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The anti-list list: The Millions has launched their annual Year in Reading feature, which bucks the trend (happily indulged in over here) of making Best of the Year lists that "posit an illusory pinnacle of achievement and quality," in favor of collecting a British-style series of what-was-the-best-book-you-read-last-year replies, under the commendable rationale that "true discoveries are often made not by finding out what everybody
liked, but by getting from one trusted fellow reader a recommendation
that strikes a nerve or piques an interest." Two pluses: they give each contributor more room to make their case than the usual UK list does, and they string out their posts throughout December, which makes for enjoyable daily grazing. So far, recommendations from Hari Kunzru, Julie Klam, Phillip Lopate, and LanguageHat's Stephen Dodson, who finally convinces me that, yes, I really have to go all-in on the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary as my big (my only?) gift request this year.
What Canada will read: Two big Canada lists are announced this week: The Globe and Mail's annual top 100 list (which, if we add it to our top 100 consensus list from last week, narrows the agreed-upon books to only tw Asterios Polyp and The Lost City of Z), and perhaps the most influential one of the year, the 2010 Canada Reads lineup of five books that will be debated on the CBC early next year in a series that always sends the books high onto bestseller lists.
Down with Daddy Lit: In the Daily Beast, Lizzie Skurnick lays waste to the budding genre of reverent, "child curation" Daddy Lit with a barrage of memorable one-liners, aimed mainly at Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, "a singular entry in the annals of parenting literature"”bypassing a
now-commonplace obsession with one's offspring to head straight to
sanctification."
Moving & shaking: Could it be that Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac birthday ode to John Crowley has sent his novel Little, Big, one of the all-time cult novels (which has been sitting on my to-read pile forever), to the top of our Movers & Shakers list today?
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