Books on Your Christmas List?

Do you need a gift for that someone who has everything? A special child in your life? A father or grandfather? Lists of selected books for gift giving are everywhere this time of year. Here are links to a few:

Nancy Pearl's Under-the-Radar Holiday Books. Nancy Pearl, librarian and author of Book Lust, recommends books on NPR. This list includes books for adults, teens & children. NPR's best lists for 2009 are listed by critic, so you know who is recommending what.

The New York Times prefers to list the 10 Best Books of 2009 for different categories: children, graphic novels, crime novels, cookbooks, and many more.

Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2009. These are the folks who review books for the bookselling & library world. They present an exhaustive list of adult books divided by type/genre, for example Fiction, Non-Fiction, Mystery, Comics, etc. The only hitch is toward the bottom of the list where Religion runs right into Cookbooks without a break. I am religious about cooking, but I don't think that's what they meant. They have another list of Best Childrens Books.

Amazon gives us two top books lists: Top 100 Editor's Picks and Top 100 Customer Favorites. The customer favorites are decided by books sold by the end of October, 2009, at Amazon.

BookPage's Book Case blog lists the top ten in categories: Fiction, Picture Books, Cookbooks, Audiobooks, Middle Grade Books.

And how do these lists help? They give you a quick blurb about each book. You will see books that you may have missed or that are outside your normal reading interests. Soon we'll be seeing best books of the decade lists.