Salon’s ultimate book guide for 2013

Got gift certificates to spend? James McBride, Elizabeth Gilbert, Junot Diaz and many more have suggestions

Michele Filgate

Salon reached out to a bunch of writers who had new books out this year to find out what their favorite book of the year was. We saw a lot of books by big-name writers: Donna Tartt, Jonathan Lethem and Elizabeth Gilbert, just to name a few. But 2013 was a good year for lesser-known writers, too. Here are some titles you should add to your to-be-read piles. Now you just have to find the time to read them.

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The 13 Best Biographies, Memoirs, and History Books of 2013

By Maria Popova

 

From Alan Turing to Susan Sontag, by way of a lost cat, a fierce Victorian lady-journalist, and some very odd creative habits.

It’s that time of year again, the time for those highly subjective, grossly non-exhaustive, yet inevitable and invariably fun best-of reading lists. To kick off the season, here are my thirteen favorite biographies, memoirs, and history books of 2013.

 

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NPR’s Book Concierge

Our Guide To 2013’s Great Reads

by Jeremy Bowers, Nicole Cohen, Danny DeBelius, Camila Domonoske, Rose Friedman, Christopher Groskopf, Petra Mayer, Beth Novey and Shelly Tan

Choose your own adventure! Use the categories below to search through more than 200 standout titles selected by NPR staff and critics. (You can also combine categories!) Then click on the books’ covers to find out why we love them.

(But wait! No best-of lists this year? Here’s why we decided to try something new.)

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Salon’s ultimate book guide

Clockwise from top left: Gillian Flynn, Andrew Solomon, Adam Johnson, Junot Diaz, Claire Vaye Watkins, Victor LaValle

Junot Díaz, Gillian Flynn, Andrew Solomon, Molly Ringwald and 50 other authors recommend their favorites of 2012

By Michele Filgate

As part of a long-standing Salon tradition, we asked the authors of the books that we loved most this year to tell us about a 2012 book they read and loved. Junot Diaz, Gillian Flynn, Lauren Groff, Andrew Solomon, Tana French, Victor LaValle, Jess Walter, Maggie Shipstead and more contribute their picks below. Take the whole story shopping.

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All the 2012 Best-of Reading Lists, Together at Last

By Maria Popova

The year’s finest reading, organized by subject.

The year’s finest reading, by subject – art, science, psychology, design, history, food, children’s, graphic nonfiction, music, and more.

By popular demand, here are all of this year’s best-of omnibus reading lists, in one shareable place:

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PW Staff: Our Favorite Books We Read in 2012

PW has already named its Best Books of 2012, but since readers rarely get to see the faces behind the scenes, we thought we’d let our staff share the best book they read in 2012, because deep down, we’re all just book nerds. Here are our staff picks.

 

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Most Overlooked Books of 2012: A Literary Mixtape

By Jason Boog

What book do you wish more people had read this year? People love to create Best of the Year lists every December, but we prefer to spotlight the most overlooked books each season.

Below, we are linking to free samples of the Most Overlooked Books of 2012.

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Best Books of 2012: Friends of LitReactor Edition with Irvine Welsh, Jack Ketchum, Douglas Coupland, and Stephen Graham Jones

By Joshua Chaplinsky

We’ve already given you our staff picks for the Best Books of 2012, as well as a supplemental Genre Edition for the geeks, but who the hell cares what a bunch of nobodies have to say when some real, live authors are willing to tell us what to read?

Seriously, though, we’ve had the privilege of making friends with some amazing writers, and we figured what better way to close out the year than with a special Friends of LitReactor best of list. So we reached out like a grubby urchin begging for alms and they were kind enough to share their favorite reads of 2012 with us.

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The Books We Loved in 2012

By Jen Doll

As with this year’s Y.A. offerings, adult fiction and nonfiction were pretty phenomenal in 2012. We’ve again enlisted the help of some of our favorite writers and book lovers to help recognize those works for the latest in The Atlantic Wire’s Year in Review, this time for the “grown-up reads.” Most of these are books published this year, though we’ve occasionally paid homage to works from previous years that we rediscovered or read for the first time in 2012. In any case, these are all books that moved us greatly in some way or another in the last 12 months.

Of course, no best book list can truly be complete, and there are some fantastic, thought-provoking works we have not included below, like Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be?, Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers, and Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies, to name a few. Rest assured they have not been forgotten — in fact, they appear on many a best-of list, including another one around these parts.

Read on for 34 of our favorite books of the year, in no particular order, and why we loved them — with superlatives!

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The 10 Best Psychology and Philosophy Books of 2012

By Maria Popova

From Buddhism to the relationship between creativity and dishonesty, by way of storytelling and habit.

After the best science books, art books, and design books of 2012, the season’s subjective selection of best-of reading lists continue with the most stimulating philosophy, psychology, and creativity books published this year.

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