Slate has their: 'writers and editors pick their favorites', in Best Books of 2011.
(Showing yet again how completely out of the loop and out of date I am, I have not received a review copy or otherwise obtained a one of these titles.)
Meanwhile, at Time, Lev Grossman offers his list of the Top 10 Fiction Books (annoyingly spread out over ten pages). I've actually seen and read and reviewed one of these, and it's not a book I would have ever imagined being on anyone's top ten best list: The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler. (Grossman also has a list of the Top 10 Nonfiction Books; I actually have one of those under review too -- The Information by James Gleick -- but, yes, those are the only two titles out of twenty I've seen and reviewed (and I bought the (ARC of the) Gleick myself, so only one out of the twenty titles came to me review-copy-wise.))
At his Literary Commentary weblog D.G.Myers comments on Grossman's list, in The Death of the Middlebrow Novel, noting that:
Meanwhile, at Time, Lev Grossman offers his list of the Top 10 Fiction Books (annoyingly spread out over ten pages). I've actually seen and read and reviewed one of these, and it's not a book I would have ever imagined being on anyone's top ten best list: The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler. (Grossman also has a list of the Top 10 Nonfiction Books; I actually have one of those under review too -- The Information by James Gleick -- but, yes, those are the only two titles out of twenty I've seen and reviewed (and I bought the (ARC of the) Gleick myself, so only one out of the twenty titles came to me review-copy-wise.))
At his Literary Commentary weblog D.G.Myers comments on Grossman's list, in The Death of the Middlebrow Novel, noting that:
Time magazine, the press secretary for middlebrow thought in America, has now officially abandoned its readers. A fantasy, an unfinished philosophical jawbreaker, two mysteries, a collection of cartoons, a far-fetched debut, and a graphic novel -- these are the "best books" it can recommend to readers with limited time for reading and a non-specialist interest in new fiction ?Apparently so. But, yeah: not my choices either. (Which also leads me to wonder: am I the last book-commentator left who hasn't published 'best of the year'-choices somewhere yet ?)