I love that "great" and "eight" rhyme; anyone else noticed that? It makes for such a nice greeting. I am poised for the start of the year with a calendar where the spine has not yet been cracked. For all my electronic devices --- cell phone, BlackBerry, iPod, laptop, desktop, swim headphones --- I still carry a paper calendar and scrawl notes in it for advance planning. By the end of the year it's stuffed with notes, receipts and papers. I keep the old calendars in a stack at the house; they tell their own story of me and where I was these past years.

For some reason I am not swept up completely in holiday madness this year. To be honest, it may just be because I am not focusing on what needs to be accomplished. Thus, when I see holiday lights and falling snow this afternoon, I think the scene is lovely and I am not seeing signs that "gee, Carol, you should be attacking your holiday list."

A few weeks ago we learned that the New York Times changed how they organized their paperback bestseller list. It is now broken up into trade (which is a format frequently read by book clubs) and mass market paperbacks, giving readers the ability to track a number of bestselling selections in each category. Earlier this week, as I was reading our list of the "Top Requested Guides," I realized that I wanted to make some changes there to give many more titles the chance to be spotlighted, as the appearance of some of the same guides each month was keeping us from sharing new trends with you. Beginning this month we now are featuring our "most read" guides in the following categories: New Favorites, which includes popular new guides; Ongoing Favorites, which includes guides that have been popular with reading clubs for an extended period of time; and Enduring Favorites, which includes discussion guides to the work of authors who have been read by book groups for years.