Favorite Books of 2011 January 4, 2012

We ran a new element in our BOOKS ARE GREAT GIFTS (#bagg) campaign this year–#litchatpicks2011. Throughout the month of December we asked followers to post their favorite books released during 2011. We had several hundred posts, with nearly as many different books suggested as favorites. After scrolling through all of the #litchatpicks, we gleaned the top five picks from our followers:

The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach (Little, Brown & Company)
The Tiger’s Wife, by Téa Obreht (Random House)
The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern (Doubleday)
Divergent, by Veronica Roth (Katherine Tegen Books)
So Much Pretty, by Cara Hoffman (Simon & Schuster)

We promised a free #bagg of books to someone posting in the feed. After careful deliberation, we’ve selected @KatDuncanPhoto as the winner of the free bag of books. Here is the post she made that turned our heads:

Kat Duncan picked three of the top five #litchatpicks2011. Congratulations, Kat. We’ll have your #bagg of books to you as soon as we receive your mailing address.

As for tradition, here are my favorite ten novels released in 2011:

A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan (Anchor)
Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer, Wesley Stace (Picador)
Hustle, by Jason Skipper (Press 53)
Irma Voth, by Miriam Toews (Harper)
The Coffins of Little Hope, by Timothy Schaffert (Unbridled Books)
The Family Fang, by Kevin Wilson (Ecco)
The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern (Doubleday)
The Tiger’s Wife, by Téa Obreht (Random House)
The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortise, by Julia Stuart (Doubleday)