I set myself a little project at the start of November: to post a list on Bluesky of my favorite book published each year since 1846, three a day, so covering the 60 days from 2 November to 31 December. Obviously I prepared the list several days in advance, and then published the posts usually along with my mid-morning coffee.
In almost every case, my choice for top book of the year is the one whose title makes me go “Oooh! I have good memories of reading that!” Often these are classics, because almost by definition a classic has provoked that reaction from a lot of readers. Sometimes they are books you may not have heard of, and maybe I’ll inspire you to give them a go.
To get the books for each year, I used a combination of sources.
- The Wikipedia page for “Year X in Literature” was a starting point, but not always a good one. It gets longer and less useful the closer you get to the present.
- Up to the end of the twentieth century, the most helpful source, nine years out of ten, was the Goodreads page for books tagged with each year by Goodreads users. This was not so good for years ending in 0, as there are enough Goodreads users who tag books by decade to swamp the signal in those cases.
- In the most recent period, the really useful source was my own LibraryThing catalogue, sorted by year of publication and by my rating of the books published in that year. This still needed to be checked, as the majority of my books are not first editions but later reprints, and so the publication date of my own copy is often later than the date of first publication.
And speaking of the date of first publication, that’s not always easy to define. For a play, is it first performance or the first printing of the script for sale? For a nineteenth century novel published originally as a series, is it the date the series concluded or the date that the book was published as a book? For Middlemarch, I went with both and listed it twice. There is one other book that I give two years to because of its publication history. If you know me at all, you will not be surprised by which book it is.
In the early years, the choice was sometimes easy if there was only one book published that year that I had actually read. (For example Immensee, and Black Beauty.) Even so, I hate The Mill on the Floss, so I have left 1860 blank; there are a couple of others where I really don’t seem to have read anything from that year.
In later years, the problem was not too few but too many books, particularly (and this did surprise me though perhaps it shouldn’t have) in the last quarter of the twentieth century; the number of books that I have read from each year then drops a bit from the year 2000, though it’s still a lot higher than pre-1950.
When I got to the end, I realised that it’s too early to be sure what my favourite book published in 2024 or 2025 will be (and of course I reserve the right to change my mind about earlier years too). So the eventual list covers 178 of the last 180 years, starting in 1846 and ending in 2023.
I list books by the date of first publication in the original language, but use the English language title – except for Les Misérables, where the French title is better known in English. Likewise if the author is generally known by a variant of their name in English, I use the familiar version – Leo Tolstoy rather than Lev.
Each link in the list below links to my Bluesky post for that day. Each post includes a cover picture for each book, a link to my online review if I have written one, and shout outs to other books published in that year which I have read and like (which really mount up in the second half of the list). In general I skip books I didn’t like, though there are a couple of early years where I mention them to avoid leaving the year blank (eg 1849, 1875).
The list is more male and whiter than I would really like, but I guess it also reflects my years of reading voraciously. Having said that, the first two entries are by a writer of colour (Alexandre Dumas, grandson of an enslaved woman) and by a woman (Charlotte Brontë); and my most recent five are all by women, two of them women of colour.
Here is the list.
| 1846 | The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas |
| 1847 | Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë |
| 1848 | The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Brontë |
| 1849 | Immensee, by Theodor Storm |
| 1850 | David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens |
| 1851 | Moby-dick, or, the Whale, by Herman Melville |
| 1852 | Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe |
| 1853 | Twelve Years a Slave, by Solomon Northrup |
| 1854 | Hard Times, by Charles Dickens |
| 1855 | The Warden, by Anthony Trollope |
| 1856 | None |
| 1857 | Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert |
| 1858 | Doctor Thorne, by Anthony Trollope |
| 1859 | Three-way tie: A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, by Edward Fitzgerald On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin |
| 1860 | None – I hate The Mill on the Floss |
| 1861 | Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself [Harriet Jacobs] |
| 1862 | Les Misérables/The Wretched, by Victor Hugo |
| 1863 | Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838–1839, by Fanny Kemble |
| 1864 | A Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne |
| 1865 | Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll |
| 1866 | Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
| 1867 | None |
| 1868 | The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins |
| 1869 | War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy |
| 1870 | Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, by Jules Verne |
| 1871 | Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, by Lewis Carroll |
| 1872 | Middlemarch, by George Eliot (end of serialisation) |
| 1873 | Around the World in Eighty Days, by Jules Verne |
| 1874 | Middlemarch, by George Eliot (first book publication) |
| 1875 | The Mysterious Island, by Jules Verne |
| 1876 | The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain |
| 1877 | Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell |
| 1878 | Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy |
| 1879 | A Doll’s House, by Henrik Ibsen |
| 1880 | Washington Square, by Henry James |
| 1881 | The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James |
| 1882 | Bevis: the Story of a Boy, by Richard Jefferies |
| 1883 | Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson |
| 1884 | The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain |
| 1885 | After London, by Richard Jefferies |
| 1886 | Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson |
| 1887 | A Study in Scarlet, by Arthur Conan Doyle |
| 1888 | Looking Backward: from 2000 to 1887, by Edward Bellamy |
| 1889 | Three Men in a Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome |
| 1890 | The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde |
| 1891 | Gösta Berling’s Saga, by Selma Lagerlöf |
| 1892 | The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle |
| 1893 | The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle (published in 1893 though first edition is dated 1894) |
| 1894 | Arms and the Man, by George Bernard Shaw – first performance – not actually published until 1898 |
| 1895 | The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells |
| 1896 | The Wheels of Chance, by H.G. Wells |
| 1897 | Dracula, by Bram Stoker |
| 1898 | A tie: The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells The Ballad of Reading Gaol, by Oscar Wilde |
| 1899 | Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad |
| 1900 | Love and Mr Lewisham, by H.G. Wells |
| 1901 | The History of Sir Richard Calmady, by “Lucas Malet” [Mary St Leger Kingsley] |
| 1902 | The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Arthur Conan Doyle |
| 1903 | The Riddle of the Sands, by Erskine Childers |
| 1904 | The Phoenix and the Carpet, by E. Nesbit |
| 1905 | The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Baroness Orczy |
| 1906 | The Railway Children, by E. Nesbit |
| 1907 | The Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad |
| 1908 | The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame |
| 1909 | Ann Veronica, by H.G. Wells |
| 1910 | The History of Mr Polly, by H.G. Wells |
| 1911 | The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett |
| 1912 | The Crock of Gold, by James Stephens |
| 1913 | Swann’s Way, by Marcel Proust |
| 1914 | Dubliners, by James Joyce |
| 1915 | The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka |
| 1916 | A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce |
| 1917 | The Man with Two Left Feet, by P.G. Wodehouse |
| 1918 | The Return of the Soldier, by Rebecca West |
| 1919 | In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, by Marcel Proust |
| 1920 | The Mysterious Affair at Styles, by Agatha Christie |
| 1921 | The Guermantes Way, by Marcel Proust |
| 1922 | Ulysses, by James Joyce |
| 1923 | The Prisoner, by Marcel Proust |
| 1924 | Juno and the Paycock, by Sean O’Casey |
| 1925 | Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf |
| 1926 | The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie |
| 1927 | To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf |
| 1928 | All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque |
| 1929 | A Room of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf |
| 1930 | Not So Quiet…, by Helen Zenna Smith |
| 1931 | The Waves, by Virginia Woolf |
| 1932 | Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons |
| 1933 | Testament of Youth, by Vera Brittain |
| 1934 | I, Claudius, by Robert Graves |
| 1935 | The Box of Delights, by John Masefield |
| 1936 | At the Mountains of Madness, by H.P. Lovecraft |
| 1937 | The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien |
| 1938 | Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell |
| 1939 | The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck |
| 1940 | Cue for Treason, by Geoffrey Trease |
| 1941 | Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, by Rebecca West |
| 1942 | The World of Yesterday, by Stefan Zweig |
| 1943 | The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry |
| 1944 | Gigi, by Colette |
| 1945 | Animal Farm, by George Orwell |
| 1946 | Hiroshima, by John Hersey |
| 1947 | The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank |
| 1948 | Finn Family Moomintroll, by Tove Jansson |
| 1949 | Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell |
| 1950 | The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury |
| 1951 | The Day of the Triffids, by John Wyndham |
| 1952 | The Birds and Other Stories, by Daphne du Maurier |
| 1953 | Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury |
| 1954 | The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, by J.R.R. Tolkien |
| 1955 | The Return of the King, by J.R.R. Tolkien |
| 1956 | My Family and Other Animals, by Gerald Durrell |
| 1957 | On the Beach, by Nevil Shute |
| 1958 | Tom’s Midnight Garden, by Philippa Pearce |
| 1959 | A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller |
| 1960 | To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee |
| 1961 | Catch-22, by Joseph Heller |
| 1962 | A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle |
| 1963 | Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut |
| 1964 | Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl |
| 1965 | Dune, by Frank Herbert |
| 1966 | Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes |
| 1967 | A tie: Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny The Third Policeman, by Flann O’Brien |
| 1968 | A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. Le Guin |
| 1969 | The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin |
| 1970 | Fifth Business, by Robertson Davies |
| 1971 | The Tombs of Atuan, by Ursula K. Le Guin |
| 1972 | Watership Down, by Richard Adams |
| 1973 | Dark Horse, by Fletcher Knebel |
| 1974 | The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin |
| 1975 | Imperial Earth, by Arthur C. Clarke |
| 1976 | Roots, by Alex Haley |
| 1977 | Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson |
| 1978 | The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams (performance of original radio play) |
| 1979 | The Fountains of Paradise, by Arthur C. Clarke |
| 1980 | The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco |
| 1981 | Midnight’s Children, by Salman Rushdie |
| 1982 | Schindler’s Ark (later Schindler’s List), by Thomas Keneally |
| 1983 | The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett |
| 1984 | The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera |
| 1985 | The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood |
| 1986 | Maus: A Survivor’s Tale I: My Father Bleeds History, by Art Spiegelman |
| 1987 | Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons |
| 1988 | Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, by James M. McPherson |
| 1989 | In Xanadu: A Quest, by William Dalrymple |
| 1990 | Interpreting Northern Ireland, by John H. Whyte |
| 1991 | Maus: A Survivor’s Tale II: And Here My Troubles Began, by Art Spiegelman |
| 1992 | Small Gods, Terry Pratchett |
| 1993 | Parable of the Sower, by Octavia E. Butler |
| 1994 | Long Walk to Freedom, by Nelson Mandela |
| 1995 | Bloodchild and Other Stories, by Octavia E. Butler |
| 1996 | A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin |
| 1997 | Voices from Chernobyl, by Svetlana Alexievich |
| 1998 | Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney |
| 1999 | Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles, by Brian Feeney, Seamus Kelters, David McKittrick, David McVea and Chris Thornton |
| 2000 | Ash, A Secret History, by Mary Gentle |
| 2001 | The Emperor’s Babe, by Bernardine Evaristo |
| 2002 | Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, by Claire Tomalin |
| 2003 | Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi (last part first published this year) |
| 2004 | The Island at the Centre of the World, by Russell Shorto |
| 2005 | The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life, by Tom Reiss |
| 2006 | Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel |
| 2007 | Alice in Sunderland, by Bryan Talbot |
| 2008 | The Years, by Annie Ernaux |
| 2009 | From a Clear Blue Sky: Surviving the Mountbatten Bomb, by Timothy Knatchbull |
| 2010 | The Bloody Sunday Report, by Lord Savile of Newdigate et al |
| 2011 | Among Others, by Jo Walton |
| 2012 | Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes, by Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot |
| 2013 | Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie |
| 2014 | A tie: Station Eleven, by Emily St John Mandel Common People, by Alison Light |
| 2015 | Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates |
| 2016 | East West Street, by Philippe Sands |
| 2017 | Exit West, by Mohsin Hamid |
| 2018 | Factfulness, by Hans Rosling |
| 2019 | Girl, Woman, Other, by Bernardine Evaristo |
| 2020 | The Mirror and the Light, by Hilary Mantel |
| 2021 | The Sun is Open, by Gail McConnell |
| 2022 | Babel, or the Necessity of Violence, by R.F. Kuang |
| 2023 | Old Babes in the Wood, by Margaret Atwood |
So that’s 178 books in total (blank years and double wins being compensated by a few ties):
- 56 (31%) by women, 13 (7%) by writers of colour;
- 76 (43%) non-genre fiction, 60 (34%) science fiction and fantasy, 26 (15%) non-fiction, 7 (4%) comics, 5 (3%) works of poetry, and 4 (2%) plays
- 149 (84%) originally written in English, 15 in French, 4 in German, 2 in Swedish, one each in Czech, Dutch, Italian, and Norwegian.
I tried to crunch down to national origin, but it’s quite tricky because of the number of authors of mixed identity. I make it roughly 96 books by British and Irish authors combined, roughly 40 by USians and 3 by Canadians, 15 by French writers and 18 by other Europeans, three by Asian writers and two by Australians.
This of course in no way reflects the objective quality of the books, it just illuminates the biases in my lifetime of reading.
There may be material for a party game or convention panel here, where you have a balloon debate about all of the books published in a particular year, and see which one survives after expert (or at least earnest) discussion.
But this post is long enough, so I will leave it here for now.