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Kimberly’s Top 17 of 2017

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Contrary to previous years, a lot of the books I read this year were adult titles. Perhaps I just need a break from YA, but it seemed like a lot of the YA titles I read this year didn’t match the quality of previous years. I only gave five titles five stars on Goodreads, and only two of them were YA.

I read a lot this year. As of this writing on the 25th, I’ve read 112 books, and this number will likely go up a few by the end of the year. Like last year, I did most of my reading on audio: 65 on audio versus 47 in print. Most of those print titles were ebooks, which is a pretty significant change for me. I find I don’t miss the physical book as much as I thought I would.

While I did think the field for YA was weaker this year than in past years, my top 17 overall were true standouts. Here’s a brief rundown, in no particular order. Links lead to my own reviews; if I didn’t write one, they lead to Goodreads.

Middle Grade

Wolf Hollow by Lauren Wolk

This was just a really well-written, heartstring-tugging middle grade novel that reminded me a lot of the books I read when I was around ten years old. It’s definitely deserving of its Newbery honor.

Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo

This is a beautiful book. I love the idea of a short bio modified to read like a fairy tale/bedtime story, and the art is GORGEOUS with many different styles represented. The 100 women chosen are from all over the world, from many different time periods, of many different races, and run the gamut of anything and everything a woman can be (which is anything!). We got four copies donated to the library and I would just like to thank that soul because I never would have known about this book otherwise.

Princess Princess Ever After by Katie O’Neill

This is a sort of retelling of Rapunzel, but this time it’s a headstrong black princess, Amira, who rescues a white princess, Sadie, in the tower. They then go on a series of fun, small adventures, culminating in a bigger adventure where they confront the person who put Sadie in the tower in the first place. And yes, they fall in love, and there’s a sweet lesbian wedding in the epilogue, where the two girls are now adults and have accomplished much in their lives – and have come back to each other to live happily ever after.

Young Adult

Midnight at the Electric by Jodi Lynn Anderson

I loved how this was a story within a story within a story – one set in the near future and the others set at two different points in the past. And it was so well-executed and all of the characters were interesting. I’m still thinking about this book, months after reading it. This was the first really great YA novel I read this year.

Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World edited by Kelly Jensen

I mean, obviously. Not just because Kelly is amazing, but because her work is amazing, and the pieces she chose for this anthology are amazing. I especially liked Kody Keplinger’s pieces about not wanting kids.

Wonder Woman: Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo

Bardugo’s novel is action-packed, funny (Diana learning about odd human customs never gets old), and quite deep. Alia is biracial, Greek on her dad’s side and Black American on her mom’s side, and this provides a real-life example of the metaphor that Diana represents: a fish out of water feeling in your own family and your own culture, of straddling two places and not really belonging in either. Romances are hesitantly formed, friendships are tested, and there’s a shocker of a twist near the end – but one that sharp-eyed readers who trust themselves will have seen coming. Bardugo is a fine writer and she was a perfect choice to tell this story.

Dare Mighty Things by Heather Kaczynski

This book ticks so many of my boxes: non-astronauts being sent into space, imaginative futuristic tech, the possibility of alien contact, and a plot full of twists and secrets. It’s so much fun and I wish I could read it all over again, not knowing what was going to happen.

Adult

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

This was my first foray into my goal of reading a ton of classic books this year. I read a total of four (not as many as I intended, but not too shabby), and this was definitely the best. I listened to the audio version that Angelou narrated; she is the perfect reader for her own story.

Shrill: Notes From a Loud Woman by Lindy West

Lindy West narrates her own memoir, and she is pretty great at it. This is just a really solid book about growing up, fighting back, and asserting your place as a woman and as a fat person in a world that would generally prefer you be “as small, quiet, and compliant as possible.”

Persuasion by Jane Austen

This is easily my favorite Jane Austen – the heroine is somewhat close to my own age, the letter at the end is some of the most romantic writing in any novel, and it’s genuinely funny. It’s not her most popular, but it’s the one I can see myself re-reading at some point down the road.

Do You Want to Start a Scandal by Tessa Dare

Tessa Dare’s books are hit and miss for me, but generally she gets better with each book. This one is her funniest yet; I was snorting with laughter while listening to it as I got ready for work in the morning.

The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne

This was my pick for the book club I joined this year, and I’m happy to say I really enjoyed it. It’s literary science fiction, featuring two young women at two different points in the future. One is making a forbidden journey across an energy-harvesting road in the middle of the Arabian Sea, a road not meant for human travel, and the other is journeying across Saharan Africa toward Ethiopia, running from an act of violence she witnessed. Their journeys eventually coalesce. It’s fascinating and deep with lots to discuss.

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

I also read this one for book club. Lahiri is a master of short fiction. My favorite story is the last one, but the best story is the first.

The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith

J. K. Rowling is really great at writing mysteries, which should come as no surprise. She is a fantastic plotter, and the best mysteries require meticulous plotting. The next two are just as good. The fourth, Lethal White, should be published sometime in 2018.

Version Control by Dexter Palmer

I loved this literary SF novel about time travel, alternate futures, marriage, online dating, casually toxic relationships, and so much more. It’s intelligent and sometimes funny and will satisfy the reader looking for just the right mix of literary writing and SF weirdness.

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

This gothic novella about a school of young people who have returned from other worlds and now have to readjust to living in our own world again is fascinating. None of the worlds the people visited would be appealing to those of us reading, but to the people in the story, they had become home. A murder mystery drives the plot, but it’s the various worlds and the characters that visited them that make this story so engrossing. This also wins my award for Best Title.

In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware

Ruth Ware is really, really good at writing thrilling mysteries. In her first novel, Ware has created a cast of interesting, dynamic characters, some of which you’ll like and some of which you won’t, and her plotting is top-notch, plus the atmosphere can’t be beat. It’s pure joy to see the way everything comes together – you won’t be able to quit turning the pages. This is a true marriage of mystery and thriller, just the way I like it.

 

 

 

 

 

2016 Reading in Review

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Does anyone still care about 2016? I always feel like I’m cheating a little if I make my best of list before the end of the official year. What if the last book I finish, in the last hours of December 31, turns out to be the most phenomenal book of the year? (It hasn’t yet, but in theory, it could happen.)

So I hope some of you are still interested in reading a bit about 2016 books. In no particular order, these were my favorite reads of the year. Most were 2016 publications, but some are backlist. Links lead to my reviews, if I wrote one.

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YA Fiction

The Passion of Dolssa by Julie Berry

I loved this story about a teenage female mystic in 13th-century France fleeing persecution and the teenage girl and her sisters who take her in and protect her. It’s superb historical fiction – a well-realized setting, characters that feel immediate but not overly modernized, literary and completely absorbing – about a time period not written much about in books for teens. I highly recommend it on audio for the old Provencal pronunciations and spot-on voicing of the two main characters.

The Diviners by Libba Bray

This is by far my favorite book by Libba Bray. It’s got a lot going on – 1920s New York setting, supernatural murders, multiple POVs, a main character with magical powers – but Bray makes it all work together. The characters and time period (not usually one of my favorites) are fascinating in her hands, and so is the central mystery.

A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro

How I love Sherlock Holmes retellings. This one stands out because of the voice. It’s gender-swapped: Charlotte Holmes is the descendant of the “real” Sherlock Holmes, and she inherited his genius at solving crimes as well as his propensity for misandry and drug addiction. She strikes up a tense friendship with James “Jamie” Watson, a descendant of John Watson, who narrates the book. They investigate the murder of a student at the boarding school they both attend, and while the mystery is good, it’s the relationship between Charlotte and Jamie that sets this book apart.

The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge

OK, I know I said that these were in no particular order, but I lied (see what I did there?). This is my favorite book of the year, and the one my workplace selected as our Mock Printz winner (I am so hoping it gets some love from the real Printz committee). It’s rare that my favorite book is also one I would consider a contender for an award based solely on literary merit, but there you have it. I loved the melding of historical fiction, fantasy, and mystery; the characters were three-dimensional and interesting; the plot was complex and kept me guessing; and it explores religion vs. science, feminism, and the nature of truth, all things that are catnip for me in fiction.

The Diabolic by S. J. Kincaid

This is a true science fiction treat: a space adventure with a killer hook, complex world-building, political machinations that will interest teenagers, an unusual love story, characters you love and characters you love to hate, and a twisty plot that will leave you breathless. It reminded me of everything I love about science fiction, and as soon as I finished it, I started gushing about it to people. If you’re a fan of science fiction at all, pick this up – it’s even better than Kincaid’s Insignia series, which was excellent as well.

If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo

Russo’s book is a positive, hopeful story of a Amanda’s acclimation to a new school, where no one knows that she was assigned the male gender at birth, not the female gender she knows she is. At heart, it is a sweet teen romance, but the focus broadens to Amanda’s family and friends as well. Amanda initially passes easily, but inevitably, she is outed, and this conflict is the main driver of the story. Amanda’s voice is authentically teen and readers (cis and trans) will easily empathize and root for her. Not just socially important, this is also just a well-executed story.

george-gino

Middle Grade Fiction

George by Alex Gino

Jamie Clayton (a trans actress from Sense8) narrates Gino’s young middle grade book about a girl who everyone thinks is a boy. Melissa, as she prefers to be called instead of her given name George, desperately wants to play Charlotte in her school’s production of Charlotte’s Web, but her teacher tells her that role is reserved for girls – not knowing that Melissa is a girl, too. Melissa’s friend decides to help her out, and there is a happy ending. This is a gentle story about a trans child that also doesn’t shy away from some of the unpleasantness associated with being trans. This book single-handedly attempts to fill a giant hole in kidlit – books for elementary age kids about trans kids – and it does so wonderfully.

adult-fiction

Adult Fiction

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

I describe this book as the anti-Gone Girl. Like Gone Girl, it’s a twisty, psychological thriller about unlikable people who do nasty things and lie about them, but it diverges from Gone Girl in an important way that would be a complete spoiler if I mentioned it here. So just take my word for it and give this immensely popular novel a whirl, if you haven’t already.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

With this gorgeous gem of a book, Emily St. John Mandel reminded me that adult science fiction is still worth reading. This is literary SF set in a post-flu pandemic America that also flashes back to the times before. It focuses on a variety of characters, but they all revolve around a Hollywood star, Arthur Leander, who is on the brink of being washed-up – or perhaps he has already passed that point before he contracts the flu and dies in the first few pages of the novel. The writing is just so lovely, the characters so real, and Kirsten Potter’s voice is perfectly suited to narrate the audio version.

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Middle Grade/YA Nonfiction

March: Book Three by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell

Ugh, this was just so good. I can see why it won the National Book Award. The story is engrossing, Lewis tells it in such an engaging way, and the art is a terrific complement. I learned so much but never felt like I was reading a textbook or being lectured. Fascinating and important and moving.

Uprooted: The Japanese American Experience During World War II by Albert Marrin

Marrin covers the Japanese-American imprisonment in American concentration camps (with an excellent explanation for why these were concentration camps, not internment camps, both legally and practically speaking). He also delves into Japanese-American participation as soldiers in both the Pacific and the European warfronts. The writing is crisp, the topic absorbing, and Marrin doesn’t shy away from calling things what they are – racism, concentration camps, white supremacy. Especially in light of the current climate, this should be required reading for all Americans.

The Plot to Kill Hitler: Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Spy, Unlikely Hero by Patricia McCormick

McCormick traces Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life from sensitive young boy to passive resister to outright involvement in some of the most well-known plots to kill Hitler. His life is fascinating and not very well known by many in America (I don’t believe I even heard about him until I was an adult myself). McCormick asks her young readers hard questions and challenges them to think deeply about what they would do in Bonhoeffer’s situation – and whether doing the right thing, the hard thing, the dangerous thing is worth it even in the face of failure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Best of YA” Lists By the Numbers: 2011 – 2014 Stats, Comparisons, and Thoughts

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In 2011, I started keeping track of the YA books that made the “best of” lists across the professional publications, which include Kirkus, Horn Book, School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and in instances where it’s happened, Library Journal. My methods of data collection have varied a little each year, as sometimes I’ve been more interested in one element than another or it’s a matter of time, energy, and having read or having had access to titles to verify what they do or do not include.

Since there’s now been four years of data, I thought it would be worthwhile to look at the similarities and differences as seen through these lists. This will be an imperfect post with imperfect data; it wasn’t until the last couple of years I better understood what I was looking at and how to look at it. That means some of the data might be lacking in some years and it might be inaccurate in others. That doesn’t change what’s worth thinking about, though.

All of the data comes from the following posts:

Because the journals have selected varying numbers of titles for their lists, haven’t selected any titles for their lists, and because my own counting has changed over the years, the number of eligible titles in each data set is different. That doesn’t make a huge change, though, when it comes to comparisons by percentages. Most years, between 55 and 90 titles are on these lists. Not all of the categories I’m going to hit in this comparison will have all four years featured; that has been noted where appropriate.
Let’s dig in.
Gender and “Best of” Lists

Have more female authors always been on the “best of” lists? Has there been any sort of change over the last four years? 
In 2011, the gender breakdown was 58% women and 42% men. 
In 2012, 80% of the authors on the “best of” lists were women and 20% were men. 
In 2013, the breakdown was roughly 75% women and 25% men.
In 2014, the break down was roughly 70% female authors and 30% male authors.
Each of the four years, women had more books on the “best of” lists than men did. This is decidedly different than the New York Times Bestsellers list, which is dominated by male authors. On average, 70% of the “best of” authors are women and 30% are men. 
There doesn’t appear to be any trend here in terms of whether male or female authors are earning more or fewer spots each year. 
When it comes to the gender of main characters, comparison is a little tricky, since I haven’t been consistent about keeping track of that. I covered it in 2013 for the first time, but I didn’t create a catch all category of “cast of characters” until this year. So this data is imperfect by nature, but I’m going to share it, since it’s interesting nonetheless. 
In 2013, the split of female and male main characters in YA fiction was almost 50/50. Female voices came ahead only slightly, with 53% of the titles. For a year when there were far more female authors than there were male authors, it can’t be said male voices were underrepresented in the books at all.
2014 had more female voices than male voices represented, but with the cast of characters as a third factor, the representation isn’t hugely different. Again, despite having more female authors on the “best of” lists, the difference in male voices in the books against female voices in the books remains not hugely different. There are plenty of books featuring male main characters and they’re earning recognition. 
Debut Authors and “Best of” Lists

As more people talk about and seek out debut authors, has that impacted the “best of” lists at all? Are we seeing more now than we did in 2011 or are we seeing about the same number? This particular factor interests me as it relates to the Morris award and when the finalists are announced. I haven’t kept record of that from prior to this year, so I can’t make a call on how it may or may not influence picks on these lists.
In 2011, roughly 25% of the books on “best of” lists were by debut authors, while 75% were by authors who’d been previously published.
The numbers changed a little bit in 2012, as 20% of the authors were debuts and 80% were more seasoned authors.
The percentages were unchanged in 2013, with 20% of authors being debut and 80% being previously published.
2014 featured the biggest percentage of debut authors, at almost 29%, with previously published authors filling 71% of the “best of” list slots.
The data shows there’s never been fewer than 20% of “best of” picks going to debut authors. This seems like a really positive percentage and shows how professionals picking these lists aren’t sticking entirely to those voices that are familiar to them. I think that sort of recognition — one that happens with Morris titles, too — helps these books find new readers and helps grow excitement for those debut authors’ sophomore efforts. 
“Best of” Books By Genre

Genre is touch to figure out every year. Some books could go one way or another way, and some books cross genres and blur the lines between them. In fact, something I’ve noticed about many of the “best of” titles over the years is that many of them seem to find themselves on these lists for that very reason — they are doing unique things with genre, making them stand out as memorable. 
But have there been any trends over the last four years? Is there one kind of book doing more strongly than others? Are there genres which don’t seem to appear as many times as others on these lists?
The first stab I took at genre was in 2011, wherein for some reason I thought it was valuable to separate thrillers from mysteries. There weren’t as many genre-braided titles in this year, though as it shows, contemporary/realistic titles had the most representation, followed closely by fantasy, historical fiction, and then mysteries/thrillers, and science fiction. 
The 2012 breakdown looks a little different than 2011, wherein fantasy titles outranked realistic, followed by historical, science fiction, then mysteries/thrillers. There was a noted drop in historical fiction here from the previous year. 
In 2013, I discovered how much easier this data is to look at in bar form than in pie form. Realistic fiction took the top spots this year, followed by historical fiction, then fantasy. If fantasy and paranormal were folded together, it’s likely it would be even with historical, if not slightly more. 
Even when the subgenres of fantasy were collapsed, realistic fiction still held the most “best of” spots in 2014. Fantasy wasn’t far behind. But most interesting is that historical fiction is nearly non-existent in 2014 on the lists — more books were historical fantasy than actual historical fiction. This year also ushered in more titles that were magical realism, as that was a subgenre/blending of genres not seen in previous years. 
Maybe the most interesting thing about this data is how science fiction hasn’t been a leading genre in the “best of” lists. In fact, it’s fallen a bit — are we not seeing science fiction among the “best” anymore? Has there been a drop in the number of science fiction titles being published? Are science fiction books more likely part of a series and thus not always easy to put on “best” lists? There are more questions than answers, but I want to know more about what’s happening with science fiction in YA. 
Also worth noting: despite the fact everyone considered this to be THE year for contemporary/realistic fiction, it’s not really doing better than in previous years. This is a statement I’ve made since the start, and I’ll stick with it: contemporary/realistic fiction isn’t a trend. It’s a staple, and it’s always been there and always been stable. Even if a couple of big names have made it more prominent in bookstores and in getting marketing/publicity money, the trend isn’t changing how well-respected and regarded it is. People have been reading it and people will continue reading it. 
Diversity and the “Best of” Lists

So…have we been seeing more people of color and more LGBTQ representation on the “best of” lists in the last four years? 
My data on this has been presented a few ways, depending on what information I could find about books or authors in a given year. I haven’t made any of this data visual in the past, so I’m going to continue in that trend:
  • In 2011, 8 books were primarily about or featured a main character of color. 2 featured main characters who identified as LGBTQ. I did not count authors in this year, citing that finding the information was too difficult, and I believe this — people have been identifying more in the last couple of years, making that information more public and accessible. 
  • In 2012, there were 89 books and 90 authors represented in the data. I collapsed representation of people of color this year, meaning the count included both the authors who identified and he books that featured a main character of color. There were 20 titles/authors that fit.  A total of 6 books featured LGBTQ main characters or story lines. 
  • In 2013, I kept the author/character counts separate for people of color, and I found that 8 of the authors were people of color, and 10 of the books featured main characters of color, for a total of 18. There were 55 authors and 62 main characters. A total of 5 books by my count featured main characters who identified as LGBTQ, though as noted in the comments, I didn’t include The Dream Thieves, so there are actually 6. 
  • In 2014, there were 14 main characters/authors that I identified as people of color and a total of 6 books that featured LGBTQ main characters or story lines. 

It’s really tough to tell whether or not things are improving or not. Sure, there are more people of color and more LGBTQ stories represented in the last year than in the first year, but it’s still a very small percentage. As I noted yesterday, only 2 books featured stories where the main character identified as LGBTQ and a person of color. I think it’s about damn time we saw more of these stories and about time we saw more of these stories being recognized. 
What can be said, though, is these numbers are still tiny. 
Final Data and Thoughts


There’s not a lot else to dig into when comparing the data that’s particularly useful — I note every year that Candlewick seems to have a good number of titles on “best of” lists for a publisher as small as they are, and I also note every year that books published as hardcovers have a markedly better time of being recognized as “best of” titles than paperback originals or split run titles. Books published in April, May, September, and October have better chances of landing on lists than those published in November, December, January, July, and August. 

Journals have been changing their number of titles selected each year, and that’s been interesting to see. A few years ago, Kirkus selected 100 titles; this year, they selected 50. Not all of them ended up in my count, since they included fiction and non-fiction, but Kirkus still has the largest number of titles on the list, and the titles Kirkus selects more often only end up on the Kirkus list, as opposed to showing up on numerous lists.

Another worthy element to consider, which I haven’t here but could if I were to dig up all of my original spreadsheets, is whether there are authors who are perennial favorites. I have a suspicion, for example, that Maggie Stiefvater and A. S. King are two authors who have appeared every year on these lists (in fact, I know that they have!). Anyone who is up for the challenge of ferreting that out is more than welcome to do so, and I’d be happy to include that work in a link round-up feature here.

So, with all of this data now here, what’s surprising? Is there anything worth thinking about or any conclusions worth drawing? What sort of picture does this paint about what is considered the best in any given year? What is going on in science fiction?

I’d love to hear thoughts and ideas about this, or anything else noteworthy in the “best of” lists, as there’s now a four-year look at data.

“Best of 2014” in YA Fiction List Break Down

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Every year, I like to dive into the “best of” lists and look at the similarities and differences between and among the lists. More, I think it’s worthwhile to dig into what the books that comprise these lists do or don’t have within them — how diverse are they, how are they representing sexuality, what sort of gender make up are the characters and authors, and so forth. Because the “best of” lists offer a glimpse into the year of reading for YA, this is an interesting and worthwhile way to see what is and isn’t happening.

This is the fourth year I’ve done this, and previous data sets can be found here, here, and here. I do plan on looking through them all and comparing across years, since I am curious whether things are looking any differently now in 2014 than they were in 2011. Look for that in the next week or so.

To look at the numbers, I broke apart the “best of” YA lists from the following professional publications: Kirkus, Horn Book, School Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly. In previous years, I also used Library Journal’s lists — first a “Best YA” list, then a “Best YA for Adult Readers” list — but they didn’t have one this year. From those lists, I pulled out only the YA fiction, meaning that they were titles designated for those readers 12-18. I did not include graphic memoirs, though I did include graphic novels when they were fiction. In the past I’ve eliminated graphic novels, but this year there were only two, so I kept them. This led to a total of 55 titles being tallied in the data. There were 59 authors considered here, as well. I included translators and illustrators in the author category because their work is as important and worth considering. When I get into the charts and designations, there will be further notes about this, as I could not track down information I’d hoped to and had to leave it out in some places.

Using my own knowledge from reading the books or reviews, I determined whether books featured a main character or main arc that included LGBTQ themes. I double-checked that data with Malinda Lo, who will be posting her 2014 round-up of the year in LGBTQ YA this week. I also looked at whether main characters were people of color or an author was a person of color, as determined through my own reading, reviews, and/or easily researched information. I did have to ask about a couple books and authors, and that information was verified for me. In addition to these analytical pieces, I’ve made notes in my data where other elements of diversity were part of a story; this includes mental illness, disabilities, minor roles for characters of color, and so forth. I did not tabulate this data, but it is all available to look at in my giant spreadsheet. Because writing out titles would make this post very, very long, I encourage having that open while looking at the data, as it’ll make referencing which books were counted where easier.

All information about starred reviews came through Jen J’s exceptionally well-done spreadsheet. There is one note to make about this, which is that I also went through Horn Book’s January/February starred reviews to be completist about it, which led to one title on this list having an additional star yet to be noted on her spreadsheet.

As always, caveats: none of this data means anything. I’ve not tried to draw conclusions or suggest certain things about the books that popped up on these lists. Errors here in terms of counting, in how I’ve marked books LGBTQ or POC are my own, and so forth, are all my own. Since I haven’t read all of these books, some of these are educated guesses.

Now…what do those “best of 2014” YA fiction lists look like this year?

Gender Representation In “Best Of” Lists


When it comes to male and female authors, who has more slots on the “best of” lists?

Out of the 59 authors represented, 18 were men and 41 were female. This isn’t a surprising ratio at all, though it certainly looks a lot different than the ratio we see on the New York Times Bestsellers List. While I’m not going to draw comparisons in this post, I can say that this ratio is smaller than in previous years of looking at this data — there are more men represented in 2014 than in previous years. 
It’s really challenging to look at how main character gender breaks down, but I gave it a go. To make it a little easier, I’ve broken the data into three pieces: male main characters, female main characters, and a third segment, cast of characters. For books with two main characters alternating voices, they’ve been counted in their respective categories. For books with more than two main characters — How It Went Down and The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone, for example — I’ve put them into the cast of characters category. Those books all featured multiple narrators, multiple “main” voices, and both male and female perspectives. I counted a total of 63 main characters (“cast” was counted as a single number here) and the breakdown looks like this:
There were a total of 37 main characters who were female, 22 who were male, and 4 books featured a cast of each. For what many like to believe of YA being a “female dominated” category, these numbers really do not suggest that. These “best of” lists represent a slice of YA, of course, but they represent a vetted and respected slice of YA — one professionals deem to be the most solid or remarkable of the year (or as the case might be in some places, the books that had really nice marketing budgets and got into the right hands). There were more female-driven narrators for sure, but they were not entirely out of line with male narratives here. 
Last year, I wondered if the perspective was that male-led narratives were “better” or more respected than female-driven ones. This is something I’m still curious about, given how much talk there is that there aren’t books out there with male voices or that there aren’t male YA authors. Both of those claims are false, as anyone who knows anything about YA can tell you, but looking at the hard numbers from these lists only confirms those claims aren’t truths. There ARE more female led books, but it doesn’t mean male led books don’t exist. They make up 35% of the “best of” lists this year! 
Debut Authors 

How good are the chances of making a “best of” list when you’re a debut author? Note that all four of these lists appeared before YALSA’s announcement of the five Morris finalists. That, I think, is a good thing, since there could be no influence.
As always, my definition of “debut” is purist. This is a first book. My one exception to this is the same one made for the Morris — if it’s an author’s first book in English for a US audience, I consider it a debut. This was the case in one title included. I included authors as “debut” if they had published in or edited an anthology in the past, as that was the case in a couple of authors. 
More than 1/4 of the books on this year’s lists were written by debut authors, for a total of 16 books written by debuts. This is a really nice showing of new voices within “best of” lists. It’s been my suspicion this year has been a great one for debut authors, and I think that has been playing out in these lists, as well as other year-end round-ups. 
What about gender of debut authors? 
One-quarter of the debuts this year were male, while the rest were female. That breaks down into 4 men and 12 women. 
Back to the note on Morris titles: of the books that landed on the Morris list, four out of five of them also appeared on the “best of” lists: The Story of Owen, The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender, Gabi, A Girl in Pieces, and The Carnival at Bray. 
“Best Of” By Genre

Every year, this is the hardest breakdown for me, since genre is so fluid. How do you decide exactly what category a book belongs in if you haven’t read it? Or even if you HAVE read it, the breakdowns can be really challenging. One thing is for sure, though: there are zero paranormal titles hanging with the “best of” crowd this year. 
I took a stab at making these genres make sense, and from looking at the titles, my own reading knowledge, as well as other reviews, I pulled out eight main genres: realistic (which includes those books inexplicably set in the 90s, a trend that I have been over for a couple years now), science fiction, fantasy, horror/fantasy, mystery, historical, magical realism, and historical fantasy. 
A caveat here: there are 56 titles being considered here, rather than just 55. Because Scott Westerfeld’s Afterworlds could fall into either the realistic or the fantasy category, depending on the reader, I didn’t want to make a call. I decided to include it in both.
Realistic fiction had a strong showing this year, but it’s also a little bit deceiving. Because there were a number of subgenres of fantasy represented, it could easily be said that fantasy held its own, too. In fact, let’s look at this genre breakdown as we collapse the subgenres into the larger one. All of the books within the “horror/fantasy” subgenre are more fantasy than they are realistic, so I’m putting them in that grouping. 
And if I went ahead and made magical realism a subgenre of fantasy, then it looks like this:
Fantasy outpaced realistic fiction by one book. The two genres eclipsed science fiction, mystery, and the single, lone book in the historical fiction genre. 
Frequency of “Best of” List Appearances

Was there a big spread of titles across this year’s “best of” lists or did many titles end up on many lists? This is a little bit of a false category in that some of the publications — Horn Book, for example — had a very tiny number of titles that fit the criteria I set. Other publications, like Kirkus, had a big number of titles on their list that fit the criteria. 
Some publications that put their lists out very early, like Publishers Weekly, always fascinate me because I wonder how much it may (or may not) influence the appearance of titles on other lists. In other words, is there a “first!” pride in naming a title the best? These numbers won’t shed light on that, but they do show whether some titles were really popular among all of the “best” lists.
Only two books appeared on all four of the “best” lists — We Were Liars by E Lockhart and This One Summer by Jillian and Mariko Tamaki. The vast majority of books landed on one list, and that list would be Kirkus’s. 
Out of curiosity, I wanted to know how the books on the “best of” list shook out when it came to starred reviews earned. I used Jen J’s spreadsheet, as noted above, which includes starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, School Library Journal, Publisher’s Weekly, and Horn Book. That means titles have the chance to have up to six stars. 
Most of the books on the “best of” list earned 1 or 2 starred reviews. Out of the 55 books, only two earned six stars: This One Summer and Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future. 
This One Summer by the Tamakis landed on all four lists and earned six starred reviews. It is, by this measure, the most decorated and distinguished YA novel in 2014. 
As for the entire breakdown of starred reviews and list honors, here’s the spreadsheet:
Sometimes the more stars earned means the more likely the book will appear on multiple “best of” lists and sometimes, it doesn’t. In general, this year looked to be more spread out in terms of the titles being given a “best of” designation. 
“Best of” By Publication Date

One really interesting thing I read in the reports by YALSA committee chairs for an upcoming board meeting was that books published in the latter half of the year had a distinct disadvantage when it came to being considered for the Morris award, which announces its finalists in early December. This is something I have always thought about, especially when it comes to these “best of” lists. While it’s great to announce them in early November or even the first week of December, what about the books that are published later? Reviews are obviously reading all year long, but how easily would a smaller title from a smaller publisher with a not-so-huge marketing budget fall under the radar? Most people know that “big books” are published in the March – May range, as well as the September – October range. That’s not a hard-and-fast rule nor universal, but spend a little time looking at publication frequency, budgets, when book publication dates change, and so forth, and you see the patterns. 
Here’s when the books published each month:
If you look at the first half of the year against the last half of the year, the divide is almost exactly even: 28 of the “best of” titles published between January and the end of June, while 27 published between July and December. October was the most frequent month — how much is that due to fresh memory of titles when list-making time happens? There were zero books published in December on these lists, and there was only one title from the months of November and June. 
Again, nothing can be said about this, but it is interesting to speculate. 


“Best of” By Publisher

How diverse were the publishers represented on the lists? Did we see Candlewick doing really well, as seems to be the case every single year?
I’ve collapsed imprints into their bigger house, so First Second, Tor, and St Martins fall under Macmillan. 
This chart is difficult to read, but breaking it into two charts throws off scaling, which is even more problematic. Everything to the right of Macmillan, which reaches 6 and is in dark blue, lands at one title each. These are primarily smaller publishers, like Pyr, Soho Teen, Holiday House, Algonquin, and so forth. 
Penguin had the most representation on this year’s lists, with 8 books, followed by Random House at 7, Macmillan at 6, and — as always, this makes me so happy — Candlewick had 5. 
While Penguin and Random House are now one publishing house, I chose to keep them separate. Putting them together is really fascinating though: they certainly dominate then, with a total of 15 titles on the “best of” lists. 

Collapsing the publishers down by whether they’re a “Big 5/6” or smaller, the “Big 5/6” have a total of 32 titles on the list, while the mid-size and small publishers have 23. Not a bad split at all. 


LGBTQ and POC Representation on “Best of” Lists

This was a watershed year for discussion of diversity in the publishing world. While it’s always been there, this year, in comparison to prior years, it was a much bigger, more vocal discussion. But did it make any impact on the books on these lists? 
It would be a tease to compare to years past in this post, but the long and the short of it is that the answer is no.
As noted above, I used my own knowledge, research, and consultation with Malinda Lo to pull out the books which featured main characters who identified as LGBTQ or which had significant story lines that involved LGBTQ themes or situations. Where Malinda doesn’t count Sarah McCarry’s About A Girl since it’s not necessarily overt, I have included it, since I thought it was a big enough thread to merit inclusion. I do not look at author’s sexuality when looking at LGBTQ because this is too difficult to gauge without knowing the authors — it’s not obvious, sexuality is fluid, and not all authors choose to self-identify in their bios or information available about them. 
Out of the 55 books, a total of 6 books fit the LGBTQ criteria. That would be 10% of the list. 
What about representation of racial diversity? Because finding information about authors and their racial backgrounds is easier, I fold them into the same category as I do main characters of color. For books where the author is a person of color and their main character is a person of color, I counted it only once. Some authors, whose background may be difficult to distinguish, I reached out to them or to those who know them for confirmation. 
Out of the 55 books and 59 authors, there was a count of 14 writers/main characters of color. That’s roughly 24%. 
What about books that feature or are written by people of color that feature LGBTQ main characters or plot elements? 
2.
It’s still very straight and very white on the “best of” lists. 
It’s worth noting again, though, that some of the books DO feature secondary characters who aren’t straight or aren’t white; those have been noted in the spreadsheet. 

Miscellaneous Data

Let’s wrap this up with a couple more pieces of data that are interesting, even if they’re not necessarily important ones. 
First, there were a total of 49 books published as hardcovers, 3 published as paperback originals, and 3 published as split runs (meaning both hardcover and paperbacks published at the same time). 
Three of the books were novels in verse, and I include Jenny Hubbard’s And We Stay in this count, even though it’s only partially in verse. I did not include Gabi, A Girl in Pieces, though it does include poetry in it. This list also had 3 graphic novels and 1 book in an “alternative” format — The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone‘s interview-format made it worth putting into a category all of its own. 
I’ve always looked at country of origin on these lists, too, as they often seem like they feature a lot of books by authors who aren’t from the US. This year, there were a total of 40 authors who were from the US, and there were 18 from outside the US. I did not include information on one of the illustrators, as I could find nothing about her in my research and didn’t want to make assumptions either way in terms of her country of origin (I did find enough to know other data about her, as reflected above). 
Finally, I broke out books by whether or not they were stand alones or part of a series. There were 39 stand alone titles and 16 books that were part of a series. This included “loose” series, like Dirty Wings. Of the books in a series, I found where they fell within their series to be one of the most interesting pieces of data — where you’d suspect almost entirely first or final books in a series to hit these “best of” lists, it turns out that this year was a good year for books in the middle of a series-in-progress. There was one book that was a final in a series, 10 that were first in a series, and 5 that fell somewhere in the middle. 

So…What Now?


Nothing can be made from this data. It doesn’t mean anything, especially pulled from its context. But nevertheless, it’s interesting to look at and speculate upon because it does give a glimpse into the year of YA as deemed by professionals and experts on YA.

Were there any surprises in this data? Any titles that did or didn’t make the lists that were curious?

One thing I keep wondering about and have zero explanation for — and would love to read some theories about — is why Andrew Smith’s Grasshopper Jungle earned more acclaim from review journals and “best of” lists than his second release this year, 100 Sideways Miles, which was a title on the National Book Awards long list. I thought it was a more accomplished, literary, and full novel (not to mention it portrayed females as actual dynamic characters, rather than as props for use by the male heroes). It was surprising Smith didn’t have both books pop up on these “best of” lists.

“Best of 2013” and “Best of 2012” YA Lists Compared & What We Should Talk About

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On Tuesday and yesterday, I looked at the data about this year’s “best of” lists, as tallied from School Library Journal, Kirkus, Horn Book, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal’s “Best YA for Adults.” I used almost the exact same metrics as I did in 2012, adjusting a bit for new categories and removing a couple I didn’t necessarily find that interesting or have enough data to pull together into anything worth looking at.

Because I used the same tally sheet and looked at so many of the same factors, I thought it would be worthwhile to compare what the “best of” lists in 2012 looked like against this year’s “best of” lists. Were there any notable differences between the two years? Were there more books considered “best” one year than the other? Was there a big difference in gender representation? What about other factors? If “best of” lists give a snapshot of a year in YA, then what will comparing two consecutive years say about preferences in “best” books? Again, this is all data and nothing conclusive can be said about it, but it is interesting to look and speculate.

In both 2012 and 2013, I used the same criteria to define a YA book. I didn’t look at non-fiction, and I didn’t include graphic novels in the final results. In both years, I also took Amazon’s age rating of the book being for those 12 and older as a standard for “YA fiction.”

Range and Spread of Titles Selected


The first thing that caught my attention when looking at the 2013 data was that it seemed like there were far fewer books being labeled “best of” than there were in 2012. Turns out, my suspicions were correct.

Note that this bar chart begins at 50 and Google won’t let me change it to begin at 0. But it shouldn’t matter, as it’s pretty clear there’s a difference in titles selected: last year, there were 89 unique titles on the “best of” lists. This year, there were only 55.

I decided to look at each publication and compare their number of unique choices last year against this year. Every publication selected more YA fiction last year than they did this year, except for Publishers Weekly, which picked 16 titles this year and only 11 last year. There’s a big difference in Kirkus’s number of choices, where they had selected 82 last year and 42 this year. Repeated titles were included here, as long as it was a unique journal which selected it (in other words, every instance of Far, Far Away counted as an individual title, as long as it was a different journal that picked it).

Even accounting for the non-fiction and graphic novel selections — which were minimal this year, as well — there were definitely fewer books selected as “best of” this year.

Does the fewer number of titles being selected as “best of” suggest that maybe this was a weaker year for YA fiction? Or if that’s not the case, did fewer books stand out and resonate this year among editors tasked with selecting the bests? Most “best of” lists are decided by vote and by the editors of the journals, and I wonder if there’s any correlation between the number of “best of” titles selected and the number of starred reviews earned this year. In other words, did fewer books earn starred reviews in 2013 than in 2012?

Even with Kirkus’s more esoteric selections, as discussed yesterday, there seem to be surprisingly few bests this year. Is this a trend we’re going to continue to see in the coming years or will 2013 be sort of an outlier?

Author Gender and “Best of” Lists


I didn’t keep track of the gender of the main characters in 2012 the way I did in 2013 (part of it having to do with having way more books on the 2012 list), but I did look at the gender of the authors on both sets of lists. For 2012, there were a total of 90 authors and in 2013, there were a total of 55.

In 2012:

There were 72 females and 18 males.

In 2013:

There were 41 females and 14 males.

As can be seen, there was a smaller percentage of female authors in 2013 than there were comparatively in 2012. Eighty percent of the authors in 2012 were female, whereas about 75% were female in 2013.

Although there aren’t hard numbers to represent all of the YA books published as categorized by author gender in these years, it does make me wonder a little bit if there were fewer female authors in 2013. Or were there fewer female-written books that stood out as “best?” It’s a small percentage drop, of course, but it’s an interesting trend, especially when taken in light of the data about the New York Times gender split for their YA list.

Debut Novelists on the “Best of” Lists

Did debut novelists do better in 2012 than they did in 2013 when it comes to being on the “best of” lists? Let’s take a look.

In 2012:

There were a total of 18 debut novelists in 2012, which came to 20% of the total number of authors on the “best of” list.

Compare to 2013:

There were 11 debut novelists in 2013, which also equalled a total of 20% of the authors on this year’s “best of” lists. In other words, no difference in debut novelists on the lists in the last year.

Genre Representation in “Best of” Lists

I mentioned that this year, there was a rise in realistic fiction in frequency of appearance on the “best of” lists. I thought it was notable, as the last couple of years have mentioned that realistic fiction would become “the next big thing,” and the “best of” lists at least suggested that realistic fiction caught more critical attention this year.

But was there a rise in realistic fiction this year as compared to last year? And if so, what was in abundance last year that maybe didn’t show itself as popular among the “best of” lists this year?

Here’s the 2012 breakdown:

Fantasy took up the largest portion of the “best of” lists, though realistic held its own. Last year, when I did the genre breakdown, I made “mystery and thriller” a separate category, which I did not do this year. I suspect if I were to reconsider categories, many of those books would end up under realistic fiction, thus making it about the same size as fantasy in terms of appearances on the list. Historical and science fiction followed in popularity.

There were more historical novels on this year’s “best of” lists than there were in 2012, with roughly 24% of the books falling under that genre. Compare to last year’s 14%. But what’s most notable is that fantasy dropped sharply this year, at roughly 19%, while in 2012, fantasy occupied almost 40% of the “best of” lists. There were also fewer novels categorized as science fiction that appeared in 2013 than in 2012.

Realistic fiction’s presence on the “best of” lists definitely increased, even if the mystery/thriller category is rolled into realistic fiction for 2012’s counts. This year, realistic fiction was nearly 44% of the “best of” lists.

Best of by List Frequency

With the fact there were fewer books on this year’s “best of” list than in 2012, as well as a shift a bit in terms of genre representation, I thought it would also be worth looking at the frequency of titles appearing across multiple lists. There were 5 lists total, and I was curious whether more books would appear more frequently on lists in 2012 or in 2013.

In 2012, here’s what the frequency of books on the “best of” books looked like:

The vast majority of books only showed up on one list, though a good portion also showed up on two lists. Smaller numbers appeared on three and four lists, and there was a single book which appeared on all five of the lists (that went to Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity). For the curious, the books which were on four lists each last year were Vaunda Nelson’s No Crystal Stair, Margo Lanagan’s Brides of Rollrock Island, AS King’s Ask the Passengers, John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, and Libba Bray’s The Diviners.

Compare to 2013:

There were a smaller percentage of books appearing on a single list this year than last, but there was a pretty big increase in the percentage of books on two lists, as opposed to one list in 2012. That’s percentage-wise, though, of the total number of books across the five lists. Raw numbers show that it was actually only an increase of one book appearing on two lists this year — 11 in 2013, rather than 10 in 2012. Both years saw a total of five books on three lists, though because of the smaller number of books overall on this year’s list, the percentage appears larger.

As mentioned in a previous data post, there were no books this year that ended up on all five of the “best of” lists (except for Boxers and Saints, which was not included in any of the data because I didn’t include it in YA fiction but considered it a graphic novel instead).

So What Does This All Mean?


In the big context of “best of” lists and accolades at the end of any given year in YA fiction, the data doesn’t really say a whole lot. It does, however, give us a picture of what a year in YA looks like. This year, it appears we have fewer female authors penning books considered “best of” (though it’s still a larger percentage than male authors), and we have many more realistic fiction filling out the lists than other genres.

We have fewer books earning multiple spots on “best of” lists, but with fewer books overall, what does that say? Again, the question I keep circling back to and have from the beginning of looking at this data is how much one list impacts another list and how much marketing may influence these things.

This year felt like a noteworthy one when it came to books being sold to readers and sold to readers in a very big way. There appeared to be a lot more money spent on a lot fewer titles, and I wonder how much of that reflects in these “best of” lists. The more a book is sold as a great book, how much more likely are we to believe that?

Even the most objective readers can’t avoid hearing and seeing the buzz about certain books. I’m not suggesting that editorial boards choosing their “best of” are swayed by this kind of marketing, but rather, this kind of marketing really did stick out this year more than other years. Which then leads me to another set of questions that seem to be the ones authors and creative types deal with themselves: do these “best of” list creators stick to their purely objective “best of” picks or do they feel at times pressured to bend to what the popular opinion of the “best of” books might be?

The most popular book this year among the “Best of” selections this year was Rowell’s Eleanor & Park. It was a good book.

But this was also a book that received spectacular marketing and publicity. It got a review in the New York Times by John Green, along with five starred reviews. That wasn’t lost on the book’s marketing, either — how many places was the book heralded as one that John Green himself loved and that other readers would, too? It was SMART. It helped a new YA author, who had only published one book into the adult market prior, gain immense traction and attention very quickly (it didn’t hurt the attention Rowell’s second book out this year received, either, as we were reminded that Green loved her first book in the marketing there, too). Readers have fallen in love with Eleanor & Park over and over, and it showed up on nearly every list this year where adult readers were told it’s okay to read YA because of books like that.

Was it this year’s “best” book? Would this book be seen as this good were it not for all of the marketing behind it? What about without all of the adult praise it earned (you know, it’s a “YA book that is okay for grown ups to read”)? This book was impossible to avoid, whether you were a YA reader or you weren’t a YA reader.

It’s hard not to think about the other books that came out this year that were as good as Rowell’s. But what were they? Are they some of those books Kirkus called out that, yesterday, I questioned as to why they were on the list in the first place? Have I become accustomed to thinking that outliers on these lists indicate a poor choice? Or is Kirkus on to something I’m unaware of because those books have yet to be sold and marketed to me as a reader (or more accurately, as a librarian who buys these books and then sells them to teen readers)?

The smaller the field of “bests,” the more I wonder what was overlooked simply because a few big titles had so much weight behind them.

Of course I have no answers. I just have a lot more questions, and they’re the kinds of questions I like to end a year with because they make me reevaluate my own reading, my own means of book recommendation, and my own personal “favorite” or “best of” lists. How much farther out do I want to reach to find hidden gems? How many of the big books should I make sure I do read because maybe I am missing something big there, too?

As of this writing, I haven’t yet seen the Booklist nor the BCCB “best of” lists, and I’m curious how those will stack up against these lists. Likewise, what will YALSA committees select as best books with their Printz this year, their Quick Picks, or their Best Fiction for Young Adults?

I’d love thoughts and ideas regarding this year’s best of picks, especially as they compare to last year’s. Any thoughts? Do you have any books you wish had seen time on the “best of” lists that didn’t show up? What about books that appeared on the list that make you scratch your head a bit?