- I foolishly counted myself in to Ed’s 75 book challenge for 2006; I’ve started a little list down at the bottom of the right column to track my progress. I’ll just be putting titles and star rankings there and still plan to pull out my favorites for the Read Read list. Let’s see how long I actually stay on top of adding the books I read.
- Michelle Richmond calls attention to the Bigfoot Cultural Resurgence. Everywhere I turn these days: Bigfoot, Bigfoot, Bigfoot. I have kind of a soft spot for the big guy, based on this pseudo-scientific book about him my brother and I had when we were kids (another in the series focused on the Loch Ness Monster) and Molly Gloss’s excellent novel Wild Life.
- Why is technology so absent from many great book lists? (Via someone, I forget who though.)
- A book in a year? Or a year-long series of columns about writing a book.
- Diana Peterfreund (whose blog is charming and wonderful on a daily basis) on the experience of going through her first set of page proofs.
- Jeff VanderMeer has a host of good posts as well, but I’m pointing especially to his wife Ann’s music recommendations from 2005 and three overlooked books also from that vintage year.
- Chris McLaren is also burning up the circuits, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t point to this excellent, thoughtful post, which provoked an equally excellent, thoughtful discussion about evolution and smartness in the comments (psst: lots of Ted Chiang smartness on evolution there).
- Jessica Lee Jernigan interviews Lydia Millet about Oh Pure and Radiant Heart.
- The 200 top-selling books of 2005. (Via Conversational Reading.)