The New Yorker Best Books of the Year

About the The New Yorker Best Books of the Year

Two kinds of year-end list. 2022-2025: the magazine's Best Books of the Year page, chosen by its editors and critics, split into The Essential Reads (24 a year) and Also Recommended (the rest of the page, 310-333 a year); each is a category. 2018-2019: The Best Books of 2018 and 2019, chosen by staff writer Katy Waldman, the magazine's headline list those years (9 and 10 books). 2020-2021: The Best Books We Read in 2020 and 2021, contributors' picks; no editorial list ran those years, so these are kept, and they include older books the writers read that year. Missing years: 2006-2011 and 2015 have no year-end list on newyorker.com; 2009-2010 Book Bench ran only per-writer reading posts. 2012-2014, 2016 and 2017 are left out: the only lists are contributors' favorite-books essays (plus James Wood's personal column), prose with no per-book list and many older books. Also left out: More Books We Loved in 2018, James Wood's columns, and genre side lists such as the 2016 poetry list. Counts match the pages' own schema.org item lists for 2022-2025. No list is ranked.

Organization: The New Yorker. Official site (opens in a new tab)