On the Lists: Best Books of 2014

The “year’s best” book lists — be they 10 or 50 or 100; poetry or celeb memoirs or children’s books — are such a widespread phenomenon in English-language newspapers and magazines that the Wall Street Journal does a compilation, a master list of best-ofs:

But, on the vast majority of these best-of lists, translations are still rare. Indeed, M.A. Orthofer seems pleased to see a pitiful eight translations on the NYTBR‘s “100 notable books” list. The only translation that seems to appear with any regularity is the very well-known latest Haruki Murakami.

A bit of this is a timing problem: Most of these “best of 2014” lists were made before the fall list of Arabic novels went out to reviewers — if indeed they went out to reviewers. The smaller presses that deal in translations often don’t ship to reviewers until their actual publication date. Meanwhile, mainstream professional reviewers are already talking up their