Best Books of the Year
Best Books of 2019
Other Years: 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019
The following are the best books of 2019, as determined by book review trade magazines, national newspapers, and popular arts and culture publications. The Top 20 listed below was compiled by tallying the number of Best Books of the Year lists from major outlets and websites. The parentheses following each book indicate the total number of lists on which the book was included.
Top 20
1. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong (98)
2. The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (90)
3. Normal People by Sally Rooney (74)
4. Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino (67)
5. The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (61)
6. Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (54)
7. The Dutch House by Ann Patchett (50)
8. Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland Patrick Radden Keefe (47)
9. The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates (45)
10. Trust Exercise by Susan Choi (43)
11. The Topeka School by Ben Lerner (42)
12. Three Women by Lisa Taddeo (41)
13. Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James (40)
14. Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout (40)
15. The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom (40)
16. Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo (39)
17. In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado (39)
18. Underland by Robert Macfarlane (39)
18. She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story that Helped Ignite a Movement by Jodi Kantor & Megan Twohey (38)
20. Women Talking by Miriam Toews (38)
Other Books on 20 or more lists:
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli (35), Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips (34), Know My Name by Chanel Miller (34), Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman (33), Good Talk by Mira Jacob (33), Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (31), Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson (31), Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep (30), Exhalation by Ted Chiang (29), How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones (28), Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Reid Jenkins (27), Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky (27), Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston (27), The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern (27), The Collected Schizophrenias by Esme Weijun Wang (26), The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy (26), Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss (23), Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo (23), Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry (22), Pet by Akwaeke Emezi (22), The Tradition by Jericho Brown (22), American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson (21), Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators by Ronan Farrow (21), How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi (21), City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert (20), Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (20), Inland by Tea Obreht (20), On the Come Up by Angie Thomas (20), The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa (20), The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells (20), This is How You Lose the Time War by Amar El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone (20)
