Welcome to The Best of Book Riot. Here’s your weekend edition with the most popular stories from the week that was.
Somehow, we are already knocking on November’s door, which is great for new books, but also nerve-racking because of…just everything. I don’t know about y’all, but I am tired tired.
There are, at least, a lot of new books coming out to both distract us and even expand our understanding of certain things. Haruki Murakami and Robin Wall Kimmerer both have new books out this month, and there’s a bookish memoir and a tale of revenge to look forward to.
My second favorite best-of list just dropped (I won’t keep you in suspense: the NYT’s 100 Notable Books list is #1), and Everett is the cover, continuing James‘s romp through the early going of awards/best-of season. I had a reader email from someone inside the business saying James was going to sweep in a way we may never have seen anyone sweep before. The blurb for why James is one of the 10 Best Books of the Year from this PW list I think gets it exactly and succinctly right: “Everett has ascended to blockbuster status without leaving behind what makes him special.” Wish I had put it so well.
Even if you’re not usually a horror reader, this is the perfect time to dip your toe in those bloody waters. I just finished a Halloween-themed readathon this weekend, which I do every year with a couple of friends, and I always look forward to it. Reading a book cover-to-cover, especially in one sitting, is a very different experience than reading a chapter or two at a time.
Because publishing is not stingy in its overall quantity release for mystery and thriller books, I decided to split the Best of the Past 10 Years into one for just mysteries and now one for just thrillers. While a book can be both a mystery and a thriller, for each list I focused on either the mystery or the thriller being the major component for the majority of the book. Once again, I counted the past 10 years as books published in the US from 2014 through the year 2023, and I broke my picks out into categories for what the book is the best of to hit a wide range of tropes and reading tastes.
For the latest Book Riot Podcast, Jeff O’Neal and I talked about a list of questions about the world of books and reading that he would love to have answered but knows are impossible.