Planning for the Year-End Notable Books List starts in January. “The Book Review at The Times reviews about 1% of the books that come out in any given year.” Way more books come out every year than you think. Below, find a few things you may or may not have known about how books are assigned, reviewed, and considered for the year-end lists of the paper of record. In addition to recommending a number of great books and writers (Nora Ephron, Christopher Hitchens, George Orwell, George Eliot, and more), dubbing Colson Whitehead one of the greatest novelists of our time, and suggesting that, of the Times‘s Top 10, a Trump supporter might most enjoy The North Water, Paul shed a little light on how things work at the Book Review (a question that some of us have been asking ourselves lately!). Pamela Paul, the editor of The New York Times Book Review, hopped on reddit yesterday afternoon to answer questions about the Book Review and the recently published list of their editors’ picks for the 10 best books of the year.