Discuss: What Makes a Book of the Year?
It’s at this time of year that I’m sure many a book-blogger’s mind is starting to compile their review-of-the-year posts, planning to stuff them with book lists, reading stats, challenge results, and much more bookish goodness.
One feature that will almost certainly be present in all of them is the ‘Books/Reads of the Year’ section.
For some of us this will be an easy thing to assemble, half-a-dozen books will instantly be obvious to us (and probably have been all year) without us having to think seriously about it, for others it will more difficult, the initial list will be embarrassingly long, and will need some serious trimming to bring it down to anywhere near a manageable size! For those of us that have had a really bad year’s reading, we might not be able to even think of a single book that deserves the accolade… *shudders at the thought*
My question today is, what criteria do you use to make the final selection?
- Does a book have to be perfect both in terms of the writing and your enjoyment?
- Is it just an enjoyment thing?
- Does the writing have to be exquisite, no matter what your enjoyment levels?
- Or is it some indefinable thing?
One of the reasons I ask is that last year, I had at least one book I enjoyed so much it made the list despite it not being among my top ’starred’ books of the year.
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To me it has a lot to do with impact. For instance, one book that will probably make it into my top list this year is one I originally gave 4 stars to – good, but not perfect. Over time, the things that made it less than perfect have slowly ebbed away from my mind, leaving me with wonderful impressions. It’s a book I can’t get out of my head. I later read another book by that author and when I did, considered it the best book I’d read in years. Now, looking back on both, it’s still the first that stands out to me.
It’s hard to know which books to pick, because sometimes you think a book has a greater or lesser impact than it does in the long run, but I always try to pick books based both on what I felt at the time and what I feel after having some distance from them. I judge every book by its writing, but also by the content – the things it says and how it effects me, what I can learn from it, that sort of thing.
Time I think does have a big impact, with some books fading away, just as much as fault fading, bring other books to the fore. I also agree it’s perfectly possible for a ‘4′ star book to beat ‘5′ star books anyway, because, just sometimes, great characters that you enjoy meeting and caring/agonising for, outweigh other considerations!
It’s why deciding is so tough!
I don’t think I’ve done a book of the year before – but I agree with Amanda that it has more to do with the extent to which a book sticks with you, as compared with the book that may be technically the best. But I have a hard time knowing what book’s going to have a long-term impact. Usually a book doesn’t become one of my best books until I’ve read it a whole bunch of times.
There is that as well, some books do improve with re-reads (or even just the next in the series) of course, occasionally, re-reading continuing, can mar the memory too.
It’s what can make deciding such a fun internal argument! LOL
Such a tough question. And it’s weird. When I look back at my very favorite books, it’s hard to compare them. Les Miserables is a wonderful, fantastic Classic. Beautifully written and almost perfect. The Stand by Stephen King is hardly what most people would consider great literature. But that book completely and utterly sucked me in….hook, line and sinker. I feel in love with the characters. I felt intensly for them. So…how do I pick my favorite reads? Probably the enjoyment I felt. Or at least the intensity of the feelings for it.
I’m curious about how YOU feel about the topic!
Exactly!
I had one book I read at the start of the year, brilliantly written, fantastic characters, best thing technically I think the author has done. And the along came two books (part of a series) that blew me away (even though, they’re not quite as good ‘literature’) and now, I have absolutely no idea how to decide!
Of course it’s impossible to apply the same rules to each and every book!
My favourite books of the year are always the ones that stick with me. In the last few years I have read at least 150 books a year. After a while things start to run together, so if I can remember a book by the end of the year or even a couple years down the road that is usually my criteria. I might think I really like a book at the time, but sometimes when I look back find that I have really no interest in it anymore.
Yeah, it’s strange how time can do that. But if you’re still raving about it to friends, months later, then, that I think is a good sign!
I have a lot of trouble choosing a favorite book. For the past two years, one book has jumped out at me as an instant favorite. When I read both of these books, I knew immediately they were my favorites for the year. They just swept me away with both beautiful writing and moving stories and I wanted to read them over again as soon as I’d finished just to experience the story again. I haven’t found one of these for 2009 yet! This year’s choice is likely to be much more difficult.
That’s the reason we all read I think, for that one book that sucks our face off, and RL ceases to exist!
I do my annual reading recap on my birthday, and since that was yesterday (11/4) I put up a post w/ my favorite reads – so this topic was definitely on my mind!
For me, a book makes my “best of the year” list by standing out in my memory (for good reasons, not bad ones!) long after I read it. It can be due to the writing, the topic, my connection to the book, or something completely different – but it has to be a book that I can remember clearly even months later.
I know everyone judges things differently, but that’s how it work on my blog.
I think, it’s so hard to decide because you just cant use the same standards/rules for each book. Sometimes it just has to be down to pixie-dust or something, a book says love me, and we do!
Strangely enough, a good number of the books I loved don’t often show up on the “Best of the Year” lists. This can be because the author or publisher is small or unknown. And no, the book doesn’t have to have stellar writing to make me love it. As Heather said, it’s my connection to the book, how it made me feel. This can be because of the writing, but oftentimes it is because I feel drawn to one or many of the characters, or if the storyline is something that really hits home for me.
Reading though everyone comments so far, I think the one thing that has the most effect is characters. Great characters can really drive a book up the table faster than almost anything else!
As has been said above for me it is impact rather than great writing. I need to still remember the characters, the feeling of reading the book and being sucked in. My favourite books of all time: Possession: A Romance, Time Traveller’s Wife and Jane Eyre have all survived many readings and I still remember tons of details but I find something new each time I visit them.
As for this year I’ll have a few books to pick from but nothing that I have a major desire to reread anytime soon – well unless I read something great in the next 8 weeks
Great characters seems to be one on the key’s for most people, because a lot of other important things hang off of it, it you don’t love them, then the book has to work that much harder to have an impact.
Here’s hoping a book comes out of nowhere and blows you away sometime in the next 8 weeks!
Interesting and fun post, Bart! I have this problem every year, what is my favourite book(s) of the year? I seldom have just one, and narrowing it down to one is painful. Last year I was able to, because I read a book that I just loved – it was fun, interesting, had amazing characters and was well-written. It was good. Lonely Werewolf Girl, which it turns out not a lot of people have read, nor can get through. So I think one of the best things about our favourite book(s) of the year, is that it reveals us to ourselves and others. This is where I was that year, this is what I liked that year, this is what I read. This year, I’ve tried reading some books others rave about, and I’ve come away dissatisfied. Once again, I find reading is personal. And so far my book of a year is a classic, over 100 years old!!
How do you choose, Bart?
I’ve never tried picking a “Book of the Year”. That would be a interesting challenge. I have to agree with several other comments, books that have the most impact, that really stick with me, tend to be my favorites. I may not even know that at the time I read a book, six months later it pops up in my thoughts and I realize it is one of my favorite books.
I won’t pick a book of the year, but I’ll likely list a handful of my favorites. As I say in my review policy, I give a book an A or A+ for a number of reasons — and some aren’t that sophisticated! Sometimes it’s just a matter of the right book at the right time, sometimes it’s really the audio production that hooks me (I had two fabulous listens this year). Yes, I want good writing, a good story, good characters, something that makes me think, a brilliantly done biography…. but really it boils down to my reaction at the moment, which is colored by myriad factors.
My coming across this post couldn’t be more timely, considering I just followed a whim an hour or so ago and re-read my Year in Review posts from all the years I’ve been blogging.
Last year when I did a Top 10 list, this is what I wrote:
“Making any kind of top 10 list after a reading year like this is a difficult challenge. I weighed my ratings, my remembrances of what I felt as I read the books, and many other intangibles and this is the list I came up with. In the end I chose books that are not only ones that I would recommend for you to pick up, but books that gave me a memorable, stayed-with-me-for-days experience. This is not a critics list, this is a list about an emotional connection.”
I think that sums up nicely what I use to judge my top reads of any given year. It is so much more about my personal *experience* with a book than it is with judging the mechanics of the authors’ style, the societal relevance of the book, etc. While an author’s skill certainly plays into it (generally I feel like I am a good judge of writing), it isn’t what makes or breaks the experience for me.
It is hard to believe that we are a little over a month away from the year end wrap up (I do mine in late Dec.). Where has the year gone?