Heatwave!!!! I cannot do anything. I can barely move. I spent about fifty minutes driving and burnt my fingers on the steering wheel twice. Madness!! Here is official newsletter #1 for May, newsletter #2 coming before end of month.
I don’t think the Guardian’s novel poll is fit for purpose
I paid only some attention to the gradual rollout of the Guardian’s 100 Best Novels list. I have an eye on the old list of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die because I am terrified of my own mortality, which means there were no surprises on the Guardian one - it’s almost a trimmed-down version of the same. I am in the press (?!) so I got an early press release (!?) bearing a grand announcement about what #1 would be. I don’t know why I even opened the email. It was Middlemarch - surely the most anticlimactic #1 in the history of #1s.1
It was surprising to find myself so unexcited because I love canonisation. It’s a whole “thing” for me. I think it is what every broadsheet newspaper should be doing. I also think a magazine is kind of a dud if it doesn’t have its own mini-canon of orbital IP.2 Canonisation is a valuable exercise because:
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