What Can You Learn From End-of-Year Book Roundups?
One of the things I love about the holiday season is how everyone creates year-end best-of lists. From Oprah’s holiday gift picks to 20 things you can buy on Amazon that you didn’t know you needed to the best gifts for cyclists (my husband is one), I read them all. My all-time favorites are the best-of-the-year book lists, and I realized as I was devouring them that writers can learn so much from them. Here are a few great lessons, reminders, and inspirations:
1.) Books are sold by category
The Buzzfeed list is broken down by genre and category. I sent out the link to 6 different clients, friends, and family members because of the way they presented the books. It made me instantly think of people I know who would be interested in that category — and this is, in fact, the way that books are sold: Word of mouth from one person to another. You mention a book to someone because of some particular reason that they will care. When you are writing a book, you have to know who that someone is and why they will care. In other words, you have to know your category.
2.) Some books get all the love
I saw the same books coming up again and again and again on all the lists. Slate, The New Yorker, and NPR all feature two or all three of the following: Trust Exercise by Susan Choi, On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, and The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead.
Maybe these books are clearly superior to all the other books, or maybe they are the ones everyone is talking about in certain circles, or maybe these books just got lucky breaks. We don’t know why certain books get more attention than others, but the fact is that they do.
3.) Some books you just want to read for their titles
The Guardian list had a book called This is Not a Book About Charles Darwin: A Writer’s Journey Through my Family by Emma Darwin. I literally know nothing but that — but I’m buying it. Great titles do that: they rope you in all on their own.
4.) Book people are creative in other ways
Look at the embroidery art that highlighted the best of books list at the Washington Post!!! I was so smitten, I went to see who made it and if it was for sale. The artist’s name is Sarah K Benning. She is an embroidery artist. This piece was marked as sold — my bet is the editor who commissioned it bought it the moment she saw it because that’s what I would have done.
5.) YA books have the best covers
Speaking of art, YA books have the best covers. Look at the covers on Seventeen magazine’s list. They’re each a gorgeous world of their own. They make you want to dive in.
6.) Children’s books are the best books
My children are all grown up and I don’t have very young children in my life right now, but I loved that time of life — going to the library and bringing home stacks of books, going to the bookstore and looking at all the spectacular stories and art. Books for young children are so powerful because you KNOW they’re going to change lives. They’re going to turn their readers into readers and writers and artists and thinkers. You can feel the power oozing from their pages. I wanted to hold each book on The New York Times’ Best Children’s Books list in my hands and put them on my bookshelf for when next I have young children to read to.
7.) Books might just be our species’ salvation
The Book Riot list has so many books by writers from diverse backgrounds of every kind, and they point to worlds so different from my own. The sheer breadth of ideas this list covers is mind-boggling — and makes me remember to stretch outside of my normal book-reading habits to make room for all the different voices. Reading those voices may just be the way out of the divisiveness that plagues us.
8.) Books carry messages of hope, healing, solace, salvation, education, understanding, and so much more
I read the Buzzfeed holiday gift book recommendations (already mentioned in #1) and wanted all the books. All of them. I was clicking madly on books I had not heard of and books I had, putting them on wish lists and TBR lists and bookstore lists. I felt a giant, energizing wave of every good emotion you can feel about humanity. All I could think was thank goodness these writers had the thought to write their books, and took the time to write them well, and invested in getting them out into the world where we can enjoy them and learn from them and grow from them. And also thank goodness that I have so many book-reading friends in my life. I know I will have so many good conversations based on all these books I’m going to read and that they’re going to read.
That famous quote about heaven being some kind of library? A place filled with books and the people who read them? It’s a heaven we can also have here on earth.
