The end of the year is approaching, the universe is expanding, and the internet is updating—right now, it is mostly updating its Best Of lists. Therefore, per Literary Hub tradition, I will now present to you the Ultimate List, otherwise known as the List of Lists—in which I read all the Best Of lists and count which books are recommended most.
This year, I sorted through 62 lists from 48 publications, which yielded a total of 1,132 books. (I can only say: yikes.) 94 of those books made it onto 5 or more lists, and I have collated these for you here, in descending order of frequency.
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20 lists:
James McBride, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
19 lists:
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars
David Grann, The Wager
Zadie Smith, The Fraud
16 lists:
Jonathan Eig, King: A Life
15 lists:
Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood
R.F. Kuang, Yellowface
Rebecca Makkai, I Have Some Questions For You
Ann Patchett, Tom Lake
Safiya Sinclair, How to Say Babylon
Jesmyn Ward, Let Us Descend
14 lists:
Mariana Enriquez, tr. Megan McDowell, Our Share of Night
Paul Murray, The Bee Sting
13 lists:
S.A. Cosby, All the Sinners Bleed
Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World
Catherine Lacey, Biography of X
12 lists:
Claire Dederer, Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma
Deepti Kapoor, Age of Vice
Victor LaValle, Lone Women
11 lists:
Emma Cline, The Guest
Daniel Mason, North Woods
Justin Torres, Blackouts
Abraham Verghese, The Covenant of Water
Colson Whitehead, Crook Manifesto
10 lists:
Matthew Desmond, Poverty, By America
Lauren Groff, The Vaster Wilds
Kelly Link, White Cat, Black Dog: Stories
Jonathan Rosen, The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions
C Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey
9 lists:
Darrin Bell, The Talk
Timothy Egan, A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them
Alice McDermott, Absolution
Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful
John Valliant, Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World
8 lists:
Jen Beagin, Big Swiss
Jamel Brinkley, Witness
Nicole Chung, A Living Remedy: A Memoir
Anne Enright, The Wren, The Wren
Jenny Erpenbeck, tr. Michael Hofmann, Kairos
Tania James, Loot
Jessica Knoll, Bright Young Women
Hilary Leichter, Terrace Story
Christina Sharpe, Ordinary Notes
Maggie Smith, You Could Make This Place Beautiful
Héctor Tobar, Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino”
Ilyon Woo, Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
7 lists:
Daniel Clowes, Monica
Michael Finkel, The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession
Homer, tr. Emily Wilson, The Iliad
Benjamin Labatut, The MANIAC
Dennis Lehane, Small Mercies
Elliot Page, Pageboy: A Memoir
6 lists:
Sebastian Barry, Old God’s Time
Gary J. Bass, Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia
Ned Blackhawk, The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History
Tania Branigan, Red Memory: The Afterlives of China’s Cultural Revolution
Tananarive Due, The Reformatory
Teju Cole, Tremor
Tessa Hadley, After the Funeral and Other Stories
Isabella Hammad, Enter Ghost
Rachel Heng, The Great Reclamation
Tahir Hamut Izgil, Waiting to Be Arrested at Night: A Uyghur Poet’s Memoir of China’s Genocide
Angie Kim, Happiness Falls
Deborah Levy, August Blue
Yiyun Li, Wednesday’s Child: Stories
Lorrie Moore, I Am Homeless If This is Not My Home
Donovan X. Ramsey, When Crack Was King: A People’s History of a Misunderstood Era
Britney Spears, The Woman in Me
Barbra Streisand, My Name is Barbra
Alice Winn, In Memoriam
Yepoka Yeebo, Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World
5 lists:
Naomi Alderman, The Future
Anne Berest, tr. Tina Kover, The Postcard
Cat Bohannon, Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution
Tom Crewe, The New Life
Patricia Engel, The Faraway World
Patricia Evangelista, Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country
Anna Funder, Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell’s Invisible Life
Cristina Rivera Garza, Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice
Paul Harding, This Other Eden
Mick Herron, The Secret Hours
Nathan Hill, Wellness
Lydia Kiesling, Mobility
Jhumpa Lahiri, tr. Jhumpa Lahiri and Todd Portnowitz, Roman Stories
Andrew Leland, The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight
Ayana Mathis, The Unsettled
Marie NDiaye, tr. Jordan Stump, Vengeance Is Mine
Mark O’Connell, A Thread of Violence: A Story of Truth, Invention, and Murder
Caroline O’Donoghue, The Rachel Incident
Ed Park, Same Bed Different Dreams
Salman Rushdie, Victory City
Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki, Roaming
Brandon Taylor, The Late Americans
Paul Yoon, The Hive and the Honey
List of Lists Surveyed:
The New Yorker’s The Best Books of 2023 (The Essentials) • The New York Times’s 100 Notable Books of 2023 and 10 Best Books of 2023 • TIME’s The 100 Must-Read Books of 2023 • The Atlantic’s The Books That Made Us Think the Most This Year • Publishers Weekly’s Best Books 2023 • The Wall Street Journal’s The 10 Best Books of 2023 • The Los Angeles Times’s 13 Best Novels (And 2 Best Short Story Collections) of 2023 • The Washington Post‘s 50 Notable Works of Fiction and 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction and 10 Best Books of 2023 • Vulture’s The Best Books of 2023 • Slate’s The 10 Best Books of 2023 (Laura Miller) and The 10 Best Books of 2023 (Dan Kois) • Electric Literature’s Best Novels of 2023, Best Nonfiction of 2023, and Best Short Story Collections of 2023 • The Economist’s Best Books of 2023 • Vanity Fair’s 20 Favorite Books of 2023 • Esquire’s The 20 Best Books of 2023 • Oprah Daily’s The Best Books of 2023 • Den of Geek’s Best Books of 2023 • Amazon’s Top 20 Books of the Year • Book Riot’s Best Books of 2023 • Chicago Tribune’s 10 Best Books for 2023 • Inside Hook’s The 10 Best Books of 2023 • The Guardian’s Best Books of 2023 • Powell’s Books’ Best Books of 2023: Fiction and Best Books of 2023: Nonfiction • Real Simple’s 60 Best Books of 2023 • Good Housekeeping’s The Must-Read Books of 2023 • AIR MAIL’s 12 Best Books of 2023 • The New York Public Library’s Best Books for Adults 2023 • The Boston Globe’s 55 Books We Loved in 2023 • Book Soup’s Best Books of 2023 • The Chicago Review of Books’ Best Books We Read in 2023 • The California Review of Books’ 10 Best Books of 2023 • The Globe and Mail’s The Globe 100: The Best Books of 2023 • Tattered Cover’s Books of the Year 2023 • ELLE’s Editors Share the Books They Loved Best in 2023 • The New Statesman’s 20 Best Books of 2023 • Harper’s Bazaar’s The 45 Best New Books of 2023 You Won’t Put Down • The Chicago Public Library’s Favorite Books of 2023 and Top 10 Books of 2023 • BookPage’s Best Fiction of 2023 and Best Nonfiction of 2023 and Best Mystery & Suspense of 2023 and Best Romance of 2023 and Best SFF & Horror of 2023 and 10 Best Books of 2023 • Shelf Awareness’s Best Adult Books of 2023 • Kirkus Reviews’ Best Fiction Books of the Year and Best Nonfiction Books of the Year • Library Journal’s Best Books 2023 • The Telegraph’s 50 Best Books of 2023 • The Conversation’s Best Books of 2023 • The New York Post’s Best Books of 2023 • PEOPLE’s Top 10 Books of 2023 • Foreign Affairs’ The Best of Books 2023 • Town & Country’s The Best Books of 2023 • The Independent’s 25 Best Books of the Year • and of course, Literary Hub’s The 38 Best Books We Read in 2023.
