Amazon's Best Books of 2008

Amazon.com just released its lists of the Best Books of 2008. There’s an editor’s list and a customer’s list. The editor’s top 10 are:

1. The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher
2. Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg
3. Nixonland by Rick Perlstein
4. The Forever War by Dexter Filkins
5. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
6. The Likeness by Tana French
7. Serena by Ron Rash
8. So Brave, Young, and Handsome by Leif Enger
9. The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
10. The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu

Tom at Omnivoracious has this to say about the surprising #1 pick, The Northern Clemency:

I'm fairly sure we've never chosen a book as our favorite of the year that hadn't even been released when we chose it (it did just come out last week, after Knopf moved it up from a November 11 pub date, after moving it up once before from the Spring '09 list after it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize). But a few of us were smitten as soon as we could get advance copies, and we managed to spread our enthusiasm to the rest of the team just in time to make our final list.