End-of-the-Year List Madness

We're into the second week of November and I'm already starting to spy the "Best of" lists everywhere. Amazon and Barnes & Noble have emailed me their 2010 top picks lists. Publisher's Weekly has posted their top books of 2010 (for adults, teens, and babes). Soon we'll see the top picks in our local newspapers. It's the beginning of the big push for Holiday Season sales, telling us which books we should be giving (or reading) this season. 


I thought it might be interesting to compare:


Publisher's Weekly lists 31 top picks, the first 10 are:
  1. A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan (Knopf)
  2. Freedom, Jonathan Franzen (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
  3. Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand (Random)
  4. The Surrendered, Chang-rae Lee (Riverhead)
  5. The Big Short, Michael Lewis (Norton)
  6. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot (Crown)
  7. Just Kids, Patti Smith (Ecco)
  8. Man in the Woods, Scott Spencer (Ecco)
  9. The Lonely Polygamist, Brady Udall (Norton)
  10. The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson (Random)


Amazon.com has several lists (because one is simply not enough)
Their editor's picks for the top 100, the first 10 are:
  1. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
  2. Faithful Place, Tana French
  3. Matterhorn, Karl Marlantes
  4. Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand
  5. The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson
  6. Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
  7. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, Stieg Larsson
  8. To the End of the Land, David Grossman
  9. Just Kids, Patti Smith
  10. The Big Short, Michael Lewis
Their editor's picks for the top 10 books in Literature & Fiction are:
  1. Matterhorn, Karl Marlantes
  2. Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
  3. To the End of the Land, David Grossman
  4. The Imperfectionists, Tom Rachman
  5. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, Helen Simonson
  6. The Hand That First Held Mine, Maggie O'Farrell
  7. Skippy Dies, Paul Murray
  8. One Day, David Nicholls
  9. Memory Wall: Stories, Anthony Doerr
  10. The Lonely Polygamist, Brady Udall


Barnes & Noble weighs in with it's choices for Best Books (for Adults) of 2010:
  1. The Big Short, Michael Lewis
  2. Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
  3. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
  4. The Passage, Justin Cronin

  5. Medium Raw,

    Anthony Bourdain

  6. Matterhorn, Karl Marlantes

  7. Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens

  8. The Scent of Rain and Lightning, Nancy Pickard

  9. War, Sebastian Junger

  10. The Invisible Bridge, Julie Orringer



What books do all three agree on?

  1. The Big Short, Michael Lewis
  2. Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
  3. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot

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