Year end best-of lists make me a little jealous. Jealous of the mythical creatures—for they truly are mysterious, rare as unicorns—called “book critics,” who are paid to read books and write about what they’ve read, and who’ve read enough that they can say with confidence which of the quarter million books published each year are the best.

I’m not one of them. I have a day job, you know? I can’t tell you which novels published in 2013 were the best.

But I am—and I say this with pride—a connoisseur of best-of lists, and though I can’t confidently tell you which books published this year are the best, I can tell you which year-end book roundups are most worth your time: which are the most interesting, the most democratic, the most likely to yield book suggestions that you’ll really, truly, love.

So here it is, the list of booklists, the best of the best-ofs:

5. Amazon’s Best Books of 2013. There are plenty of things not to like about Amazon—but their monthly editors’ picks and yearly Best-Of aren’t among them. Amazon makes it to this list by virtue of being maximally broad: instead of a top 10, their editors give us a top 100—and if you’re looking for something specific, they also break things down by genre: best mystery, best sci-fi, best teen and young adult. This year, Amazon gets extra points in my book for including Eleanor & Park, a sweet YA romance that is easily the best new release I’ve read this year, in their top 10.

4. The Millions Year in Reading. This isn’t a top-10 list, exactly—simply a yearly feature in which The Millions, one of the best literary sites on the web, asks writers to tell them about some of the best stuff they read in the past year. Recommendations range from recent releases to old classics, fiction to nonfiction, but it’s always an interesting series.

3. Goodreads Choice Awards. These year-end book awards put on by Goodreads, the crowdsourced book review and recommendation site, are appropriately democratic, relying on the votes of the site’s members to come up with its award winners. What’s interesting about the resulting Goodreads best-of lists are how well they do or don’t match those of the critics. Very often, what regular people are reading and enjoying matches what the critics liked: this year, Khaled Hosseini’s And the Mountains Echoed, a frequent resident on best-of lists, won Best Fiction. But writers who are usually ignored by the critical establishment get some love too: oft-snubbed Jodi Picoult was runner-up in the Fiction category, and voters had no problem giving Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol Best Mystery/Thriller, barely edging out the pseudonymous J.K. Rowling mystery, The Cuckoo’s Calling. If the critics’ booklists sometimes show you the books that you should be reading (but won’t), the Goodreads Awards give you great books that people are actually reading—and actually enjoying.

2. Time’s Top 10 Books. Time Magazine doesn’t exactly have the literary clout of the New York Times, but under the leadership of novelist Lev Grossman, the magazine consistently picks the most interesting and entertaining novels for its best-of list. As a critic, Grossman is seemingly immune to snobbery, with an affinity for both the high-literary and low-genre. As a result, his best-of lists give plenty of love to books in genres that are otherwise overlooked. Last year’s Time list included not one but two YA titles—including John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, which got the top spot. This year’s list is no exception, with spots going to Neil Gaiman and Joe Hill right alongside Jhumpa Lahiri and George Saunders.

1. The Morning News Tournament of Books. Technically, this won’t kick off until March. But the Morning News Tournament of Books is the best take on the best books of the year out there. I trust it more than the National Book Award, more than the Pulitzer, more than the Booker. Inspired by NCAA March Madness, The Morning News puts together a bracket of the previous year’s best fiction, then puts the titles in head to head matchups until an ultimate winner is crowned. It’s a fun concept for a best-of competition, and a helpful one for readers who just don’t have the time to read every significant book every year. Following the Tournament of Books is like talking with your smart, well-read best friend about what you should read next, about which book is really worth your time—this one’s better than that one, but not quite as good as that other one, but oh look here’s the ultimate winner, I guess I know what I’m reading next. It was the Tournament of Books that convinced me last year to buy Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son, and for me it would get the top spot based on that recommendation alone.