Booksellers nominated the “books they have felt the most pride in recommending to readers of all interests through the year.” B&N booksellers will now vote on their favorite, and the top book of the year will be announced November 14th. Here are the finalists: Surprisingly, only three of these titles overlap with B&N’s earlier Best Books of 2022 list: Lessons in Chemistry, Babel, and Skandar and the Unicorn Thief. Notably missing are come of the years’ biggest titles, like I‘m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy — though the booksellers featured Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, one of the year’s buzziest books, which was missing from that earlier list. Babel by R.F. Kuang The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher An Immense World by Ed Yong Skandar and the Unicorn Thief by A.F. Steadman The Three Billy Goats Gruff by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen Turkey and the Wolf: Flavor Trippin’ in New Orleans by Mason Hereford with JJ Goode Apollo Remastered: The Ultimate Photographic Record by Andy Saunders Ice Cold: A Hip-Hop Jewelry History by Vikki Tobak The booksellers’ list includes more obscure or narrowly focused books, like a history of hip-hop jewelry and a New Orleans cookbook, as well as a picture book. This voting structure is an interesting middle ground between editors’ picks (like the New York Times’s Best Books of the Year) and public voting (like the Goodreads Choice Awards), which appears to allow for titles to get featured that would not likely show up in those other formats. Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books.
