Best biography books of 2013

The Goodreads Choice Awards have three rounds of voting open to all registered Goodreads members. Winners will be announced December 04,

Opening Round: Nov 05 - 10

Voting opens to 15 official nominees, and write-in votes can be placed for any eligible book (see eligibility below).

Semifinal Round: Nov 12 - 17

The top five write-in votes in each of the categories become official nominees. Additional write-ins no longer accepted.

Final Round: Nov 19 - 26

The field narrows to the top 10 books in each category, and members have one last chance to vote!

Books published in the United States in English, including works in translation and other significant rereleases, between November 26, , and November 17, , are eligible for the Goodreads Choice Awards. Books published between November 18, , and November 17, , will be eligible for the awards.

We analyze statistics from the millions of books added, rated, and reviewed on Goodreads to nominate 15 books in each category. Opening round official nominees must have an average rating of or higher at the time of launch. Write-in votes may be cast for eligible books with any average rating, and write-in votes will be weighted by the book's Goodreads statistics to determine the top five books to be added as official nominees in the Semifinal Round. A book may be nominated in no more than one genre category, but can also be nominated in the Debut Novel category. Only one book in a series may be nominated per category. An author may receive multiple nominations within a single category if he or she has more than one eligible series or more than one eligible stand-alone book. Learn more

It&#;s that time of year again, the time for those highly subjective, grossly non-exhaustive, yet inevitable and invariably fun best-of reading lists. To kick off the season, here are my thirteen favorite biographies, memoirs, and history books of (Catch up on last year&#;s best history books.)

1. LOST CAT

&#;Dogs are not about something else. Dogs are about dogs,&#; Malcolm Gladwell asserted indignantly in the introduction to The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs. Though hailed as memetic rulers of the internet, cats have also enjoyed a long history as artistic and literary muses, but never have they been at once more about cats and more about something else than in Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology (public library) by firefighter-turned-writer Caroline Paul and illustrator extraordinaire Wendy MacNaughton, she of many wonderful collaborations &#; a tender, imaginative memoir infused with equal parts humor and humanity. (You might recall a subtle teaser for this gem in Wendy&#;s wonderful recent illustration of Gay Talese&#;s taxonomy of cats.) Though &#;about&#; a cat, this heartwarming and heartbreaking tale is really about what it means to be human &#; about the osmosis of hollowing loneliness and profound attachment, the oscillation between boundless affection and paralyzing fear of abandonment, the unfair promise of loss implicit to every possibility of love.

After Caroline crashes an experimental plane she was piloting, she finds herself severely injured and spiraling into the depths of depression. It both helps and doesn&#;t that Caroline and Wendy have just fallen in love, soaring in the butterfly heights of new romance, &#;the phase of love that didn&#;t obey any known rules of physics,&#; until the crash pulls them into a place that would challenge even the most seasoned and grounded of relationships. And yet they persevere as Wendy patiently and lovingly

A compilation of over up-to-date, contemporary profiles of accomplished and rising stars of politics, industry, entertainment and the arts from the U.S. and around the world.

H.W. Wilson's Current Biography Yearbook combines a full year of the monthly magazine Current Biography into a single, permanent record. It has been delivering up-to-date biographies of men and women of contemporary importance since Current Biography is renowned for its unfailing accuracy, insightful selection and the wide scope of influence of its subjects.

Current Biography Yearbook offers ongoing access to the important personalities of today:

1. Includes the day's most talked-about and influential people.
2. A remarkably wide range of professions
3. Obituaries, where appropriate, of figures profiled in previous yearbooks.
4. A complete index listing all those profiled in the current year.
5. Multiple photos accompany most of the entries. Now Printed in Full Color.

Profiles are approximately 2, words and include biographical statistics and a bibliography for easy access to additional information. Photographs accompany many of the entries.

Free Online Access Included with Purchase to the Salem Press/Grey House Platform, your readers will be able to search through the biographies of those profiled. An unlimited number of simultaneous users and remote access included.

Variety

Here’s a sample of the wide variety of notable figures featured in the Yearbook: Politician Eva Aariak, Singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams, Cricketer Chamari Athapaththu, Singer and actor Halle Bailey, Author and activist Jennifer Finney Boylan, Businessperson Shou Zi Chew, Textile artist Melissa Cody, Actor Charlie Day, Actor Colman Domingo, Blues singer Angelique Francis, Romance novelist Jasmine Guillory, Science fiction writer Hugh Howey, Artistic gymnast Jake Jarman, Installation artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien, Football player Travis Kelce, Soccer player Thembi Kgatlana, Cartoonist and au

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw (Fourth Estate) is a brilliant, sprawling, layered and unsentimental portrayal of contemporary China. It made me think and laugh. I also love Dave Eggers' The Circle (Hamish Hamilton), which is a sharp-eyed and funny satire about the obsession with "sharing" our lives through technology. It's convincing and a little creepy.

William Boyd

By strange coincidence two of the most intriguing art books I read this year had the word "Breakfast" in their titles. They were Breakfast with Lucian by Geordie Greig (Jonathan Cape) and Breakfast at Sotheby's by Philip Hook (Particular). Greig's fascinating, intimate biography of Lucian Freud was a revelation. Every question I had about Freud – from the aesthetic to the intrusively gossipy – was answered with great candour and judiciousness. Hook's view of the art world is that of the professional auctioneer. In an A-Z format, it is an entire art education contained in under pages. Wry, dry and completely beguiling.

Bill Bryson

The Compatibility Gene by Daniel M Davis (Allen Lane) is an elegantly written, unexpectedly gripping account of how scientists painstakingly unravelled the way in which a small group of genes (known as MHC genes) crucially influence, and unexpectedly interconnect, various aspects of our lives, from how well we fight off infection to how skilfully we find a mate. Lab work has rarely been made to seem more interesting or heroic. But my absolute book of the year is Philip Davies's hefty, gorgeous London: Hidden Interiors (English Heritage/Atlantic Publishing), which explores fabulous London interior spaces that most people know nothing about, from George Gilbert Scott's wondrous chapel at King's College to L Manze's eel, pie and mash shop in Walthamstow. It is beautifully illustrated with photographs by Derek Randall and worth every penny of its £40 price.

Eleano