Looking for a great holiday gift? Try a book, I always say. It works for mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, even parents and babysitters. And you don’t need to know any sizes or color favorites — just topics. Wrapping is also very easy and most stores will do it for you.

The New York York Times has come out with its “10 Best Books of 2007” which will make any book giver seem well-read and in the know. Some titles are familiar to me, others aren’t, which reminds me that there are so many books and so little time to crack open a book.

On the list in nonfiction is Jeffrey Toobin’s “The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court,” which local booksellers have said is selling briskly already. On the fiction side, is “Man Gone Down” a first novel by Michael Thomas which I’ve been meaning to pick up. It is a current day tale of searching for identity and the American dream. Check out the Times’ complete list with the originally published NY Times book reviews online or in the print edition to be published Dec. 9. There is also a related article on the 100 Notable Books of 2007 in case you need a longer list of suggestions.

•Other nonfiction titles are “Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone” by Rajiv Chandrasekaran; “Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression” by Mildred Armstrong Kalish; “The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History” by Linda Colley; and “The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century” by Alex Ross.

•Other fiction titles  are “Out Stealing Horses” by Per Petterson, translated by Anne Born; “The Savage Detectives” by Roberto Bolano, translated by Natasha Wimmer; “Then We Came to the End” by Joshua Ferris; and “Tree of Smoke” by Denis Johnson.

There’s lots to read and plenty to shopping ideas.

For a compilation of book-related gift selections, send me an e=mail noting your favorite title at bnackman@LoHud.com. I bet you readers out there can come up with old favorites as well as new sleepers that will really entice booklovers.