We’re quickly approaching the end of the year and it seems like a new “Best of 2010 Books” list is being released every day. Take these lists for what they’re worth. They are highly subjective, of course, and there’s a lot of great books published this year that, for whatever reason, haven’t got the attention they deserve (The Physics of Imaginary Objects by Tina May Hall, for example). Nevertheless, “best of” lists can be helpful starting places if you’re looking for book recommendations or perhaps a holiday gift for that friend or family member who’s always so hard to shop for. So here’s a few lists you might consider checking out:

• The New York Times’ Ten Best Books and 100 Notable Books of 2010
• The Huffington Post, Great Titles to Add to the NYT Best of 2010 Lists
• Flavorwire’s 10 Great, New Books That Didn’t Make the Times’ Best of 2010 List
• The Atlantic’s Books of the Year
• The Economist’s Books of the Year
• NPR’s Best Books of 2010
• Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2010

If “best of” lists are not your thing, The Millions does a wonderful series — The Year in Reading — in which writers and editors discuss, of all the books they read in 2010, the one(s) that meant the most to them (regardless of publication date).

Bookforum and the Guardian also have authors discussing the books they loved reading this year.

If you need to buy a gift for a lover of world literature, you might want to check out the holiday gift guide at Salonica.

Greenpoint’s independent bookstore, Word, also has a great gift guide, divided into useful categories such as “For the Literati,” “For Kids,” and “For the Foodies.”

Finally, if you haven’t found what you are looking for here, Largehearted Boy has undertaken the Herculian task of aggregating every 2010 “best of” list he can find. If you can’t find it here, it doesn’t exist.