The Sunday Salon - A Guessing Game

Like many other bloggers, I've been thinking about what my favourite reads of the year were. I already have a good idea of what will make my final top twenty (and have in fact written a draft), but usually I only post my list on the final week of December because I'm hopeful until the very end that another book will blow me away.

As some of you might remember, last year I had a game/giveaway in which I asked people to guess my favourites, and rewarded one winner with a book of their choice from my final list (credit to Literary Feline, who I think was the first blogger to do this back in 2007). I had a lot of fun with this little contest last year, so I thought I'd do it again. Here's what you need to know:

• If you click here you'll find a list of all the books I read so far this year.
  
• After taking a quick look through the list, leave me a comment with five titles that you think will make my final Best Reads of 2009 list.
  
• The books don't have to be published in 2009. As long as they're books I read this year, they're fair game.
• ETA: It's totally okay to just guess randomly if you have no idea. Who knows, you might get lucky!
• I will put the names of those who guess correctly in a hat and draw a winner.
  
• If nobody gets five books right, I'll draw from among those who manage to guess four.
  
• Order doesn't matter. You don't need to guess my favourite five reads of 2009; just five books that will make my final list.
  
• The winner will receive a book of their choice from my final list, which I plan to post a week from today.
  
• This means that you have until Saturday the 26th to play.

Good luck! I think plenty of you will get many books right this year, as there were quite a few titles I was particularly loud and gushy about.

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Another thing: as I mentioned last week, Chris and I are hosting the 2010 Graphic Novels Challenge. Quite a few people who are new to the comics medium have asked us to put together a list of recommendations for beginners, and we plan to do just that. But to make the list as complete as possible, we'd like to ask for your help. Please click the link for details - I have to say I'm a little sad that the post has been up for a while and we got zero e-mails with suggestions so far. You don't have to to be an expert in comics and graphic novels to contribute; if you read one that you'd recommend to others, please send it in. Thank you in advance!