Every year, sometime in November, media publications come up with end-of-the-year lists. These have become a fixture now, and act as a kind of stocktaking — of remembering the best and worst of what the past year offered. We have lists for nearly everything now — from celebrity weddings to indie movies, to songs and podcasts, to influencers and scandals. And of course, books.
The book list is a staple, and considering the volume of titles that are released in the market every year, we need, and have, several of these now. To cover as much ground as possible, we also have all sorts of categories and segments, from fiction and non-fiction to coffee-table books, children’s books, and more.
Apart from being a great way to remember and honour some of our favorite books, these lists serve as a discovery platform for readers. Both curating and consuming these lists provides both a bird’s-eye view of the year’s crop and standout trends and patterns. For example, while curating this year’s best fiction list, I noticed how many of our big hits this year were chunky books you could really sink your teeth into, such as Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting, Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water, K. R. Meera’s Assassin, and Deepti Kapoor’s Age of Vice.
But curating these book lists can be tricky. The first cut I made for the best fiction list had 40 titles more than it was supposed to. This was an indulgence, a personal hat-tip to all the books I have loved over the year. And while culling them down to just 10 was tough, it also made my job easier to see the names put down in black and white. I could immediately sense how some of them elicited, for one reason or another, a stronger reaction in me. So, to begin with, I followed my gut.
A lot about my job is that — following my instinct that tells me to read this book or to spend more time on that title. It isn’t, obviously, an exact science. But all book editors have their own personal set of rules and standards of measurement. This is good, for it is what brings variety. It is why there are some lists that are translation-heavy, some that are filled with international books, and others that tend to favour Indian literary fiction. The difficult part is to figure out one’s own rules.
My first rule is to remember that I read for pleasure. This is important, since I also read for work. It is to remind myself that I can’t read everything, but because I might find myself trying to, there is the danger of reading beginning to look like a chore.
Then comes the question of personal taste and subjectivity. If I liked a book, is that enough for it go on the list of the best? Is it enough that I couldn’t put down Assassin, or that I thought Lydia Davis’s Our Strangers is a stunning piece of art? That can’t be enough, so what else makes a title deserving of inches in print? It is a tough question with no single answer.
The first step is easy, which is to pick a great story told well. But then, this has a been a particularly great year for fiction, and there have been many great stories told incredibly well. So, I looked for stories that gave way to more stories, that sparked conversations that then led to more conversations. R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface comes to mind, or Perumal Murugan’s Fire Bird. While picking a book, and not just for this list, I also look for diversity and representation — and not only in who is telling the story, but also the stories themselves.
As an exercise, this is a fascinating one, allowing for not just a revisit, but also a chance to go back to a beloved book with a new set of questions. And once a book editor has asked and answered these questions, they are left with pretty much the perfect combination of instinct and information — tools needed to make a choice that we can stand by.
swati.daftuar@thehindu.co.in
