A new season begins, and as the leaves change, so do reading recommendations. And why not? Winter is coming, and you’re going to need all the books you can get.
For this walkthrough, I went through a total of 25 lists from 22 outlets that collectively recommended 354 different books—certainly enough to keep the fire burning for a while longer. (Metaphorically, that is.) I then collated the results to find out which books were the most recommended books in the literary universe that season. Celeste Ng’s latest book, as you’ll see, blows every other book out of the water, although Cormac McCarthy packs her punch with his combined number (although as you probably know, he’s got two contiguous novels out this year, some releases are listed just the one first). Below is the list of the most-listed books – and hopefully something good to read.
17 lists:
celeste ng, Our missing hearts
12 lists:
Cormac McCarthy, The passenger
11 lists:
NK Yemisin, The World We Make
Ling Ma, Bliss Montage
george saunders, day of liberation
10 lists:
Namwali Serpell, the furrows
9 lists:
kate atkinson, shrines of happiness
michelle obama, The light we carry
Maggie O’Farrell, The wedding portrait
kevin wilson, Now is not the time to panic
8 lists:
Jonathan Escoffery, If I survive you
Andrew Sean Greer, Less is lost
Yiyun Li, The Book of the Goose
Lynn Steger Stark Flight
7 lists:
huahsu, stick to the truth
john irving, The last chairlift
Cormac McCarthy, Stella Maris
6 lists:
Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead
Matthew Perry, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing
Alan Rickman, Insanely deep
Kamila Schamsie, Best friends
5 lists:
rachel aviv, strangers to ourselves
bono, Give up
Stephen King, fairy tale
Ian McEwan, Instruction
Lydia Millet, dinosaur
Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Song of the Cell
Paul Newman, The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man
stacy ship, The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams
Baek Sehee, tr. Anton Hur, I want to die but I want to eat tteokbokki
Elizabeth Strout, Lucia by the sea
Alice Wong, Year of the Tiger: The Life of an Activist
4 lists:
Fredrik Backmann, The winners
Katherine Dunn, toad
Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song
Maggie Haberman, shop steward
adam hochschild, American midnight
Elizabeth McCracken, The hero of this book
jon meacham, And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle
Annie Proulx, Bog, Bog & Swamp
Deanna Raybourn, killers of a certain age
Margaret Wilkerson Kuster, On the roof
Dani Shapiro, signal fire
Jan S. Wenner, Like a Rolling Stone
3 lists:
Hilton Als, my pinup
Russell Banks, The Magic Kingdom
kate beaton, Ducks: Two years in the oil sands
buzz bissinger, The Mosquito Bowl: A game of life and death in World War II
SE Boyd, The lemon
Graham Boynton, Wild: The Life of Peter Beard
Blair Braverman, Little game
Margaret Burnham, Through Now Known Hands: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners
Candice Carty-Williams, people person
Brandi Collins-Dexter, Black skinhead
Edward Enninful, A visible man
rossgay, arouse joy
Kerri F Greenidge, The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family
Jasmine Guillory, drunk on love
Ralph Macchio, Growing up: The Karate Kid and I
Chelsea Manning, Readme.txt
Ernesto Mestre-Reed, victim
Richard Osmann, The missed bullet
David Quammen, Breathless: The scientific race to defeat a deadly virus
Gwendoline Riley, my phantoms
Jerry Saltz, Art is life: Icons and iconoclasts, visionaries and vigilante groups and glimmers of hope in the night
Prince Shakur, When they tell you to be good
Adam Silvera, The first to die at the end
courtney summers, i am the girl
Nina Totenberg, Dinner with Ruth
Laura Warell, Sweeter, softer, lots of rhythm
Ryan Lee Wong, On which side are you
Constance Wu, make a scene
*
The list of examined lists:
Kirkus’ 150 Most Anticipated Books of the Fall • Esquire’s The best books of autumn 2022 • TIME’s The 33 Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2022 • The New York Times’s 33 works of fiction and poetry this fall, 15 non-fiction books to read this fall, and 15 memoirs and biographies to read this fall • The Los Angeles Timess 30 Books We Can’t Wait For This Fall • BookPages Fall 2022 Preview: Most Anticipated Fiction and Most Anticipated Nonfiction • good housekeeping’s 15 Best Fall Books of 2022 You Must Read This Season • The Boston Globe’s Here are the 20 new books we’re most excited about this fall • USA Today’s 20 fall books we can’t wait for • The New York Post’s These are the 28 books you should read this fall • Cosmopolitan’The 17 Best Books of Fall 2022 You Can’t Put Down • The 35 New Books from BuzzFeed News You Can’t Put Down • The Houston Chronicle’s Here are the most anticipated books of the fall • The Chicago Tribune’‘s Books for Fall 2022: Our 65 Titles for the Season • AARP’s 45 Best New Books of Fall • BookRiot’s 30 Liveliest, Best Fall Books of 2022 • The Observer’s Fall Arts Preview 2022: Books • City Country’s The 45 must-read books of fall 2022 • The best books from Shereads are coming out in fall 2022 • Fashion’s The best books to read this fall • The Orange County Register’s 17 books coming out in fall 2022 • The 9 books of the week to read this fall.
