Here they are, the books that readers thought deserved more love this year. There were a lot of great nominations, so many, in fact, that I’ve divided the presentation into two installments — these books have already had to fight for their share of the limelight; I didn’t want them to get lost in the shuffle here.

The book title links lead to Powell’s, with additional links to information following. An observation: While I found reviews of many of these titles at The Washington Post, The San Franciso Chronicle, and other publications, very few seem to have been covered by The New York Times Book Review. Huh. Who would have thought? They’re usually all over interesting new fiction.

• At the top of the list, with votes from these guys, is David Markson’ s Vanishing Point, released in February 2004.

Jennifer Howard’s positive review in Washington Post; a review in City Pages; MadInkBeard’s introduction to David Markson; and a lament from Return of the Reluctant about how little attention the book’s received. Group consensus on the novel as summed up by Derik B.: “Brilliant and moving.”

• In addition to his Markson vote, The Elegant Variation puts in a kind advance word for Mitch Cullin’s A Slight Trick of the Mind, which will be published next April by Doubleday. “Even though it isn’t due out for a few more months, [it] risks being overwhelmed by the Chabon juggernaut.” Said juggernaut being The Final Solution, which, like Cullin’s novel, takes Sherlock Holmes as a protagonist. TEV compares the two novels in this review, arguing that Cullin’s is the superior.

• Sarah Weinman nominates Adam Braver’s Divine Sarah, “a short novel about Sarah Bernhardt that I absolutely adored.”

Carolyn See’s review in Washington Post, which concludes, “Readers interested in the wars between life and art, art and commerce, inspiration and age, should be captivated by Adam Braver’s novel.”

• Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network votes for George Garrett’s Double Vision. It was put out by University of Alabama Press last summer.

Double Vision was Ploughshares’ Editors Corners pick for Winter 2004-05. The journal called the novel “a witty tour de force, marrying fact and fiction about a gifted generation of American writers.” Here’s the University of Alabama Press book page.

• Stephen Dixon’s Old Friends also comes in for some love from the group. The novel was published by Melville House this fall.

This Melville House press page has links to reviews of Old Friends in Village Voice, Los Angeles Times and other papers; a review by Rake’s Progress; mention by the illustrious Laura Lippman that she recently purchased a copy as a result of this discussion (see comments). Also, please note that Lizzie TOTALLY KNOWS Dixon.

• The Robert Birnbaum juggernaut weighs in with several suggestions of titles you may wish to catch up on:

Sailors on the Inward Sea by Lawrence Thornton (Philadelphia Inquirer review)

An Unfinished Life by Mark Spragg (Bookreporter.com review by Curtis Edmonds; Birnbaum interview with Jim Harrison that mentions An Unfinished Life)

The Bad Boy’s Wife by Karen Shepard (San Francisco Chronicle review by Brad Vice)

Prisoners of War by Steve Yarborough (San Francisco Chronicle review by Matt King)

The Rope Eater by Ben Jones (New York Times Books in Brief mention (scroll down); author interview with Birnbaum)

Inheritance by Lan Samantha Chang (interview with Birnbaum in which Chang discloses a youth spent in the wondrous city of Appleton, Wisconsin (no, I will never tire of that fact); “Hangzhou 1925,” an excerpt from the novel published in Ploughshares)