AFTER a heated discussion by 17 judges, the top 10 books of the year were announced Sunday from a shortlist of 30 books.

    Although the judges had varying opinions on some books, they unanimously praised the high quality of the 10 winning books.

    Yuan Xi, senior editor of People’s Daily, said that the top 10 books represented the overall highest quality of this year’s publications. Yuan said he felt gratified that “One Square Inch of Silence” and “The Besieged Tengchong in 1944” were in the top 10. “‘One Square Inch of Silence’ is an educational book about protecting the environment. 2015 is the 70th anniversary of the anti-fascist war, so ‘The Besieged Tengchong in 1944’ can be a tribute to war martyrs,” Yuan said.

    Although this year, the organizing committee had opted for increasing the number of fictional works on the shortlist, the genre only accounted for a small portion of the top 10 books.

    Chen Zishan, a professor of Chinese literature at East China Normal University, said it is sad that fiction accounts for such a small portion of the final selection.

    “We can’t choose fiction for the sake of increasing its proportion of the top 10 books. I feel a good book can only be selected for its good quality, be it fiction or non-fiction,” said Jiang Xiaoyuan, head of the science department of Shanghai Jiaotong University.

    Emigrant writer Li Changsheng said that there was a good balance of different kinds of books in the final selection, but felt it a pity that translated foreign works outnumbered original Chinese works. “I hope more good original Chinese books become top 10 books in the future,” Li said.

    This year’s selection mechanism, a reform of previous years, introduced a section of shared reading. Each judge was required to read intensively two books from the 30 books on the shortlist and share their reading experiences with other judges.

    Chen said that the shared reading section allowed judges to have a thorough understanding of all the books so they can better understand the books’ merits and defects.

    Jiang Xiaoyuan also agreed that the section allowed exchanges between judges so they could make justified decisions about all the books.

    Li, who has attended numerous book selection events, praised the efforts that have been made with regards to Shenzhen’s book selection event in its nine-year history, and called the event “a noble persistence.”

    “For the past decade, I have witnessed the growth of Shenzhen’s Reading Month and have seen it stand out far ahead of other similar book review and reading events. I have to pay my tribute to its achievements in the past 15 years, and I look forward to its development in the next 15 years,” said Liu Ruilin, editor-in-chief of Guangxi Normal University Press. (Anna Zhao)