Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Best-of-year historical fiction roundups from around the web

Now that 2021 is drawing to a close, media outlets have been publishing their "best of" lists from the past year.  I've collected those that focus on historical fiction, though there aren't as many of these as I've found for other genres.

NPR's Best Books 2021 (which used to be called Book Concierge) has a historical fiction category with an impressively wide range of subjects and subgenres. I like how they include literary fiction (The Sweetness of Water), historical romance (Wild Rain), historical fantasy (A Marvellous Light), and books for younger readers (Finding Junie Kim) under the same umbrella. Among my own favorites on this list: Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray's The Personal Librarian and Laird Hunt's Zorrie.  Here are the NPR selections as a list rather than a visual graphic.

The New York Times presents their best new historical fiction of the season with a dozen recent releases, as well as an overall "best of" for 2021. There's a bit of overlap between them. The focus is, as you'd expect, literary fiction, and I haven't read any of these!

In The Times (London) we have critics Nick Rennison's and Antonia Senior's 15 top favorites of the year. Without a subscription you'll need to sign up for a free login, which gets you access to a limited # of articles. There's a nice mix of literary and commercial here, including Elodie Harper's The Wolf Den (set in Pompeii before the infamous eruption of Mt. Vesuvius), which I also loved. It will be published in the US next March.

In Canada, the CBC has 12 books for the historical fiction lover's shopping list, which includes some novels set in very recent history.

British magazine Woman and Home offers many historical novels (not all by women) for consideration for your TBR, conveniently divided by historical era.

Cosmopolitan has a lengthy list of 27 best historical novels from the last year. While it was posted in late October, some fall reads are included.

Lastly, Goodreads announced their most popular choices for Best Historical Fiction a few weeks ago, and I actually read nine of the nominees (but not the winner, Taylor Jenkins Reid's Malibu Rising).

16 comments:

  1. Thank you for the links.

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  2. Thanks for checking them out!

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  3. Replies
    1. I always look forward to the best of lists!

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  4. I'm very excited about my 2022 reading and that will certainly include historical fiction. I keep my TBR on Goodreads and have shelves for the various genres, so it's easy to find what I'm in the mood for. Thanks for your posts and Seasons Greetings!

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    1. Good idea to create TBRs by genre category. Happy holidays! I have lots of books to look forward to for 2022 also.

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  5. Sarah, I always look forward to your articles. This one is especially filled with solid gold for the historical fiction reader and writer. Thank you!

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    1. Thanks, Nancy! Glad you liked the post.

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  6. Thanks for these links. I have found alot of books that I am interested in reading.

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  7. Sarah, are you aware of any good historical fiction podcasts or maybe a list to choose from? I'm not especially interested in author interviews, preferring instead to hear people who read the books talk about them. Thanks!

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    1. Most of the ones I'm familiar with use the interview format. I emailed another blog reader I know to see if he has recommendations - surely there must be some good ones out there!

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    2. Unfortunately he doesn't know of any, either. I'll keep looking! Someone ought to come up with one.

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    3. Thanks - they're hard to find!

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  8. Wonderful, as always, Sarah! Thanks so much.

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