Illustration by Yiren Tang
The Globe’s annual list of the most notable books of the year is here, and avid readers across the country can now explore the best and most interesting tomes 2025 has to offer. This year’s edition also included the launch the Globe 100 archive, with access to decades of our picks.
On Nov. 28, arts editor Judith Pereira and book critic Emily Donaldson answered reader questions on the Globe 100 list – how it’s put together, how to navigate the resources – and shared their personal recommendations from years past.
Here is a curated summary of the questions and answers:
How does the Globe 100 book list come together?
How do you decide which books make the list every year, and which don’t?
Judith Pereira: I have an Excel spreadsheet and all through the year, I’m adding books that I’ve come across, that publicists have pitched to me, that writers who work for the section talk to me about.
In October, I develop a long list and have a meeting with Globe writers, editors and freelancers who work for the section. Ian Brown, Patrick White, Susan Krashinsky Robertson, Joe Friesen, Danielle Webb, Lisan Jutras and many more join for an afternoon of pizza and discussion. Lisan pitched The Hounding; Ian pitched Benbecula and so on.
Sometimes things get very heated. Titles are added and deleted as the afternoon goes on; for example, Spare was on the longlist in 2023 but after much debate, it was decided if we had an audiobook section we would have added it, but it didn’t make the list as a print copy.
As we’re a Canadian publication, I do look for the best and most notable in Canadian fiction and non-fiction.
After that there’s a core group of around five or six people that talk through the list and I make cuts or additions. The last weeks of the Globe 100 are hectic. If we can’t make a call, I read the book – the one thing you can be sure about is that every book on the Globe 100 has been read by at least one person and sometimes they’re read by several.
Illustration by Yiren Tang
Do the seasonal book previews feed into the best-of list at the end of the year? If I see one in one of those lists, is it more likely to appear in the Globe 100?
Emily Donaldson: My main contribution to the 100 is through those seasonal previews, and I can tell you how that particular sausage is made: It begins with conversations with publishers and publicists about what they’ve got coming out, what they’re excited about, followed by a deeper scouring of catalogues and the compiling of a ridiculous spreadsheet that quickly balloons out of control.
Next comes the tsunami of actual books, in either digital or physical form, and days/weeks of reading. For previews, I can’t read all the books in their entirety – unlike the 100, these are meant as lists of the “most promising” books coming out in a season – but I read at least a few chapters. If the prose doesn’t live up to the hype, the spreadsheet shrinks. The previews function as an initial cull, as it were, so many make 100, but many don’t.
Do bestseller lists and sales in general impact what books you pick for the list? How much importance do you put on a book being popular?
Pereira: I definitely look at bestseller lists because they give me a sense of what people are reading across the country. The Globe gets its list from Booknet, which is a non-profit that collects weekly point-of-sales data from more than 2,000 retail outlets across Canada. I also often go to bookstores to talk with booksellers about what they’re seeing. I worked in a bookstore and I know the importance of handselling.
If I had read or if someone had pitched Rebecca Yarros’s book, Fourth Wing, in the year it was published, there’s a good chance it may have ended up on the list. This year’s offering, Onyx Storm, sold 20 million copies in the first month it was released, but I didn’t think it was as strong a book as the first one.
Illustration by Yiren Tang
Why wasn’t there any poetry on the list?
Pereira: In the past few years, the number of books published has increased by a lot. We now have almost 500,000 books published and this doesn’t include self-published work. Our readers have asked for more fiction/non-fiction and with a limited amount of space, we’ve had to make a call just like we do with all coverage. This year, for example, we took out children’s books and cookbooks. I’m still going to publish the best of those books but we had to make a call about the main list.
I’m a little surprised that there appear to be no French-language books from Quebec included on the list. Why is that?
Donaldson: As a native Quebecker myself I’m always on the lookout for interesting books from the province. Your question makes me realize that there weren’t a lot works by Quebeckers that came on my radar this year – an exception being Mireille Gagné’s Horsefly (covered in my spring seasonal preview). I’d like to put their relative absence down, unscientifically, to a smaller output this year.
To clarify: we don’t cover untranslated French books. These days many of the translated works – and I’m mainly talking about fiction here – from Quebec come from just a few publishers, most of them smaller/indie. Ones that pop immediately to mind are Anansi, which has been steadily publishing novels by (the late) Marie-Claire Blais; Coach House, which published Eric Chacour’s What I Know About You (which made last year’s list), and Biblioasis, which has published several novels by the amazing Kevin Lambert, who was profiled (by me) in the paper last year and who has made the 100 twice.
Illustration by Yiren Tang
What was your favourite part of working on this year’s list?
Pereira: My favourite part is talking about books with fellow readers but that’s kind of why I’m doing this Q&A. I love discussing books. The hard part is when we have to make calls to drop books; this list could be 200 books, but ultimately we have to make the decision and it’s never done lightly. Authors put so much into their work and I always appreciate what they’ve given to us, the readers.
Reading habits
How can someone possibly read 100 books in one year?
Donaldson: Most mortals can’t! But to be clear: the 100 books on the list aren’t read in their entirety by every Globe staffer and writer who contributed to the list, but each book that appears has been read by a contributor (who brings it forward and advocates for it, often inspiring others to check it out).
Do you have any tips for reading more often? It’s so easy to get distracted nowadays!
Pereira: Here are my tips in no particular order:
- I don’t have Facebook/Instagram on my phone so I don’t scroll; I just have them on my desktop
- In the evening, I keep my phone on a table far away so it’s there if I have to answer it, but I don’t use it to keep myself busy
- I don’t own a television; I watch TV and movies on my computer but that requires more work
- I also have favourites that I return to when I’m in a slump and they almost always kick-start me again. I also switch genres; I’m not precious about what I read so I bounce between sci-fi, mystery, romance, etc.
Recommended reads
What’s your personal favourite book on the list? And your favourite book in general?
Donaldson: Sophie Elmhirst’s A Marriage at Sea was my favourite work of non-fiction – I have a penchant for the “sad boat” genre (look for a forthcoming roundup!) and this one is stunningly and pithily written. I also loved Eric Andrew-Gee’s The Mind Mappers, which I was truly unable to put down.
In fiction my vote goes with Souvankham Thammavongsa’s Pick a Colour and Eimear McBride’s The City Changes Its Face – both continue to do things with prose that make me very happy.
Pereira: I can’t pick one book from this year. My two favourite Canadian fiction books this year were Endling by Maria Reva and Pick A Colour by Souvankham Thammavongsa and I loved Eric Andrew-Gee’s The Mind Mappers. I will also read anything by Guy Gavriel Kay. I also loved Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume (Book III). Here’s a profile of her in the New York Times.
I have books for different times. I love reading A Christmas Carol at Christmas; I also always watch Lion in the Winter. I’ve been reading Robert Caro’s books for what seems like FOREVER.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is what I read when I need a pick-me-up. Also anything about spies, shipwrecks and Maritime history.
Are there any books on the list you think are underrated or deserve more attention?
Pereira: I would say everyone should take a look at We Survived The Night by Julian Brave NoiseCat and also Greg Mercer’s The Lobster Trap (which is just a lovely, lovely book that is so well-written).