A favorite hand-sell book of the year, oh my.

I was delighted to learn tonight that Life is a Verb has been nominated for a SIBA Award. As the Southern Independent Booksellers Association describes on their site:

Each year, hundreds of booksellers across the South vote on their favorite hand-sell books of the year. These are the Southern books they have most enjoyed selling to customers; the ones that they couldn’t stop talking about; the ones most often pushed into a customer’s hands with the words “You have got to read this!” The SIBA Book Award was created to recognize great books of Southern origin, as determined by people whose business it is to know great books—the independent booksellers of the South.

Books are nominated in six categories, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry, cooking, young adult, and children’s. For a book to be eligible, it must be set in the South, and it must have been originally published within the 2008 calendar year. Only SIBA-member booksellers can submit nominations and vote on the selection of finalists. Winners will be chosen from the list of finalists by a jury of SIBA booksellers.

Is there any greater honor than to be among the favorite hand-sell books of the year? A book that book sellers push into customer's hands? I think not.

I am smiling.

(I'm Southern?)