From Book Riot:
‘Tis the season for “best of” book lists, and we’ve rounded up quite a few on Book Riot. The newest addition is the first “The Atlantic 10,” which the magazine defines not quite as the best books of the year, but the books that “impressed us with their force of ideas, that drew us in not because of some platonic ideal of greatness, but because they got our brains working and presented fresh angles on the world. In a phrase, they were good to think with.”
The editors introduce their picks as,
“Between the covers of these books, readers will find an enormously diverse set of subjects and an array of writerly moods, from the whimsical to the deadly serious. These are stories that plunge into the intimate world of farmworkers in Central California, the unlikely friendship between two Asian American college students, and the machinations of modern-day authoritarians. The questions these titles pose are varied and generative. How has Ireland evolved over the past several decades? What kind of art form is the video game? What role does racism have in the health and wellness of Black people? But what binds these books to one another is that, in 2022, they were the ones that gave us a new way of looking, that forced us to stop and consider—that, once the last page was turned, dropped us back into our lives as smarter people.”
Link to the rest at Book Riot
PG nominates:
Books that ‘impressed us with their force of ideas, that drew us in not because of some platonic ideal of greatness, but because they got our brains working and presented fresh angles on the world. In a phrase, they were good to think with.
as the most-pretentious description of the time-hackneyed end of year “Best Books of 18xx/19xx/20xx” clichéd genre magazine article better described as the because-not-much-is-actually-happening-and-we’re-all-going-to-be-on-vacation-during-the-holidays filler article AKA “How are we going to publish a magazine in December that isn’t all advertisements?”
As for PG, he’s experiencing an array of writerly moods at the moment. He’s not certain how long this condition will last or whether he should contact his doctor and get some sort of anti-writerly–moods prescription called into the local pharmacy.