December 3rd, 2007

What I Don’t Know

A quick cruise of my favourite blogs indicates that it’s year-end best-book lists that are currently fascinating and irritating people (if people-I-know are reasonably representative sample of people-at-large, which they probably aren’t). Since I need to update my links list anyway, and there’s this copacetic (not a word? unsure) moment, let me introduce you to Thirsty: A Biblioasis Miscellany is a blog run by Daniel Wells for Biblioasis press, but occasionally guest-written by authors from the press. It’s about the books, obviously, but also about Canadian publishing, poetry, grants, reviews, translation and a host of other things that I know a lot about *in theory* and yet am contunually surprised by in real life. Thirsty is a great window into how (hard) you work to get books into the world, and it’s written with such consistent passion that it also reminds you why someone would.

Steven W. Beattie at That Shakespearian Rag is at the other end of the food chain, a consumate reader and reviewer of books. I have to admit that I have trouble keeping up when I read that blog, because not only have I not read most of the books under review, I have often not read that reference points to which they are compared, the reviews that Mr. Beattie is in dialogue with, or the awards he is in agreement or dispute with. Sometimes this blog makes me feel dumb, but it is also highly educational, and the writing is interesting and broad enough that you can learn starting from square one if you have to. It’s also sometimes pretty funny, and always well-written, and we both liked *Michael Clayton*.

Both these gentlemen have been commenting on year-end booklists, as I say, and so has my touchstone of the book-reviewing universe, Ms. Clare at Pickle Me This. I would encourage you to read all three and then, if you are like me, strongly consider but not actually get around to finding the actual list somewhere.

I wrote the thesis
RR