And One More Slips Under the Wire

[[B O O K S]] * Well, after much consideration and hard work, it has finally been posted: January Magazine’s giant “Best Books of 2005” feature. As editor Linda L. Richards explains in her introduction, “You might notice that we’ve left things a bit later this time than we have in other years. This is simply because we’ve noticed that as we--and everyone else--present their best of the year compilations a little earlier each year, after a while ... well ... it just gets a little silly. The January Magazine list does not represent the books we liked best in the first 10 months of 2005. Nor does it indicate which books we thought were being most actively promoted in fourth quarter 2005. These are, quite simply, the books that most touched us and stayed with us as we continued on our reading journey throughout 2005.” The January rundown of favorites--covering non-fiction, fiction, crime fiction, arts and culture, cookbooks, and children’s books--follows on the heels of lists made by critics at other publications (see here, here, and here). It’s likely the final such inventory I’ll be highlighting for the year, even though I, like other book critics, will surely continue to discover over the next month titles from 2005 that really deserved more acclaimation, but that we didn’t know about soon enough. Oh, well. There’s always 2006 in which to try again.

Happy New Year, everyone.