Former Arizona Daily Star books editor J.C. Martin in 2007.

 James S. Wood, Arizona Daily Star

You could write a book with all the book lists we find in our in-boxes at this time of year. What were the best books of 2021? Well, it depends whom you ask. Almost every newspaper and magazine in the country seems to have its own thoughts on that. Booksellers, too. YouTube? Check. NPR? Check.

Someday soon, we may see a year-end list of best year-end lists, and one of its earliest entries will be datelined Tucson, Arizona.

In 1977, the Arizona Daily Star began publishing a special section each November that recommended Southwest books as gift suggestions for the holidays. It was headlined “Southwest Books of the Year” and became a year-end staple of the Daily Star.

Now in its 44th year and managed by the Pima County Public Library, the Southwest Books of the Year program is one of the oldest “best of” book lists in the United States.

“Because of its name, some people think it’s an award program,” said Helene Woodhams, a current reviewer and former program coordinator after it moved from the Daily Star to the library in 2005. “But there are no awards, no trophies or certificates. These are reading recommendations from judges who know a lot about books and even more about the American Southwest.”

The concept was developed by the late June Caldwell Martin, the now-legendary book editor of the Arizona Daily Star from 1975 until 1994.

Known throughout Arizona as “J.C.,” she was a tireless crusader who lit the fuse when local interest in books exploded in the 1970s and ‘80s.

She read more than 100 books a year. In the words of a friend, Mary Alice Keller, she owned more books than the Library of Congress.

Being the Book Editor for the Daily Star was Martin’s dream job, and her monthly book column ran in the Daily Star for 35 years. Another of her projects was the newspaper’s Book and Author Luncheon, held each spring from 1980 through 1996. It attracted bestselling authors such as Elmore Leonard, Alex Haley, Irving Stone and Dave Barry, and served as a springboard for the hugely popular Tucson Festival of Books.

Still, Martin’s favorite legacy would probably be her first: the Southwest Books of the Year program.

Shortly after becoming the Book Editor of the Daily Star, she invited UA librarian David Laird, UA Special Collections librarian Don Powell and author C.L. Sonnichsen to review Southwest-themed books for the newspaper’s book page.

At year’s end, they collaborated on a list of gift suggestions for the holidays. It quickly became an annual advertising supplement in the Star, and the Southwest Books of the Year program was born.

More than 1,000 books have been featured as “Southwest Books of the Year,” some by famous people such as Sandra Day O’Connor, but many by authors now known for that one single book.

The series is among the many strands that connect the Golden Age of Tucson literature to life in the Pueblo today.

In the 1980s and ‘90s, a number of well-known authors — Larry McMurtry, Andrew Greenley and Barbara Kingsolver among them — lived and worked here. UA graduates such as Richard Russo, David Foster Wallace, Tom Boswell and Antonya Nelson were finding their voices. At one point, more than 50 independent bookstores could be found in and around town, and weekend “popup” shops were familiar sights when neighbors ran out of space on their bookshelves.

Bruce Dinges, former editor of the Journal of Arizona History, remembers the era well.

“Tucson has had always had a vibrant literary community and a public hungry for books,” he said. “But things really seemed to take off in the ‘70s and ‘80s. J.C. Martin would tell you she just illuminated that, but she encouraged and promoted it, too. She was a real crusader for books.”

Dinges joined the Southwest Books panel of reviewers in 1986 and remains active today.

“We had a core group of reviewers that seemed pretty constant, and another few people who seemed to come and go every few years,” he said. “We’d have evening meetings at J.C.’s home, swapping stories and talking books. Now we meet any way we can. Maybe it’s because we all care about books. Maybe it’s because we all care about history. Whatever it is, we all take our jobs seriously. We all think it’s important.”

They all do, which is why the Southwest Books of the Year remains important to this day.

The Pima County Library will announce this year’s selections next month.

Footnotes

J.C. Martin’s first husband was novelist Erskine Caldwell, who later wrote “Tobacco Road” and “God’s Little Acre.” J.C. got over Erskine but never her love of books.

Martin retired from the Daily Star in 1994 and died on Mother’s Day of 2020.

The title of Martin’s column in the Daily Star was “Southern Arizona Authors” and it continues to this day. Now curated by Helene Woodhams and Christine Wald-Hopkins, the column is formatted much the same as Martin’s was. Woodhams and Wald-Hopkins offer capsules describing recently published books by Tucson-area authors, many of whom are self-published.

A number of authors who took part in the Daily Star’s Book and Author Luncheon through the years became headliners in the early years of the Tucson Festival of Books, including Elmore Leonard.

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