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Amazon on Wednesday announced the Best Books of 2020 published to date, as chosen by the retailer’s literary editorial team.
Although Amazon, which launched in 1994 as an online bookseller, said earlier this year that it would deprioritize book sales while concentrating on other arms of its e-commerce empire during the economic shutdown, the retail giant is still continuing to publish an annual midyear list. The top 20 books of the year so far—published between January and June of 2020—spans top picks across fiction and nonfiction, mystery and thrillers, children’s and YA (young adult), and more.
“We read voraciously throughout the year, and we usually read the books well before they are actually published,” Chris Schluep, Amazon books editor, tells Fortune. “By May or so, I have a good idea of what business books have stuck with me—either something that made me think differently, or a best-in-class, or a book that I just can’t get out of my mind.”
A team of seven, the Amazon Books editors have read hundreds of titles over the past six months to whittle the pile down to these top 10:
- The Girl With the Louding Voice: A Novel by Abi Daré
- Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker
- The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: A Hunger Games Novel by Suzanne Collins
- Deacon King Kong: A Novel by James McBride
- Pretty Things: A Novel by Janelle Brown
- Writers & Lovers: A Novel by Lily King
- Sigh, Gone: A Misfit’s Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In by Phuc Tran
- The City We Became: A Novel by N.K. Jemisin
- Oona Out of Order: A Novel by Margarita Montimore
- The Mercies: A Novel by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Based at Amazon HQ in Seattle, the Amazon Books editors also read countless business books, and determined these 20 titles to be the best business books of 2020 so far:
- Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything by BJ Fogg
- Capital and Ideology by Thomas Piketty
- Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West (Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology) by Justin Farrell
- The Velvet Rope Economy: How Inequality Became Big Business by Nelson D. Schwartz
- Joy at Work: Organizing Your Professional Life by Marie Kondo
- Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life by Ozan Varol
- Designing Your Work Life: How to Thrive and Change and Find Happiness at Work by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans
- Leadership Is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say—and What You Don’t by L. David Marquet
- The Passion Economy: Nine Rules for Thriving in the Twenty-First Century by Adam Davidson
- Leadership Strategy and Tactics: Field Manual by Jocko Willink
- The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler
- Arguing With Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future by Paul Krugman
- More than Ready: Be Strong and Be You…and Other Lessons for Women of Color on the Rise by Cecilia Nuñoz
- The Victory Machine: The Making and Unmaking of the Warriors Dynasty by Ethan Sherwood Strauss
- Economic Dignity by Gene Sperling
- This Is Not a Fashion Story: Taking Chances, Breaking Rules, and Being a Boss in the Big City by Danielle Bernstein
- Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit by Ashley Mears
- The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes by Zachary D. Carter
- How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom by Matt Ridley
- Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen by Dan Heath
Looking forward (because yes, there are still six more months of 2020), the Amazon Books team already has a long to-read list before completing a comprehensive “Best Of” list for the year.
“Ray Dalio’s Principles was our top pick a couple years ago, and I’m always interested in his take on things, so The Changing World Order, which publishes in September, is one I’m looking forward to reading,” Schluep says. “I would also say Your Next Five Moves, a book about business strategy, is on my radar. But there is nothing more fun than discovering a gem you didn’t expect to find, so I’m looking forward to a surprise or two before the year is over.”
