Ernest Hemingway once remarked, "There is no friend as loyal as a book." This year's literature felt a lot like that: books that followed you around even after you'd finished reading them; books you carried everywhere, telling friends and colleagues of their magic; books that greeted you warmly in those fleeting moments of solitude; books that, for one reason or another, consumed you fully.

We had some favorites: The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison, A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James, Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, 10:04 by Ben Lerner, Redeployment by Phil Klay, Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer, Panic in a Suitcase by Yelena Akhtiorskaya, Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi, Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine, Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle, and Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay.

But it's hard to settle on just one, so we'll let you decide: What was the best book of the year?

Join us in Kinja, and share your thoughts.

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