Hodgepodge 34/365 - Best Books

It's that time of year when periodicals and radio shows round up the best books of the year. I happened to be driving and listening to Science Friday today, and Ira Flatow was talking with Maria Popova of Brain Pickings and Scientific American editor Lee Billings about their favorite science books of the year. It made me so happy! For one thing, to be able to listen to NPR—which I love to do while driving—at all (I dread turning it on anymore, fearing I'll hear the hated name); and for another, I love books and I love science and I love to get suggestions of good books to read! Win win win!

But other lists are being published too, of fiction, nonfiction, poetry. So I thought today I'd compile a list of websites that offer such lists. I'll try to remember to add to it as I encounter new ones during the month.

So here are a few:

The Best Science Books of 2016: 18 of them, with many, many additional suggestions in the comments. Me, I'm most intrigued by The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli, Felt Time: The Psychology of How We Perceive Time by Mark Wittmann, Being a Dog: Following the Dog into a World of Smell by Alexandra Horowitz, and the children's book The Polar Bear by Jenni Desmond. And I may just have to get Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space by Janna Levin for David. Yay, Christmas taken care of! (Good thing he doesn't read my blog.)

Cornell Lab of Ornithology has a specific list of best bird books!

The NPR Book Concierge for 2016: a whopping 309 books in 30 categories—including the usual suspects, but also ones like Rather Short, Seriously Great Writing, The Dark Side, and It's All Geek to Me! And oh my gosh, you can filter by multiple categories. I'm heading straight for Rather Short + Seriously Great Writing. This is heaven!

Entropy magazine's Best Fiction of 2016: 70 picks, many from small and academic presses.
And here is Entropy's Best Nonfiction of 2016: 40 titles.

Brain Pickings' 16 Overall Favorite Books of 2016.

The New York Times's 10 Best Books of 2016: 5 each fiction and nonfiction. Or for a larger selection, the New York Times's 100 Notable Books of 2016: again, half and half, but with poetry included in the fiction category.

The Christian Science Monitor's 15 Best Nonfiction Book and 15 Best Fiction Books of 2016.

10 Overlooked Books by Women in 2016, by lithub.com.

Bustle.com's 20 of the Most Important Books of 2016 and, moving on, 15 of the Most Anticipated  Books of 2017: Fiction and Nonfiction.

And since I expect the Washington Post's list of the 110 best books of the year is fairly redundant with the Times's, here instead is their list of Best Mystery Books and Thrillers of 2016 (since I love mysteries and thrillers!). Also, the Edgar Award nominees and winners for 2016.

And the WaPo's recommendations for Best Poetry Collections.

And finally, because I intend to keep reading picture books, here are Publishers Weekly's and NYT's recommendations for 2016.

I am looking forward to another good solid year of READING!