Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Lately I've been attempting to expand my reading horizons by reading books recommended by Salon. I'm doing this because I'm simply not going to read enough of a variety if I don't follow someone's recommendations, and the bestseller lists tell me what's most prominently placed in Indigo, not what I should be reading.

The only problem with Salon is it's American, so the books it recommends are rather centred in the American experience. I don't mind reading American per se, but I just looked at my "to read" pile, and I've got 4 books set in the US and one set in various places around the world (I also have 5 books to read in 3 weeks while working full-time, but I digress). That's a bit too highly concentrated.

So what I'm looking for is a book list similar to Salon's "What to read this month", but with either a Canadian or a global English-language perspective. Book reviews in the daily newspapers don't do it for me because they either review only potential bestsellers, or absolutely everything that's released that week. And I don't want something that pushes Canlit for the sake of pushing Canlit. Just a well-rounded, not completely US-centric list of the most interesting new books released during that week or month or whatever. Preferably with a number of books on the list that a person could reasonably read in that time period, but I can cull if necessary.

Suggestions?

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