Best Books – 2003
Best Books of 2003
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 2003, as determined by book review trade magazines, national newspapers, and popular arts and culture publications. The Top 15 listed below was compiled by tallying the number of Best Books of the Year lists and major award shortlists that included each book (we only counted lists of 30 or less titles in order to ensure selectivity). The parentheses following each book indicate the total number of lists on which the book was included.
Top 15
1. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (10)
2. Brick Lane by Monica Ali (9)
2. Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem (9)
2. The Known World by Edward P. Jones (9)
5. Drop City by T.C. Boyle (8)
5. Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (8)
7. The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard (7)
7. Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum (7)
7. They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace Vietnam and America October 1967 by David Maraniss (7)
10. Any Human Heart by William Boyd (6)
10. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson (6)
12. Khrushchev: The Man and His Era by William Taubman (5)
12. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis (5)
12. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi (5)
12. The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers (5)
Other books on four or more lists:
American Woman by Susan Choi (4), Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson (4), The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty by Caroline Alexander (4), The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (4), Living to Tell the Tale by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (4), Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind by David Quammen (4), Old School by Tobias Wolff (4), Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (4), Pattern Recognition by William Gibson (4), Soul Circus by George Pelecanos (4), The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (4), Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy by Carlos Eire (4), Waxwings by Jonathan Raban (4)
