Reviewing the Reviews (Part 1)
by Cindy Orr and Sarah Statz Cords
Neil Hollands of Williamsburg Public Library (VA) recently finished his mega compilation of Best Of lists for 2010. He compiled results from an astounding 175 sources to come up with the books that got the most votes. We were curious about how the consensus best books of the year compared with the reviews that came out in standard library sources before the books were published.
In other words, do library reviewers do a good job of predicting the best books of the year?
To find out, we used another great source from a colleague—Overbooked.org’s All Stars by Ann Theis of Chesterfield County Public Library (VA), the owner of the website Overbooked. Ann lists titles and indicates which ones received starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal, or Publishers Weekly.
Below are the top 50 titles of 2010 ranked in order from Neil’s aggregation of the Best Of lists. In the right hand columns you’ll find the number of Best of lists that recommended each title, as well as which starred reviews each title received, as recorded on Ann’s site. While it’s generally true that books toward the bottom have fewer stars as you would expect, you can see that the results are mixed. Do you see any patterns? We think we’ve identified several, and will follow up with details in Part 2 of this piece.
| Author | Title | Genre | # of “Best Lists” | Review stars awarded |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jonathan Franzen | Freedom | Fiction | 60 | –3– BL, LJ, PW |
| Rebecca Skloot | The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks | NF/Science | 55 | –4– BL, K, LJ, PW |
| Jennifer Egan | A Visit from the Goon Squad | Fiction | 49 | –3– BL, Kirkus, PW |
| Emma Donoghue | Room | Fiction | 49 | –3– Kirk, LJ, PW |
| Patti Smith | Just Kids | NF/Memoir | 44 | –3– BL, Kirk, PW |
| Paul Murray | Skippy Dies | Fiction | 37 | –4– BL, Kirk, LJ, PW |
| David Mitchell | The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet | F/Historical Fiction | 35 | –2– BL, LJ |
| Gary Shteyngart | Super Sad True Love Story | F/SciFi | 34 | –2– BL, PW |
| Isabel Wilkerson | The Warmth of Other Suns | NF/History | 33 | –4– BL, Kirk, LJ, PW |
| Justin Cronin | The Passage | F/Horror | 32 | –2– LJ, PW |
| Michael Lewis | The Big Short | NF/Business | 31 | –1– LJ |
| Keith Richards | Life | NF/Memoir | 30 | –1– Kirkus |
| Tom Rachman | The Imperfectionists | Fiction | 30 | –2– LJ, PW |
| Suzanne Collins | Mockingbird | YA | 29 | –2– BL, PW |
| Karl Marlantes | Matterhorn | F/Historical Fiction | 28 | –2– LJ, PW |
| Siddhartha Mukherjee | The Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of Cancer | NF/Science | 26 | –2– BL, PW |
| David Grossman | To the End of the Land | Fiction | 23 | –3– BL, Kirkus, LJ |
| Tana French | Faithful Place | F/Mystery | 23 | –3– BL, LJ, PW |
| Peter Carey | Parrot and Olivier in America | F/Historical Fiction | 22 | –3– BL, LJ, PW |
| Elif Batuman | The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them | NF/Investigative | 20 | –2– LJ, PW |
| Stieg Larsson | The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest | F/Mystery | 20 | –2– BL, Kirkus |
| Julie Orringer | The Invisible Bridge | F/Historical Fiction | 20 | –2– BL, PW |
| Laura Hillenbrand | Unbroken | NF/History | 19 | –0– |
| Gail Caldwell | Let’s Take the Long Way Home | NF/Memoir | 18 | –1– PW |
| Sam Lipsyte | The Ask | Fiction | 18 | –3– BL, Kirkus, PW |
| Nicole Krauss | Great House | Fiction | 18 | –2– BL, PW |
| Charles Yu | How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe | F/SciFi | 18 | –1– Kirkus |
| John Vaillant | The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival | NF/Environmental | 18 | –2– LJ, PW |
| Tom McCarthy | C | Fiction | 17 | –1– PW |
| Christopher Hitchens | Hitch-22 | NF/Memoir | 17 | –1– BL |
| Stacy Schiff | Cleopatra: A Life | NF/Biography | 16 | –2– Kirkus, PW |
| Ron Chernow | Washington: A Life | NF/Biography | 16 | –1– BL |
| Ian Frazier | Travels in Siberia | NF/Travel | 16 | –2– Kirkus, PW |
| Sebastian Junger | War | NF/Investigative | 16 | –2– LJ, PW |
| Brady Udall | The Lonely Polygamist | Fiction | 16 | –3– Kirkus, LJ, PW |
| Howard Jacobson | The Finkler Question | Fiction | 15 | –1– LJ |
| China Mieville | Kraken | F/Fantasy | 15 | –1– LJ |
| Helen Simonson | Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand | F/Historical Fiction | 15 | –1– LJ |
| Chang-Rae Lee | The Surrendered | Fiction | 15 | –4– BL, Kirkus, LJ, PW |
| Philip Roth | Nemesis | Fiction | 14 | –2– BL, LJ |
| Ian McEwan | Solar | Fiction | 14 | –0– |
| Joshua Ferris | The Unnamed | Fiction | 14 | –3– BL, Kirkus, PW |
| Joe Hill | Horns | F/Horror | 14 | –1– LJ |
| Stephen Sondheim | Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics | NF/Memoir | 14 | –0– |
| Mary Roach | Packing for Mars | NF/Science | 14 | 2: Kirkus, LJ |
| Mark Twain | The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1. | NF/Autobiography | 14 | –3– BL, LJ, PW |
| Connie Willis | Blackout | F/Fantasy | 13 | –2– BL, LJ |
| Dinaw Mengestu | How to Read the Air | Fiction | 13 | –2– LJ, PW |
| Lionel Shriver | So Much for That | Fiction | 13 | –0– |
| Tom Franklin | Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter | Fiction | 13 | –2– BL, LJ |
This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 1st, 2011 at 4:43 pm and is filed under A Closer Look. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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