments about the narrators. The Audible list includes Podcasts as well.

The appeal info is useful all year long, especially via AudioFile Magazine because they have reviews all year long, with monthly "earphone" winners-- think of that as equivalent to a star for a print book. And the reviews are written to help you match the audio with its best reader. I use AudioFile to help readers (including myself) all the time. It helps me help readers to figure out if they would prefer a specific title on audio versus print. I have had great success using it and honestly, have yet to find a better resource for Audio RA.

A few more notes about RA for Audio readers. For some readers, the format doesn't matter, they want the book they want as fast as possible. But for others, myself included, I prefer audio in specific genres (for me it is nonfiction and mystery). Still others use audio for commuting, exercising, chores, etc.... How and when people listen can matter for audio. These are considerations that need to come up in the RA conversation for audio readers.

A few more  things about these lists from you RA Service standpoint:

• You can use these lists to make displays online with links to eAudio-- use QR codes online AND in the stacks to provide easier access directly to your services where patrons can access them. Make lists on Libby to make it even easier for people to find the titles.
• You can use these lists to help fill out your in library displays even if you put the print book on display. No one is double checking if you got the format correct and there is no library jail to send you to if they figure it out. With best lists, the more titles, the better. So you have the print in your department and not the audio, or the audio is e only. Who cares. Put that print version on the shelf.
• Some of the Audible best titles may not be available anywhere but Audible, but a quick glance  reveals that the big ones are going to be available on your library's eAudio streaming sites.
• Neither is great with obvious backlist access, so I have it here for you. The best audio books from the past few years will be on the shelf and are still a great listen. Remember, if a book is a few years old but the patron has not read it yet, it is still "new" to them:
• Audible Best of 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020 (I love how Audible's presentation of these lists has changed so much over the 5 years listed. That alone illustrates how much the popularity of eAudio has exploded in the last few years)
• Audiofile's Best of 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020
• Back to the first bullet point: if you make a list in Libby for this year's best audio, please go back and use the links I have provided to also make lists for the past few year's best audio. And link to this lists in other lists. See last week's Best of the Best post from Chicago Public Library for a great example of how to make sure past best lists are accounted for with a single click.

Attack of the Best Lists 2025: Book Riot

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 2025" coverage [and more backlist best of the year options] you can click here.

Ending this short week with a list that pairs well with yesterday's list (NPR Books We Love); it is a smiler idea but on a smaller scale-- Book Riot's Best Books of 2025. 

I try to feature lists that have something interesting about them and Book Riot is the epitome of that. Why? Because as I have said here on the blog many times, Book Riot is the best resource to see what hard core readers are interested in.

Book Riot is the largest independent website focused on readers. All of their content is crafted to reach readers directly. They want to get the most clicks as well, which means their content is purposefully up to date, interesting, and written in a conversational tone. It is exactly what we need to stay on top of the hottest trends because it is their mission to provide the most "clickable" content to readers This means they have the time and resources to do the work for us: identifying trends and staying on top of what readers want right this second. Everything there is reader focused which dovetails perfectly with RA Service.

Their best books of the year site is made by having each writer, editor, contributor, etc... give one title as their book of the year. Because each person who works for them has a slightly different specialty, the list covers all ages and genres by default. Also they have a commitment to providing diverse voices as part of their policy.

The editors then take all of the titles and allow you, the user of this resource to browse all or to click on tags in a sidebar to help narrow your choices down. While the tags are not as compressive and stackable as the aforementioned NPR Books We Love portal, they are still extremely helpful 

Click here to get started using it for yourself, to build displays, or to help a specific patron.

The only downside to this reader focused resource is that they do not have easy access to past lists on the current year's page. And when I try to search upon the Book Riot site, I was unable to find them

However, when I went to Largehearted Boy's Ultimate List of Lists for access to past years (more on this resource here), I was able to get into the backlist of Book Riot best lists with ease. I have posted them here for you, so you can have 1 click access from my blog:

• 2024
• 2023
• 2022
• 2021
• 2020

Remember to use my link at the top of these Attack of the Best Lists 2025 posts to access all of my coverage. I do not post every best list, but I do post ones that are interesting and useful. 

Next week I will have a mix of best lists and other year in review content.

Have a safe Thanksgiving break to my American readers.

Attack of the Best Lists 2025: The 100 Must Read Books of 2025 via Time

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 2025" coverage [and more backlist best of the year options] you can click here. 

Time Magazine has had one of the most useful (to use) lists over the last 5 years. Why? because each year they give us their "100 Must Read Books." The books that entertained and enthralled them. Here is the link to the 2025 list.

Notice they don't call these books "best," they are "must reads." I love this language. It speaks perfectly to library users. These are books the editors think you should read for a variety of reasons. They are not trying to tell you to only read the most critically acclaimed books. They have chosen those but also bestsellers and titles that speak to our moment in history as well.

This is a list you can display proudly, and quite honestly, having looked through it myself, easily. Easily because you have these books already. Easily because there are many ways to promote it via their website, which has a visual representation of each cover that people can scroll through quickly or click on a specific title for an annotation with details. 

Here is the entry for The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones.

I love this entire concept as a way for you to have your year end "Best Books" discussions at your library. Ask your staff and patrons for their "Must Read Book of 2025." Don't be more specific than that. Simply use my conversation starter to displays post to ask for nothing more than what people's "must read book of 2025 was." Then sit back and watch the diverse and interesting list your library community creates. Not only will it be unique to your community but also, it will give you a sense of what titles have resonated with your readers in a way that is hard to capture. This is necessary information you need to craft your collections going forward.

And notice my advice does not limit people to the book having come out this year. The question is vague on purpose. You will get older titles. which leads to my reminder that it is not only this 2025 list that is a great choice for readers, but also, the backlist of lists. Time has been making this "100 Must Read Books" list since 2019. Here are the links to the last 5 years for you to use with your patrons immediately:

• 2024
• 2023
• 2022
• 2021
• 2020

Mine those backlists as suggestions, for book discussion titles, sure bets or great reads you may have missed displays. These are excellent titles for a general audience. They can and should be used now and as a resource all year long.

And keep the Time Must Read Books coverage bookmarked all year long. You can use these titles to suggest any time of year. And the past few year's as well. Not only is there an annotation for each title that you can "use the words of others" as a way to hand-sell the title to the reader in front of you, but also, the term "must read" in and of itself is enough to get someone to give it a try. 

Attack of the Best Lists 2025: Barnes & Noble

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 2025" coverage [and more backlist best of the year options] you can click here.

Barnes & Noble has released their Best Books 2025 portal making them the first major outlet to release their list and they are covering a lot of bases with many categories including books in Spanish.

And for the second year in a row, this is also marks the beginning of my Attack of the Best Lists coverage for 2025. 

From the portal landing page: 

The Best Books of 2025

The wait is over – meet the best books of 2025. This year delivered stories that inspired us, magical tales that transported us, novels that made us fall in love and thrillers that kept us guessing. There were picture books that left us laughing and fiction that moved us, nonfiction that helped us thrive and gave us something to think about and cookbooks we couldn’t live without. Celebrate the books that kept us turning pages.

There are 19 categories for all ages here.

Of course B&N has more than one best list. The more the merrier in their eyes because ultimately they want to sell as many books as possible. And as the holidays and gift giving opportunities approach, they want it to be as easy as possible to help you find the right books for your people.

While getting the most sales is the reason, it is nice to see the categories themselves and the books found within as more inclusive than previous years. They have categories for Best Audiobooks, Best Spanish Books for adults and kids, and have multiple nonfiction categories. They are thinking about how people read and making sure they see a category that works for them or their friends and family.

Speaking of the ease at which the average reader can access enticing titles, keep a list of those B&N categories to use as display titles and conversation starters anytime of year.

You can make a display anytime of year with these categories as well especially if you use the backlist of best lists. So while at the end of a year you can use these categories as a way to ask patrons to weigh in on their best reads of the last year, you can also use these categories and the backlist "Best" options  to make genre or reading category displays anytime of year. 

Ask you patrons to help by using  this link to see how to turn a conversation starter into a display. 

Access the backlist of Best titles through with my attack of the best lists coverage from year to year to have all the best lists, from any of the past years, all in one. But specifically, here is the B&N Best Books portal from, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020.

Look for MANY more "Attack of the Best Lists" post coming soon. 

Attack of the Best Lists 2024: LitHub's Best Book Coverage Including the Ultimate Best List

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. 

This is my last Attack of the Best Lists post of the year, although I will be revisiting all of this for my 2024 installment of Keeping Up with Books: Year in Review with Yaika Sabat for Novelist. It will be FREE and in February. Details soon, but here is the link describing the 2023 program so you get a sense of what to expect.

But back to day. Here is the list we all have been waiting for-- LitHub's aggregation of all the major best lists. From the landing page:

The Ultimate Best Books of 2024 List
Reading All the Lists So You Don’t Have To Since 2017
By Emily Temple 

The end of the year is approaching, the universe is expanding, and the internet is updating—right now, it is mostly updating its Best Of lists. Therefore, per Literary Hub tradition, I now present to you the Ultimate List, otherwise known as the List of Lists—in which I read all the Best Of lists and count which books are recommended most. 

In all the time I’ve done this, I’ve never seen a book run away with this list like Percival Everett’s James has this year: it was recommended a full dozen more times than the next most popular books. (It also won the National Book Award and the Kirkus Award, and was a finalist for the Booker—and with good reason.) 

Overall, this year, I processed 69 lists from 39 outlets, which collectively recommended more than 1,200 individual books (RIP my spreadsheet). As always, these are probably not all the lists, but all universes have to end sometime. Anyway, 90 of those books made it onto 5 or more lists, and I have collated these for you here, in descending order of frequency.

This is the only single list you need to look at because Temple has done the most focused work of anyone out there. And the results, are RA gold for you. The post she has created seamlessly combines adult fiction, nonfiction, and GNs into one list. Further, she not only does the compiling for you, the sources are listed and linked (!) at the bottom of the page, so you can have DIRECT access to the 69 most influential publications' best lists, and the aggregation of which titles are on the most lists, with just this one click. It is crowdsourcing first, but also, a resource to dive deeper, all in one place.

But wait, there's more....

Multiple layer of backlist and indexing are happening here, meaning you can embrace "Best" across multiple years. Reminder, "Best" titles have a longer shelf life than the current year. Last year's best titles, even 5 years ago, are great suggestions for a wide swath of readers. Here's how LitHub makes it easy, all year long, with their clear, consistent, and accessible tags at the bottom of their posts:

• Click here for every Ultimate Best List going back to 2017. And not just end of the year Ultimate Lists
• Click here  and here for all of LitHub's Best Books 2024 coverage, which look at everything from best books to biggest news stories (the top 50) to covers to genre reads, and more. They split the tags this year by mistake. Use both links. 
• I really like this list-- the best old and new books the Lit Hub staff read in 2024.
• You can scroll to the bottom of any of the posts in the "Ultimate Best List" link and click on the page for that year's full Best Books Coverage. So, when you click on "The Ultimate Best Books of 2022 List" you can scroll to the bottom of that post and then click on the tag, "Best of 2022" for full coverage from that year. This can be repeated going back to 2017.
• Also, I wanted to remind people of the extremely useful Best of the Decade lists they made in 2019. Those are also a great "best" resource, one that truly embraces the treasure trove that is the backlist.

All of these tags pull up useful information in reverse chronological order, meaning you decide how far into the backlist you want to dig.

But wait, there is even more...

LitHub owns CrimeReads and they have their own Best of 2024 lists (but no useful tags to collection them all. Here are those best lists:

• Best Crime Novels of 2024
• Best True Crime Memoirs of 2024
• Best Debut Crime Novels of 2024
• Best Gothic Novels of 2024
• Best Espionage Fiction of 2024
• Best Speculative Crime Fiction of 2024
• Best Historical Fiction of 2024
• Best Horror Fiction of 2024

I AM NOT DONE YET. I told you I was saving the best for last. 

LitHub also owns Book Marks a review aggregator. Full disclosure, they include Booklist and Library Journal so my reviews are part of this database. Here are their best reviewed fiction and nonfiction of 2024.

Okay, now that is the end. The final day of Attack of the Best Lists 2024. But please remember, you can use these lists all year long and the back lists as well. Click here for my Attack of the Best Lists consolidated coverage for 2023, 2022, and 2021. And note, each of those posts goes into the backlist for each list as well. going back to 2021 will take you back even further. There are literally hundred of titles here for you with one or 2 clicks that are sure to be on your shelves and satisfy a wide range of readers. 

Back Monday and Tuesday with my most popular posts and my favorite reads of the year. Until then, stay safe.

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.

Attack of the Best Lists 2024: A Year in Reading via The Millions and Thinking Outside the "Best" Box

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. 

One of my favorite end of the year, "best" events is The Millions' annual essays on "A Year in Reading." From the editor's landing page for this year's 20th installment of the series:

Welcome to the 20th (!) installment of The Millions’ annual Year in Reading series, which gathers together some of today’s most exciting writers and thinkers to share the books that shaped their year. YIR is not a collection of yearend best-of lists; think of it, perhaps, as an assemblage of annotated bibliographies. We’ve invited contributors to reflect on the books they read this year—an intentionally vague prompt—and encouraged them to approach the assignment however they choose. 

In writing about our reading lives, as YIR contributors are asked to do, we inevitably write about our personal lives, our inner lives. This year, a number of contributors read their way through profound grief and serious illness, through new parenthood and cross-country moves. Some found escape in frothy romances, mooring in works of theology, comfort in ancient epic poetry. More than one turned to the wisdom of Ursula K. Le Guin. Many describe a book finding them just when they needed it. 

Interpretations of the assignment were wonderfully varied. One contributor, a music critic, considered the musical analogs to the books she read, while another mapped her reads from this year onto constellations. Most people’s reading was guided purely by pleasure, or else a desire to better understand events unfolding in their lives or larger the world. Yet others centered their reading around a certain sense of duty: this year one contributor committed to finishing the six Philip Roth novels he had yet to read, an undertaking that he likens to “eating a six-pack of paper towels.” (Lucky for us, he included in his essay his final ranking of Roth’s oeuvre.)

The books that populate these essays range widely, though the most commonly noted title this year was Tony Tulathimutte’s story collection Rejection. The work of newly minted National Book Award winner Percival Everett, particularly his acclaimed novel James, was also widely read and written about. And as the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza enters its second year, many contributors sought out Isabella Hammad’s searing, clear-eyed essay Recognizing the Stranger. 

Like so many endeavors in our chronically under-resourced literary community, Year in Reading is a labor of love. The Millions is a one-person editorial operation (with an invaluable assist from SEO maven Dani Fishman), and producing YIR—and witnessing the joy it brings contributors and readers alike—has been the highlight of my tenure as editor. I’m profoundly grateful for the generosity of this year’s contributors, whose names and entries will be revealed below over the next three weeks, concluding on Thursday, December 19. Be sure to subscribe to The Millions’ free newsletter to get the week’s entries sent straight to your inbox each Friday.

—Sophia Stewart, editor

They ask a diverse list of writers, most of them "up and coming" or a little under the general radar to write an essay for which the only requirement is that it is on the topic of their personal year in reading. The result is an enjoyable series of essays that are united by theme but vary in style and content, as noted by Stewart above.

They also have a YIR tab at the top of The Million's homepage to access these valuable essays from the current year and any and all past years in one easy to find place at all times, making this not only one of the most interesting takes on the entire concept of "best" lists, but also the most easy to access as a resource year round. From the bottom of 2024's landing page:

A Year in Reading Archives: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013,  2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005

These "A Year in Reading" pieces are also super fun to read. Any reader will enjoy perusing these essays because they are all personal accounts of what reading meant to the author in the year that just passed. Yes there are lists of books, but it is through the author's exploration of why they chose these titles, what they meant to that person, and just in general, what reading meant to them in their life over the past year that these essays viscerally communicate the power of reading. And reading about others being positively affected by the act of reading is a joy for all readers to read. [So many "reads" in that sentence.]

However, besides the personal joy you will get from reading this, there are also tangible RA and Collection Development elements to these essays.

First, there is the training you get on appeal: why different readers like different books. One of the hardest things to get practice on in our field, is hearing readers talk about what they like to read and why. We need to gather voices from across all experiences in order to have more examples of why people like the books they like. The more examples we have experience with, the more easily we can help readers as they approach us with their inquiries. It also allows us to think more broadly about readalikes, which is one of the drums I beat frequently. This archive is a treasure trove of dozens of readers sharing their feelings on appeal.

Second, and most obvious, the lists of books that come out of the series. These are not all books that came out in 2024. These are simply the books other authors read in 2024. You will expose yourself to many titles you either haven't heard of or haven't thought about in a while, through these essays. You can even turn the entire series itself into a display using the books. "A Year in Reading" can be your title. Make a quick note about the source of the display topic and then fill it with books from the series series. Use past year's titles if you run out. It will be inclusive, diverse, and whole collection by default. 

Third, make it interactive by asking patrons to add their "Year in Reading" titles. Use this as a fun conversation starter with your patrons and staff. Instead of asking for "favorites," ask people to share their Year in Reading. Just that. Leave it open and see what you get back in response. You can even start with staff. Send out an email to all staff and ask for 5 titles that represent their year in reading. Then make small displays in the building and in all of your online spaces. This can run for weeks. Then use my conversation starter to displays directions to ask patrons to add their "Year in Reading." Put those up throughout January.

Fourth, the authors that are chosen to participate themselves are a great resource. As I mentioned above, The Millions tends to ask a diverse group of up and coming authors from across the entire landscape of writing today. Use this series to discover new authors, both to add to your collections and to suggest to patrons.

Remember to think outside of the "best" box if you want your patrons to really notice and understand how you help them to discover books they would never find on their own. Yes, we need to have the more traditional "best books" displays up, but make room for some less traditional displays that not only capture those "end of the year" feels, but also, allow them to participate in a more meaningful way.

Attack of the Best Lists 2024: Audio Books Edition

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. 

Today I have Audio specific 2024 best lists from Audible and AudioFile Magazine.

Both are separated into useful categories/genres and include extra appeal information in their reviews, most importantly, comments about the narrators. The Audible list includes Podcasts as well.

The appeal info is useful all year long, especially via AudioFile Magazine because they have reviews all year long, with monthly "earphone" winners-- think of that as equivalent to a star for a print book. And the reviews are written to help you match the audio with its best reader. I use AudioFile to help readers (including myself) all the time. It helps me help readers to figure out if they would prefer a specific title on audio versus print. I have had great success using it and honestly, have yet to find a better resource for Audio RA.

A few more notes about RA for Audio readers. For some readers, the format doesn't matter, they want the book they want as fast as possible. But for others, myself included, I prefer audio in specific genres (for me it is nonfiction and mystery). Still others use audio for commuting, exercising, shores, etc.... How and when people listen can matter for audio. These are considerations that need to come up in the RA conversation for audio readers.

A few more  things about these lists from you RA Service standpoint:

• You can use these lists to make displays online with links to eAudio-- use QR codes online AND in the stacks to provide easier access directly to your services where patrons can access them. Make lists on Libby to make it even easier for people to find the titles.
• You can use these lists to help fill out your in library displays even if ou have to put the print book on display. No one is double checking if you got the format correct and there is no library jail to send you to if they figure it out. With best lists, the more titles, the better.
• Some of the Audible best titles may not be available anywhere but Audible, but a quick glance  reveals that the big ones are going to be available on your library's eAudio streaming sites.
• Neither is great with obvious backlist access, so I have it here for you. The best audio books from the past few years will be on the shelf and are still a great listen. Remember, if a book is a few years old but the patron has not read it yet, it is still "new" to them:
• Audible Best of 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019 (I love how Audible's presentation of these lists has changed so much over the 5 years listed. That alone illustrates how much the popularity of eAudio has exploded in the last few years)
• Audiofile's Best of 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019
• Back to the first bullet point: if you make a list in Libby for this year's best audio, please go back and use the links I have provided to also make lists for the past few year's best audio. And link to this lists in other lists. See yesterday's Best of the Best post from Chicago Public Library for a great example of how to make sure past best lists are accounted for with a single click.

Attack of the Best Lists 2024: Book Riot Staff Best Picks

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. 

Still working on best books week here on the blog as I catch up on the lists that came out around Thanksgiving. 

Today it is Book Riot's Best Books of 2024. 

I try to feature lists that have something interesting about them and Book Riot is the epitome of that. Why? Because as I have said here on the blog many times, Book Riot is the best resource to see what hard core readers are interested in.

 Book Riot is the largest independent website focused on readers. All of their content is crafted to reach readers directly. They want to get the most clicks as well, which means their content is purposefully up to date, interesting, and written in a conversational tone. It is exactly what we need to stay on top of the hottest trends because it is their mission to provide the most "clickable" content to readers This means they have the time and resources to do the work for us: identifying trends and staying on top of what readers want right this second. Everything there is reader focused which dovetails perfectly with RA Service.

Their best books of the year site is made by having each writer, editor, contributor, etc... give one title as their book of the year. Because each person who works for them has a slightly different specialty, the list covers all ages and genres by default. Also they have a commitment to providing diverse voices as part of their policy.

The editors then take all of the titles and allow you, the user of this resource to browse all or to click on tags in a sidebar to help narrow your choices down. While the tags are not as compressive and stackable as the NPR Books We Love portal (yesterday's list), they are still extremely helpful 

Click here to get started using it for yourself, to build displays, or to help a specific patron.

The only downside to this reader focused resource is that they do not have easy access to past lists on the current year's page. And when I try to search, I was unable to find them

However, when I went to Largehearted Boy's Ultimate List of Lists for past years (more on this resource soon), I was able to get into the past Book Riot best lists with ease. I have posted them here for you, so you can have 1 click access from my blog:

• 2023
• 2022
• 2021
• 2020
• 2019

More best lists tomorrow.

Remember to use my link at the top of these Attack of the Best Lists 2024 posts to access all of my coverage. I do not post every best list, but I do post ones that are interesting and useful. 

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