The Best of the Best 2013 - Aggregated and Updated

Publishers Lunch

The competition for the very best books of 2013 has taken shape in the last week since our first installment of our annual "Best of the Best of" aggregation. The latest "votes" added to our count include lists from New York magazine, Entertainment Weekly (for fiction, and nonfiction), Slate, and the Seattle Times. This week we're providing two separate top ten-ish lists (ranked based on 31 lists and awards to date).

In fiction, five different books are in a tight race for the year's most admired work:

Best of the Best of 2013 Fiction (So Far)

1. Tenth of December, George Saunders (12)
2. Life after Life, Kate Atkinson (11)
3. The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt (10)
4.The Son, Philipp Meyer
5. The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri (9)
6. The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton (7)
7.A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, Anthony Marra
8. And the Mountains Echoed, Khaled Hosseini (6)
9.The Flamethrowers, Rachel Kushner

Also:
Four other books have five votes so far: The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman; The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert; The Woman Who Lost Her Soul, Bob Shacochis; and The Interestings, Meg Wolitzer. (An interesting side note: 6 of those top 13 fiction titles were excerpted pre-publication in one of our free 2013 Buzz Books ebook samplers.)

Nonfiction maintains its own set of leaders:

Best of the Best of 2013 Nonfiction (So Far)
1. Five Days at Memorial, Sheri Fink (9)
2. Going Clear, Lawrence Wright (8)
3. The Unwinding, George Packer (7)
4. Men We Reaped, Jesmyn Ward (6)
5. Lawrence in Arabia, Scott Anderson (5)
6.Thank You For Your Service, David Finkel
7.Book of Ages, Jill Lepore
8. Wave, Sonali Deraniyagala (4)
9. A House in the Sky, Amanda Lindhout & Sara Corbett (3)
10.The War That Ended Peace, Margaret MacMillan
11.Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg