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It’s possible you won’t see a better living example of that than in January Magazine’s best of the year lists. Every year. That’s at least in part because we bite off such a big mouthful. Not just fiction. Not even fiction and non-fiction. But also art & culture. Crime fiction. Biography. Cookbooks. Books for kids. Science fiction and fantasy. There’s a lot of room for subjectivity in these lists. We aren’t trying to impress anyone. We don’t need to show you how erudite and well rounded we are. We’ve been doing this a long time now. This 2011 Best of the Year feature represents the 13th time we’ve done this in our 15 year history. It took us a couple of years to think of it. Back then, best of the year lists were not a matter of course. We helped make them be. Let me tell you how the subjectivity is applied. We contact all of our writers. Honestly? We don’t have to: they know it’s coming, but we do it anyway so they can be prepared. Most of us have been reading with half a thought for this all year. I know that there have been years where in hte month of January I’ve read something so fantastic I started my best of compilation right then and there: writing it up so that over the course of a wonderful year of reading, I wouldn’t forget. Everyone is told to send reviewlets of the three to five books they liked best over the year. They don’t have to have reviewed it for us, but if they did, that’s okay, too. Such is our group here -- our passionate reading and writing group -- that almost no one ever sticks to only five choices and the maximum word count we allot is overshot about 90 per cent of the time. But it’s hard to rein in passion, isn’t it and -- honestly? -- who would we be to try?
Click below for the Best of list you'd like to see: Linda L. Richards is the editor of January Magazine and the author of several books. |
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