bibliophile omnibus

Book Design Review's Best Book Covers of 2008
(my vote goes for Harry Harrison's Make Room, Make Room. Although I did buy a copy of Sharp Teeth for the store just because the cover was so great.)

Project Foodie's
10 Best Baking Cookbooks

NPR's 10 Best Cookbooks
I highly recommend Bittman's How to Cook Everything, although they're cheating a bit listing the 10th Anniversary Edition.

NYT's 10 best illustrated children's books

NPR's Best Gift Books (aka What To Get People You Don't Really Know But Have to Buy Something For)

and a selection of Best Books of the Year lists:

Various literary figures chime in at the London Times.

The Globe & Mail offers 100 reasons to give thanks.

The NYT follows suit.

Publisher's Weekly sounds off

Christan Science Monitor's top ten nonfiction books

Amazon's selection


makes me wish I had a few spare minutes to read ANYTHING.

A couple of good books I managed to read this year pre-Fuss, although not necessarily published in 2008:

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters. The best historical novel I've ever read, completely satisfying.

Counting Heads by David Marusek. The most original SF novel I've read since William Gibson's Neuromancer back in the 80's.

Seductions of Rice, which is technically a cookbook but is part autobiography and part travelogue.

Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon. A genuine literary talent who regularly strolls through the slums of genre fiction- my kinda guy!

Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb. I hate numbers and 'the market'- compelling me to not only finish but recommend a book examining both is a prodigious feat of writing.