Merry belated Christmas and thanks for the votes

Merry Christmas from all of us here at LibraryThing! Now that I'm full of good food and family visting, it's time to get to the bookpiles.

We didn't get that many entries* in the Christmas bookpile contest, but this one was a clear winner. Great work, thelee!** My tree wasn't as poetic looking as this one, that's for sure. I particularly like how warm the light is - and a bookpile that goes from Leaves of Grass to The American Catholic Experience to Paradise Lost to Lonely Planet British Columbia, of course! As the photo caption aptly says,

Though the books don't necessarily have much to do with Christmas, some of them were Christmas gifts in the past, and Christmas is a great time to read, next to the tree, with a cup of hot cocoa, a fireplace, and friends and family doing likewise.

In unrelated, but also joyful news, we tied for the People's Choice winner in the niche category of Mashable's Social Networking Awards. That is, of course, entirely due to you—thanks for voting for us!*** As Chris said, we did exceptionally well considering Dogster put their vote button right on their homepage, while our users had to find the blog to know about the award.

*This isn't all of them - some were were emailed to me because they hadn't show up in the public Flickr pool yet.
**who are you on LT? Email me to get your recognition and claim your prize! (update—the winner is thelee!)
***I'd like to thank the Academy...