Yes! I’m so glad I came across your stack, Jan. I’ve long been troubled by “best of” lists, especially from the NYT. As an editor and reviewer in the way-back days at the Women’s Review of Books, those lists always seemed shaped by big-press budgets and PR. Now they’ve turned into clickbait like the NYT’s list this year of the “best” books since 2000 - they also shape the digital record, influencing everything from Wikipedia to AI searches (and the latter is really disturbing).
These days, I make it a practice to go to my local library, checking out what the librarians have curated (from “new fiction” to “free speech”) - and I put a hold on books other writers I like have mentioned. Curation and reviews can be enormously helpful to readers, but only if they’re done without the pretense of omniscient expertise, as you note, and the curators are honest about their personal biases. Thanks for this piece.
Thank you, Jan, for calling this 'best of' biz out.
“…. the Times editors sought books that had an emotional rather than literary, artistic, or intellectual impact.”
Yes, yes, yes! Because most of the people deciding what will be published are women and that’s where the market is directed to. (Don’t get me wrong, ladies. I love women; but it’s important that men get published as well, and that other men can read books by men for men.) And, based on that formula (emotional rather than literary, artistic and intellectual) books that might be controversial to certain demographics) do not make the cut.
“Year’s-best lists are too long on books …the media have showered with attention, deserved or not.”
Right on! This, as a wonderful, but shunned and unknown novelist, has always frustrated me. I’m even frustrated for other wonderful, but shunned and unknown novelist who won’t vent their frustration. Why do they, at the end of the year, crown books that have already had praise and ink lathered on them for 365 days, when there are a thousand times as many literary, artistic and intellectual books that have been ignored and allowed to die quietly in the cradle? Money, money, money, and politics (sexual, racial, etc).
Let me make a point about books by conservatives! I think we should be talking about ‘novels, short story collections, memoirs, by conservatives. We need more ‘novels’ by conservatives (like me), not the tomes by greed bag bloviators that write 500-page non-fiction door stoppers, retailing for 29.99. Far too many book people, when they refer to ‘conservative presses,’ fail to realize that these presses hardly ever published fiction. Now a few do, but on a limited basis. A lot of ‘conservative presses,’ I believe, simply serve as money launderers for wealthy celebrity conservatives, just like the Big Six launder money to liberal politicians and the like. You would think they had never heard of Andrew Breitbart.
It’s good that you are here on Substack. Gives me hope. I’m old enough to have actually been reviewed by one big Washington DC daily, and a dozen other small-town newspapers at the end of the last century. That’s all dried up now.
I have three ‘successful’ authors on my feed, successful in that they have agents and publishing house contracts. I have a dozen self-published authors, like myself, who don’t and are vocal about it.
I think that like in banking, there’s too much literary power, in New York City. If you’re not there, you’re seen as some kind of backwater hick, unless you’re the ‘racial, sexual, political flavor of the month, then you get a look at your stuff.
This is great, and…exactly so! The flattening of literary culture into “best books”—where reading is so inherently personal, so idiosyncratic in ways that form the whole joy of doing it at all—is so depressing, man. I say this as someone whose own books have appeared on such lists! It’s gross.
Thank you! You are so right about that flattening.
What’s happening in the book world seems to me a microcosm of what’s happening in America as a whole: There’s a 1% that gets the reviews, prizes, bestsellerdom and another 99% that gets the scraps. It’s not quite a winner-take-all realm, but it’s certainly a winner-take-most-of-it one.
By the way, I see that you have a book coming out from Ecco, a wonderful imprint. That kind of high-quality publishing is partly why it was maddening to me that the NYT couldn’t seem to find one HarperCollins book that was worthy of its year’s best list.
Boy, you hit the nail on the head here. It's something I keep thinking about and thinking about, and it is--in fact--exactly the subject of the book I have coming! I watched it happen in one industry and knew for sure that it applied to that industry, but to books and to the American middle class in general. Terrifying
Good piece. So true. Maybe now I can stop yelling at my Sunday NYT when I come across the annual list. I’ve been heard! I will note, though, that Dwight Garner reviewed the Sonny Rollins book — gave it what I’d call a gentle pan. So at least the Times was aware of that book, unlike so many other worthy works that go unnoticed.
Ah, those gentle pans. They can kill you with kindness. And those Yankee papers like the NYT seldom have the decency to tack on a “Bless his heart” to clarify their meaning as people might here in Alabama.
You have company in yelling at the NYT. @Jessa Crispin recently wrote a piece that called the NYTBR a “zombie brand” coasting on its past glories. Her story is paywalled, but I link to it and give it a bit of context in the one below. Thanks a million for reading.
Yes. I read recently the NYT "10 best novels" list. It seemed pretty obviously geared toward young, non-white folks. Now, that could be a coincidence. And hey: If the novel is good then rock and roll. I don't care who wins, whether they're women, men, white, Black, brown or green. All good in my book. (Pun intended.) But, given our current awareness of Big Publishing and, for lack of a better word "progressive wokeness," it does give one pause. I only bring this up to say: Are these really the "best"? Clearly, this is always going to be subjective. But what are the true behind-the-scenes criterion? Merit? Raw talent? Universality? Or...identity?
I'm a die-hard lover of end-of-year book lists (as well as Pulitzer and Nobel selections which I imagine have similar limitations) but I still enjoyed your informative essay. I think one reason I'm not worried about all those flaws of year-end lists is that I still end up enjoying the books they recommend so I find them beneficial. But I do understand there are probably thousands of also very good books that I'm missing out on!
I like some of the books they recommend, too. Right now I’m enjoying Hampton Sides’ “The Wide Wide Sea” a lot. What bothers me most is what you’ve alluded to: There are so many good books that have little chance of making the list because they don’t come from big names or publishers or have fat PR and marketing budgets.
One of my favorite books of 2024 is the incredibly moving story of a 9-year-old boy’s heart transplant, which I’ve reviewed on Jansplaining, The Story of a Heart. It was a finalist for a £50,000 prize in Britain and was published here by the eminent Scribner’s (Hemingway’s publisher), an S&S imprint. Many people might like it more than the Sides or Everett books.
But—while it’s appeared on year’s-best lists in Britain—it seems to have been shut out here. Part of the reason may be that PRH has become so dominant, even books from a distinguished imprint like Scribner’s get too little attention. We are so lucky the courts blocked a merger of PRH and S&S! Then we’d have been (even more) cooked.
Best books lists from publications are pointless. Who cares what for profit corporations think anyway? Best book lists from a single person who likes to read books that you also tend to like is what we are all looking for. I like their tastes, what are their top books?
Thank you, Leslie! One hopeful sign is that I posted this earlier on Medium, where it's had thousands of claps. And while I avoid cross-posting here, I've done it in this case because it's so disturbing that media critics aren't calling out the Times on its list.
Look forward to your list, too. It doesn't matter that you aren't a professional critic. Other writers should take a cue from you and do their own lists as a counterweight to the herd mentality that infects the lists in so many other places.
This! Is! Great! Hear, hear to everything you've written. And thanks for tackling this subject. (If you're interested. I put together an annual list of Best Books I Read that meets much of your criteria...except that I'm not a professional critic! Here it is if you're interested anyway: www.workinprogressinprogress.com
Yes! I’m so glad I came across your stack, Jan. I’ve long been troubled by “best of” lists, especially from the NYT. As an editor and reviewer in the way-back days at the Women’s Review of Books, those lists always seemed shaped by big-press budgets and PR. Now they’ve turned into clickbait like the NYT’s list this year of the “best” books since 2000 - they also shape the digital record, influencing everything from Wikipedia to AI searches (and the latter is really disturbing).
These days, I make it a practice to go to my local library, checking out what the librarians have curated (from “new fiction” to “free speech”) - and I put a hold on books other writers I like have mentioned. Curation and reviews can be enormously helpful to readers, but only if they’re done without the pretense of omniscient expertise, as you note, and the curators are honest about their personal biases. Thanks for this piece.
Thank you, Jan, for calling this 'best of' biz out.
“…. the Times editors sought books that had an emotional rather than literary, artistic, or intellectual impact.”
Yes, yes, yes! Because most of the people deciding what will be published are women and that’s where the market is directed to. (Don’t get me wrong, ladies. I love women; but it’s important that men get published as well, and that other men can read books by men for men.) And, based on that formula (emotional rather than literary, artistic and intellectual) books that might be controversial to certain demographics) do not make the cut.
“Year’s-best lists are too long on books …the media have showered with attention, deserved or not.”
Right on! This, as a wonderful, but shunned and unknown novelist, has always frustrated me. I’m even frustrated for other wonderful, but shunned and unknown novelist who won’t vent their frustration. Why do they, at the end of the year, crown books that have already had praise and ink lathered on them for 365 days, when there are a thousand times as many literary, artistic and intellectual books that have been ignored and allowed to die quietly in the cradle? Money, money, money, and politics (sexual, racial, etc).
Let me make a point about books by conservatives! I think we should be talking about ‘novels, short story collections, memoirs, by conservatives. We need more ‘novels’ by conservatives (like me), not the tomes by greed bag bloviators that write 500-page non-fiction door stoppers, retailing for 29.99. Far too many book people, when they refer to ‘conservative presses,’ fail to realize that these presses hardly ever published fiction. Now a few do, but on a limited basis. A lot of ‘conservative presses,’ I believe, simply serve as money launderers for wealthy celebrity conservatives, just like the Big Six launder money to liberal politicians and the like. You would think they had never heard of Andrew Breitbart.
It’s good that you are here on Substack. Gives me hope. I’m old enough to have actually been reviewed by one big Washington DC daily, and a dozen other small-town newspapers at the end of the last century. That’s all dried up now.
I have three ‘successful’ authors on my feed, successful in that they have agents and publishing house contracts. I have a dozen self-published authors, like myself, who don’t and are vocal about it.
I think that like in banking, there’s too much literary power, in New York City. If you’re not there, you’re seen as some kind of backwater hick, unless you’re the ‘racial, sexual, political flavor of the month, then you get a look at your stuff.
Thanks for your post!
This is great, and…exactly so! The flattening of literary culture into “best books”—where reading is so inherently personal, so idiosyncratic in ways that form the whole joy of doing it at all—is so depressing, man. I say this as someone whose own books have appeared on such lists! It’s gross.
Thank you! You are so right about that flattening.
What’s happening in the book world seems to me a microcosm of what’s happening in America as a whole: There’s a 1% that gets the reviews, prizes, bestsellerdom and another 99% that gets the scraps. It’s not quite a winner-take-all realm, but it’s certainly a winner-take-most-of-it one.
By the way, I see that you have a book coming out from Ecco, a wonderful imprint. That kind of high-quality publishing is partly why it was maddening to me that the NYT couldn’t seem to find one HarperCollins book that was worthy of its year’s best list.
Boy, you hit the nail on the head here. It's something I keep thinking about and thinking about, and it is--in fact--exactly the subject of the book I have coming! I watched it happen in one industry and knew for sure that it applied to that industry, but to books and to the American middle class in general. Terrifying
Good piece. So true. Maybe now I can stop yelling at my Sunday NYT when I come across the annual list. I’ve been heard! I will note, though, that Dwight Garner reviewed the Sonny Rollins book — gave it what I’d call a gentle pan. So at least the Times was aware of that book, unlike so many other worthy works that go unnoticed.
Ah, those gentle pans. They can kill you with kindness. And those Yankee papers like the NYT seldom have the decency to tack on a “Bless his heart” to clarify their meaning as people might here in Alabama.
You have company in yelling at the NYT. @Jessa Crispin recently wrote a piece that called the NYTBR a “zombie brand” coasting on its past glories. Her story is paywalled, but I link to it and give it a bit of context in the one below. Thanks a million for reading.
https://jansplaining.substack.com/p/why-your-novel-wont-win-a-pulitzer
Yes. I read recently the NYT "10 best novels" list. It seemed pretty obviously geared toward young, non-white folks. Now, that could be a coincidence. And hey: If the novel is good then rock and roll. I don't care who wins, whether they're women, men, white, Black, brown or green. All good in my book. (Pun intended.) But, given our current awareness of Big Publishing and, for lack of a better word "progressive wokeness," it does give one pause. I only bring this up to say: Are these really the "best"? Clearly, this is always going to be subjective. But what are the true behind-the-scenes criterion? Merit? Raw talent? Universality? Or...identity?
You are so right: They are always going to be subjective. And I’d love to know more about what, in some cases, the unwritten criteria are.
I'm a die-hard lover of end-of-year book lists (as well as Pulitzer and Nobel selections which I imagine have similar limitations) but I still enjoyed your informative essay. I think one reason I'm not worried about all those flaws of year-end lists is that I still end up enjoying the books they recommend so I find them beneficial. But I do understand there are probably thousands of also very good books that I'm missing out on!
I like some of the books they recommend, too. Right now I’m enjoying Hampton Sides’ “The Wide Wide Sea” a lot. What bothers me most is what you’ve alluded to: There are so many good books that have little chance of making the list because they don’t come from big names or publishers or have fat PR and marketing budgets.
One of my favorite books of 2024 is the incredibly moving story of a 9-year-old boy’s heart transplant, which I’ve reviewed on Jansplaining, The Story of a Heart. It was a finalist for a £50,000 prize in Britain and was published here by the eminent Scribner’s (Hemingway’s publisher), an S&S imprint. Many people might like it more than the Sides or Everett books.
But—while it’s appeared on year’s-best lists in Britain—it seems to have been shut out here. Part of the reason may be that PRH has become so dominant, even books from a distinguished imprint like Scribner’s get too little attention. We are so lucky the courts blocked a merger of PRH and S&S! Then we’d have been (even more) cooked.
I read 100 books a year and barely 2% are new.
https://marlowe1.substack.com/p/the-summer-farmer-the-stories-of
Best books lists from publications are pointless. Who cares what for profit corporations think anyway? Best book lists from a single person who likes to read books that you also tend to like is what we are all looking for. I like their tastes, what are their top books?
From your mouth to God's ears :).
Thank you, Leslie! One hopeful sign is that I posted this earlier on Medium, where it's had thousands of claps. And while I avoid cross-posting here, I've done it in this case because it's so disturbing that media critics aren't calling out the Times on its list.
Look forward to your list, too. It doesn't matter that you aren't a professional critic. Other writers should take a cue from you and do their own lists as a counterweight to the herd mentality that infects the lists in so many other places.
This! Is! Great! Hear, hear to everything you've written. And thanks for tackling this subject. (If you're interested. I put together an annual list of Best Books I Read that meets much of your criteria...except that I'm not a professional critic! Here it is if you're interested anyway: www.workinprogressinprogress.com