On Picking A Winning Book
The business of picking a winning book can be dicey, demanding the sensibility of a professional gambler along with a thoroughgoing knowledge of this or that literary genre.
…from Publishersweekly.com
To pick a winning book calls for one to do his or her homework by locating reliable sources that will yield information about what’s happening in the world of authors new, old and in-between. Picking ia winner in any field – be it the sport of kings or that (field) of Shakespeare, Milton and Phillip K. Dick – demands that one possess a faculty that may best be described as a “sixth sense,” an ability that lies somewhere between and partakes of both gut feelings and the ability to “get lucky.”.
now, in a massive collective effort to determine the best books of 2013, PW’s staff of certified, unassailable geniuses are poring over stacks of books already vetted and approved over the course of the year by our stable of reviewers (they literally all live in a comically oversized stable in Ulster County, NY). It’s a fun but arduous process that will lead to us editors gathering in a pub nearby and arguing about the merits of such-and-such’s book versus that other one that’s clearly unfit for the honor of a spot on the top-10 list (and thus must be content with a place in the bottom 90 *boos* *hisses* or, horror of horrors, not on the long list at all *gasps* *widespread fainting*).
On Picking A Winning Book
Artist’s rendering of our Reviewers’ Stable
This whole process of making a list of “best” things is, of course, terrifyingly subjective. Frankly, we the editors don’t even necessarily agree on what “best” signifies. We each have our own vague idea(s); some abstract platonic concept existing for itself in the void. But is that even helpful? Probably not, since that entails defining a bunch of other slippery concepts that should be working in perfect symbiosis. So maybe the best we can do for now is run the rule over some of those characteristics that will eventually take their Voltron form (and I speak here from a non-fiction perspective only, the concerns of fiction or poetry differ in both obvious and subtle ways). Anyway, welcome to the sausage factory…
-Alex Crowley — September 26th, 2013
