Editorial: Make “Best Books” Matter

Thanksgiving has come and gone, the holidays are upon us, and the best books season is well underway. Most of the “best” lists have appeared already or are about to do so. This year, LJ finally has joined the crowd in announcing its picks before year's end. It may never be too late for best books, however. For book lovers and readers, there's nothing we like more than a good book list to chew over. It can provoke surprise or dismay, validate or endorse our own favorites.

There are so many books, and so many good books published each year, that the “best” on one list may not even show up on another. Even among critics with an eye for talent, a sense of literary history, and a taste for a particular genre, there's plenty of disagreement.

For example, only two of the books nominated for the National Book Award (NBA) made LJ's “Best Books 2007” (p. 72–77): Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke (Farrar), which won the NBA in fiction, and Mischa Berlinski's novel Fieldwork (Farrar). Fifteen adult titles were nominated for NBAs, and there are 31 titles on LJ's list, plus another 45 genre and how-to books. That's not much crossover. Nor is it unusual. Author/humorist Fran Lebowitz, who emceed the NBA ceremony November 14 in New York City, took great pleasure in pointing out the many illustrious “nonwinners” of the NBA: To Kill a Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zooey, Silent Spring, Henderson the Rain King, and Beloved, to name a few.

Literary disagreements notwithstanding, there's also disagreement about the actual sales impact of award winners and “best books” lists. Publishers have been known to say they never make any money on National Book Award titles, for instance, pointing out that the books chosen aren't ones that hit the best sellers lists—even after they win.

The numbers tell a more complex story. Bookscan, which represents roughly 70 percent of book sales, reported total sales of 29,092 (quite respectable though not blockbuster) and 5,336 (not surprising for a first novel) for the Johnson and Berlinski books, respectively, the day after the awards were announced (per the National Book Critics Circle Critical Mass blog). Additionally, neither of these titles made it onto the extended list of LJ's Best Sellers, the “books most borrowed in U.S. libraries,” based on circulation statistics. But what will these books be doing later—in paperback, when the prize/nomination has had some time to work?

Like the titles nominated for book prizes, many of LJ's best books (excluding the genre and how-to) have been criticized by librarians for not being big circulators. On the one hand, we hear some librarians bemoaning the best seller culture that predominates in libraries, and on the other we hear librarians saying “good” books don't circulate. Must “popular” exclude “good”? Maybe all of these titles—the big-name prize nominees and the “best books”—just need better merchandising and promotion by both librarians and publishers, says LJ editor Wilda Williams.

Williams predicts that one of her picks for LJ's list, Michelle Richmond's The Year of Fog (Delacorte) could be the next Memory Keeper's Daughter. That book, which LJ starred and called “a natural” for book groups, started moving when it went into paperback and went on to be a big book club read. It hit national bestsellerdom and is still number ten on LJ's books most borrowed (p. 176). Put The Year of Fog or some of our other best books on your checkout counter, your hot books shelf, or your suggestions for book club reads. Let us know how they circulate. At the very least, your efforts may prompt some patrons to read books they never would have discovered otherwise. And, ultimately, isn't that the “best.”