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.
