Well, I think it was a pretty successful Thanksgiving weekend.

No, I’m not talking about winning some sort of sick contest for most mashed potatoes consumed.

Nor am I even talking about a productive Update Your Parent’s Technology Day.

No, my great success, as has become something of a November tradition for me, was cooping up in the calm of my parents’ house and knocking out some long-neglected reading.

Those seven back issues of Bloomberg Businessweek? Check.

Three back issues of Esquire and an issue of Minnesota Monthly? All in the recycling bin now.

And then there is my Pocket queue, which I reduced by almost 400 articles.

Now, granted, I summarily deleted some of those articles without reading them. And I still have about 800 articles left in the queue, and several more magazines still sitting sadly on the coffee table.

But, you see, this November tradition serves the much-needed purpose of making some room in that reading queue, for winter is coming, and with it an onslaught of end-of-year reviews, lists and lists of lists.

It happens every year:

• Best songs of the year
• Best films of the year
• Worst restaurants of the year
• Top search phrases of the year
• Weirdest moments in local television news broadcasts of the year

The list of lists goes on and on. Ex-Minnesotan Rex Sorgatz has even been known to catalog the lists just so you can be sure to read every last one. Gotta catch ’em all.

Maybe that’s all too mainstream for you? What about a look back at the 10 best glasses of water of the year?

Nothing is too obscure or small potatoes to be the subject of an end-of-year listicle.

And why not? These lists tie a nice little cathartic bow on our years. And the click-baity headlines must drive busloads of traffic to sites like Time.com that are especially notorious for the lists.

Of course, time was one would have to wait till the end of the year for these lists, but maybe that model is disappearing in a time when you can just head over to Buzzfeed whenever you want to see 39 Photos Of Communists Dressed As Bulldogs, 26 Moms On Steroids or 9 Reasons Why Star Wars Fans Were Better In The ’80s.

I, for one, am just gullible enough to add every last one of these articles to my Pocket queue.

So, I guess I better getting reading. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll be done with all this year’s lists by the time next Thanksgiving rolls around.