WGA Sets Itself Apart from Other Top 100 Lists by Adding One More

The Writers Guild of America has named the 101 greatest screenplays. The list can be found here.

Underrated Writers

Syntax of Things has an Underrated Writers series up for your persual.

Clearing the Air

Since everyone else seems to be doing it, I’ll go on record and state that I’ve only read seven of the alleged “100 Most Notable Books of 2005″. But many of these books (the Gaitskill, the Powers Mark Twain bio, et al.) are ones I’d like to read, while I have no burning interest to read others (Harry Potter, Eggers). If they’re going to start taking away litblog credentials, they’ll have to start with me. I can only cite lack of time and a tendency to read more small press and genre titles as my primary defenses.

And speaking of strange lists, what is John Grisham doing on the Post’s top 5 fiction list?

Back to our regularly scheduled hiatus.

End of the Year Fiction Lists

It’s not even December yet, but the fiction lists keep rolling on. For the record, we won’t reveal our lists until the end of the year.

(Thanks, Richard Nash, for some of these.)

Any List with Knut Hamsun On It’s Fine By Me

The English Pen has launched The Bigger Read, an effort to trump the dumbed down Big Read contest held by the BBC. The BBC plans to rebut with The Biggest Read. One thing’s for certain. This contest is going to involve more than a few testicles. (via Literary Saloon)

Miscellany

Recent Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee says that television has replaced books as the imaginative impetus for kids. Apparently, he hasn’t heard of Harry Potter.

Is Rick Moody aware of periods?

The New Yorker has a profile on Lucia Joyce, James’ daughter, focusing on Lucia’s efforts to live in the shadow of a paternal genius and her father’s neglect. Lucia Joyce would later spend most of her years in an asylum. Carol Schloss’s book on the matter seems to suggest that Lucia was the price paid for Finnegan’s Wake and that she was instrumental in contributing to its imagery.

Jim Crace on research: “My wife and my editor think I do lots of research. And I encourage them in their delusion as it makes me seem hardworking. But actually I don’t research. I oppose research. What I do is a bit of background reading in order to work out how to tell my lies. I don’t look for information, I look for vocabulary and for the odd little emotional idea that will give some oxygen to my imagination. Vocabulary is the Trojan horse that smuggles the lie. Facts don’t help. If you’re not a persuasive talker at a party, no one’s going to believe you, even if everything you say is true. But if you’re a persuasive liar then everyone is fooled.”

The future of board games? The Boston Globe says Germany.

Hitler’s unpublished second book: “Hitler introduces significant new arguments, notably in relation to the United States, Europe, and, above all, the most crucial area of his foreign policy, relations with Britain, arguments which he had been developing in speeches and articles during 1926?8. ”

More end of the year lists:

The New York Times [The Bottom Line] (user: dr_mabuse, pw: mabuse)
The Washington Post [Fiction] [Nonfiction]
The Chicago Tribune [Best of 2002] (user: dr_mabuse, pw: mabuse)
The Seattle Times [Visual Arts (including The Pop-Up Kama Sutra!)] [Performing Arts] [Classical Arts] [Rock & Roll]
Amazon
The Christian Science Monitor [Top 5 Fiction] [Top 5 Nonfiction] [Noteworthy Fiction] [Noteworthy Nonfiction]