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As 2022 winds to a close, we once again have the pleasure of bringing you our BookBrowse Best of the Year titles, the Top 20 books of the year as selected by our subscribers.
This annual list, which we're proud to have published for over 20 years, is unique among "best of" lineups determined from popular opinion in that voting is open only to BookBrowse members and subscribers of our free newsletters. This prevents vote-stuffing and mitigates the imbalance between books with different degrees of social reach, giving a fairer and more accurate reflection of which books are personal favorites. Also, thanks to our subscribers' participation, the Top 20 Books are calculated from a robust pool of votes — topping out at over 9,000 in recent years. This makes it all the more significant and exciting to note the titles that have ultimately made the final cut, and we hope you enjoy perusing the Best Books of 2022, which you can view below.
Thank you to everyone who voted — we couldn't do this without you!
Reading nonfiction with your book club provides an opportunity to learn about new topics with the benefit of others' thoughts and perspectives. It can also be fascinating to discuss how authors have chosen to view and present certain aspects of nature, society, history or their own lives.
If you're looking to expand your group's nonfiction picks for next year, we have some suggestions! Below are half a dozen books covering a wide range of subjects that will be newly available in paperback during the first half of 2023, all of which come highly recommended by our reviewers. Three are memoirs that use the author's personal experience to reflect on the world around them, while the other three are substantial dives into complex and important subjects. Despite their depth, they're relatively short, digestible reads, ranging from around 240 to 350 pages. All of them are sure to provide plenty of worthy material for conversation, and we've included ideas for topics to discuss.
What novels will your book club love reading in 2023? It's never too early to start planning a spectacular lineup. To help you out, we've put together a list of fictional works being released in paperback during the first half of 2023 that have all received 5-star ratings from our reviewers.
Our list features exciting and significant debut novels, including two from authors who previously established themselves via poetry, Destiny O. Birdsong and Leila Mottley. We've also included books by writers who were already well-known and acclaimed for their fiction, like Douglas Stuart, winner of the 2020 Booker Prize, and veteran bestselling author Victoria E. Schwab. While we're aware that some of these novels may be longer than the maximum page count that some book clubs stick to, we've considered what books would be worth exceeding this limit for and have endeavored to only choose longer selections that we think qualify as fast reads.
All the books have reading guides currently on the site or forthcoming, plus reviews and Beyond the Book articles that you can use to explore relevant subjects and start conversations. For each pick below, we've included discussion topic suggestions for your book club.
Is your book club in need of some fresh food ideas? In our most recent annual survey, we asked subscribers what snacks or meals their book groups prefer for their meetings. Below, we'll share with you some of the most popular responses, along with suggestions and resources that you can use for cooking up fun, food-filled sessions with your club in the future.
While still underrepresented, Native authors — including many emerging writers — have been behind an exciting variety of interesting literature from both major and small publishers as of late. As we at BookBrowse have been working to consciously build up the books featured in our Native and Indigenous category, we would like to take the opportunity to share with you some of our recently reviewed books by Native writers.
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