The Observer Best Books of the Year

About the The Observer Best Books of the Year

The Observer's own critics' year-end book lists: one essay per critic and section (Fiction, Biography, History, Science, Psychology, Poetry, Graphic Novels, Thrillers, Sport, Memoir). 2025 uses the paper's own sections (Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Graphic Novels) and comes from observer.co.uk, after the Tortoise Media sale; earlier years are Observer-branded pieces on theguardian.com. Years with no list: in 2006, 2008-2011, 2018, 2020 and 2022 the Observer ran only writers' and public figures' picks columns, gift guides or joint Guardian lists, all left out. Also left out: writers' picks columns in every year, the 2011 Books for giving gift guide, the 2008 year-end review round-ups, art, architecture, photography, food and children's lists, and 'One for my stocking' wish-list items. Most pieces are essays; titles set in bold are counted as the critic's picks. Bold titles with no author named on the page are left out: the Wildlife Photographer of the Year books (2012, 2014), This Is Pollock/Warhol/Dali and the Moomin editions (2014), the Drawn & Quarterly 25-year anthology (2015) and The Author's XI (2013). All pages were read through Wayback Machine copies, since theguardian.com and observer.co.uk block AI agents in robots.txt. No list is ranked.

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