Year-End Lists

Electric Lit: 15 Best Novels of 2019

[see also Best Nonfiction of 2023 • Best Novels of 2023 • Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2022 • Favorite Novels of 2022 • Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2021 • Favorite Novels of 2021 • Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2020 • Favorite Novels of 2020 • 15 Best Nonfiction Books of 2019]

• Death Is Hard Work
  Khaled Khalifa
• The Old Drift
  Namwali Serpell
• The Unpassing
  Chia-Chia Lin
• Gingerbread
  Helen Oyeyemi
• Riots I Have Known
  Ryan Chapman
• The Memory Police
  Yoko Ogawa
• Normal People
  Sally Rooney
• Bunny
  Mona Awad
• American Spy
  Lauren Wilkinson
• The Topeka School
  Ben Lerner
• Trust Exercise
  Susan Choi
• The Heavens
  Sandra Newman
• Women Talking
  Miriam Toews
• Mostly Dead Things
  Kristen Arnett
• The Need
  Helen Phillips

Electric Lit: 15 Best Nonfiction Books of 2019

[see also Best Nonfiction of 2023 • Best Novels of 2023 • Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2022 • Favorite Novels of 2022 • Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2021 • Favorite Novels of 2021 • Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2020 • Favorite Novels of 2020 • 15 Best Novels of 2019]

• Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl
  Jeannie Vanasco
• Ordinary Girls
  Jaquira Díaz
• How to Be an Antiracist
  Ibram X. Kendi
• Go Ahead in the Rain

  Notes to A Tribe Called Quest
  Hanif Abdurraqib
• Know My Name
  Chanel Miller
• What You Have Heard Is True

  A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
  Carolyn Forché
• Furious Hours

  Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee
  Casey Cep
• How We Fight for Our Lives
  Saeed Jones
• Good Talk

  A Memoir in Conversations
  Mira Jacob
• Rough Magic

  Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race
  Lara Prior-Palmer
• Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls
  T Kira Madden
• The Yellow House
  Sarah M. Broom
• The Collected Schizophrenias
  Esmé Weijun Wang
• Trick Mirror

  Reflections on Self-Delusion
  Jia Tolentino
• In the Dream House
  Carmen Maria Machado

Town & Country: The 17 Best Books of the 2010s

[see also 2023]

1. The Goldfinch
   Donna Tartt
2. The Luminaries
   Eleanor Catton
3. A Little Life
   Hanya Yanagihara
4. Just Kids
   Patti Smith
5. Lincoln in the Bardo
   George Saunders
6. Crazy Rich Asians
   Kevin Kwan
7. My Brilliant Friend
   Elena Ferrante
8. A Visit from the Goon Squad
   Jennifer Egan
9. Americanah
   Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
10. All the Light We Cannot See
    Anthony Doerr
11. The Underground Railroad
    Colson Whitehead
12. Between the World and Me
    Ta-Nehisi Coates
13. The Flamethrowers
    Rachel Kushner
14. Negroland

    A Memoir
    Margo Jefferson
15. Fates and Furies
    Lauren Groff
16. A Gentleman in Moscow
    Amor Towles
17. French Exit
    Patrick deWitt

New York Public Library: 10 Best Books of 2019

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2018]

• Disappearing Earth
  Julia Phillips
• Fleishman Is in Trouble
  Taffy Brodesser-Akner
• Good Talk

  A Memoir in Conversations
  Mira Jacob
• Normal People
  Sally Rooney
• On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
  Ocean Vuong
• Red at the Bone
  Jacqueline Woodson
• She Said

  Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement
  Jodi Kantor & Megan Twohey
• Thick

  And Other Essays
  Tressie McMillan Cottom
• Three Women
  Lisa Taddeo
• Trick Mirror

  Reflections on Self-Delusion
  Jia Tolentino

BuzzFeed: Best Fiction and Nonfiction of 2019

[see also 2022 • 2021 • 2010s • 2018]

Fiction

• The Nickel Boys
  Colson Whitehead
• Olive, Again
  Elizabeth Strout
• Gingerbread
  Helen Oyeyemi
• On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
  Ocean Vuong
• Nothing to See Here
  Kevin Wilson
• The Old Drift
  Namwali Serpell
• The Organs of Sense
  Adam Ehrlich Sachs
• Women Talking
  Miriam Toews
• Machines Like Me
  Ian McEwan
• Patsy
  Nicole Dennis-Benn
• The Book of X
  Sarah Rose Etter
• The World Doesn't Require You
  Rion Amilcar Scott
• The Dutch House
  Ann Patchett
• Your House Will Pay
  Steph Cha
• Fly Already
  Etgar Keret
• Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea
  Sarah Pinsker
• Everything Under
  Daisy Johnson
• The Tenth Muse
  Catherine Chung
• All This Could Be Yours
  Jami Attenberg
• The Topeka School
  Ben Lerner
• Lot
  Bryan Washington
• The Man Who Saw Everything
  Deborah Levy
• In West Mills
  De'Shawn Charles Winslow

Nonfiction

• The Yellow House
  Sarah M. Broom
• Say Nothing

  A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
  Patrick Radden Keefe
• Survival Math

  Notes on an All-American Family
  Mitchell Jackson
• The Queen

  The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth
  Josh Levin
• Good Talk

  A Memoir in Conversations
  Mira Jacob
• The Collected Schizophrenias
  Esmé Weijun Wang
• Wild Game

  My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
  Adrienne Brodeur
• How We Fight for Our Lives
  Saeed Jones
• In the Dream House
  Carmen Maria Machado
• Homesick
  Jennifer Croft
• The World According to Fannie Davis

  My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers
  Bridgett M. Davis

Anthony Domestico: 2019 Books in Review, as published by Commonweal Magazine. Domestico is "only listing books that I haven’t yet had a chance to write on" and has "tried to avoid books that have popped up again and again on end-of-year lists."

• Lay Studies
  Steven Toussaint
• The Heavens
  Sandra Newman
• The Corner That Held Them
  Sylvia Townsend Warner
• Hue and Cry
  James Alan McPherson
• The Manzoni Family
  Natalia Ginzburg
• Human Relations and Other Difficulties
  Mary-Kay Wilmers
• What It Is

  Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man's Blues
  Clifford Thompson
• Where Reasons End
  Yiyun Li
• No Matter
  Jana Prikryl
• In My Mind's Eye

  A Thought Diary
  Jan Morris
• Yellow Notebook

  Diaries Volume I 1978–1987
  Helen Garner
• The Caiplie Caves
  Karen Solie
• Cleanness
  Garth Greenwell

Dennis Cooper: Favorite Fiction and Nonfiction of 2019, in no order

[see also 2018 • 2016 • 2012]

Fiction

• The Complete Gary Lutz
  Gary Lutz
• King of Joy
  Richard Chiem
• The Devils
  New Juche
• Trump Sky Alpha
  Mark Doten
• The Hanky of Pippin's Daughter
  Rosmarie Waldrop
• This Brutal House
  Niven Govinden
• Juliet the Maniac
  Juliet Escoria
• Morelia
  Renee Gladman
• Song for the Unraveling of the World
  Brian Evenson
• The Silk Road
  Kathryn Davis
• Circus

  or, Moira Orfei in Aigues-Mortes
  Wayne Koestenbaum
• Rag
  Maryse Meijer
• Selected Stories
  Troy James Weaver
• Experimental Men
  M. Kitchell
• The Maze of Transparencies
  Karen An-hwei Lee
• The Book of X
  Sarah Rose Etter
• Between Appear And Disappear
  Doug Rice
• Baudelaire Fractal
  Lisa Robertson
• Xerox Over Manhattan
  Shane Jesse Christmass
• Drain Songs

  Stories and a Novella
  Grant Maierhofer
• We Are Made Of Diamond Stuff
  Isabel Waidner
• Haunted Girlfriend
  James Nulick
• Vincent and Alice and Alice
  Shane Jones
• Little Hollywood
  Jinnwoo
• Harlem Smoke
  James Champagne
• Soft Fruit in the Sun
  Oliver Zarandi
• Inside the Castle
  Josiah Morgan
• Shock Test…A Night of Truth: Bill Hicks & Timothy McVeigh Meet at Waco w/ Guest Lecturers: William Cooper & Ted Kaczynski
  Sean Kilpatrick
• Mnemic Symbols
  Andrew Hodgson
• The Ice Cream Man and Other Stories
  Sam Pink
• Mac's Problem
  Enrique Vila-Matas
• Angel House
  David Leo Rice
• The Alley of Fireflies and Other Stories
  Raymond Roussel

Nonfiction

• Tosh

  Growing Up in Wallace Berman's World
  Tosh Berman
• Beautiful Aliens

  A Steve Abbott Reader
  Steve Abbott
• How I Became One of the Invisible
  David Rattray
• Vile Days

  The Village Voice Art Columns, 1985-1988
  Gary Indiana
• A Cannibal Explains Himself to Himself
  Will Alexander
• Me & Other Writing
  Marguerite Duras
• Mr. Know-It-All

  The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder
  John Waters
• Camera
  Marcelline Delbecq
• 1979 Songbook
  Byron Coley & Joanne Roberston
• Bad Writing
  Travis Jeppesen
• Essays One
  Lydia Davis
• Death Mort Tod

  A European Book of the Dead
  Steve Finbow & Karolina Urbaniak
• Synthetic Cinema

  The 21st-Century Movie Machine
  Wheeler Winston Dixon
• Animal
  Dorothea Lasky
• The Ribbon at Olympia's Throat
  Michel Leiris
• A Body in the O

  Performances and Stories
  Tim Miller
• Foucault in California

  [A True Story―Wherein the Great French Philosopher Drops Acid in the Valley of Death]
  Simeon Wade
• Inflamed Invisible

  Collected Writings on Art and Sound, 1976–2018
  David Toop

Hyperallergic: Top 25 Books of 2019

1. Potential History

   Unlearning Imperialism
   Ariella Aïsha Azoulay
2. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments

   Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval
   Saidiya Hartman
3. Memes to Movements

   How the World's Most Viral Media Is Changing Social Protest and Power
   An Xiao Mina
4. Boom

   Mad Money, Mega Dealers, and the Rise of Contemporary Art
   Michael Shnayerson
5. C.R.E.A.M.
   Sable Elyse Smith
6. Sun Seekers

   The Cure of California
   Lyra Kilston
7. The New Black Vanguard

   Photography Between Art and Fashion
   Antwaun Sargent
8. Making Comics
   Lynda Barry
9. Life With Picasso
   François Gilot and Carlton Lake
10. Parks

    United States National Park Service Maps from the Collection of Brian Kelley
    Brian Kelley
11. Becoming Mary Sully

    Toward an American Indian Abstract
    Philip J. Deloria
12. The Canary and The Hammer
    Lisa Barnard
13. Optic Nerve
    Maria Gainza
14. An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels
    Josh MacPhee
15. The Hard Tomorrow
    Eleanor Davis
16. Temple of Silence

    The Forgotten Works of Herbert Crowley
    Justin Duerr
17. BTTM FDRS
    Ezra Claytan Daniels and Ben Passmore
18. Year of the Monkey
    Patti Smith
19. The Missing Pages

    The Modern Life of a Medieval Manuscript, from Genocide to Justice
    Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh
20. Good Talk

    A Memoir in Conversations
    Mira Jacob
21. Hot Comb
    Ebony Flowers
22. Hinge Pictures

    Eight Women Artists Occupy the Third Dimension
    Andrea Andersson
23. Supper Club
    Lara Williams
24. Changes

    Notes on Choreography
    Merce Cunningham
25. Out of Bounds

    The Collected Writings of Marcia Tucker
    Marcia Tucker

No Depression: Top Music Books of 2019, which includes a list of more good reads in addition to those listed here

• Janis

  Her Life and Music
  Holly George-Warren
• Blood

  A Memoir
  Allison Moorer
• Year of the Monkey
  Patti Smith
• No Walls and the Recurring Dream
  Ani DiFranco
• Texas Flood

  The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan
  Alan Paul & Andy Aledort
• Me
  Elton John
• Earl Scruggs and Foggy Mountain Breakdown

  The Making of an American Classic
  Thomas Goldsmith
• Up Jumped the Devil

  The Real Life of Robert Johnson
  Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow
• Move On Up

  Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power
  Aaron Cohen
• Country Music

  An Illustrated History
  Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns
• The History of Rock & Roll, Volume 2: 1964–1977: The Beatles, the Stones, and the Rise of Classic Rock
  Ed Ward
• God Save the Queens

  The Essential History of Women in Hip-Hop
  Kathy Iandoli

The Wall Street Journal: The Best Books of 2019

[see also 2021 • 2020 • 2018]

• The Anarchy

  The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire
  William Dalrymple
• Armies of Deliverance

  A New History of the Civil War
  Elizabeth R. Varon
• Black Leopard, Red Wolf
  Marlon James
• Death Is Hard Work
  Khaled Khalifa
• Oliver Wendell Holmes

  A Life in War, Law, and Ideas
  Stephen Budiansky
• A Primer for Forgetting

  Getting Past the Past
  Lewis Hyde
• Say Nothing

  A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
  Patrick Radden Keefe
• Say Say Say
  Lila Savage
• Underland

  A Deep Time Journey
  Robert Macfarlane
• The Vexations
  Caitlin Horrocks