The Season of the List...

'Best of the Year' lists are appearing hourly (well, almost). The New York Times' 10 Best Books of 2006, for example, has been online for a week and came out in print in yesterday's paper. Their list:
       Gary Shteyngart, Absurdistan
       The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel
       Claire Messud, The Emperor's Children
       Richard Ford, The Lay of the Land
       Marisha Pessl, Special Topics in Calamity Physics
       Danielle Trussoni, Falling Through the Earth : A Memoir
       Lawrence Wright, The looming tower : Al-Qaeda and the road to 9/11
       Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower : a story of courage, community, and war
       Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma : A Natural History Of Four Meals
       Rory Stewart, The Places In Between
We'll order the Trussoni. The others are already in the system, and Santa Fe readers are already standing in line for them.

Or try the American Library Association's Notable Children's Books, 2006 and School Library Journal's Best Books 2006 ; about.com's Top 10 Books of 2006; Washington Post's Book World's 10 Best of the Year ; Slate's The Year in Books ; Publisher's Weekly's Best Books of the Year – Graphic Novels ; and on and on. Too many lists to reproduce here, and way too many for choosing cover images.

As always, if there's a title which is not already in the system that you think we should have, please make a suggestion for purchase, either online or on the familiar blue postcard. We really do get nearly everything that our users ask for. It may be slow, but it happens.

P. S. We found an audio clip of Donovan's 1967 song, "Season of the Witch", which irresistably suggested itself as soon as this post had a title.