"Best" is best

The first of a few EP weigh-ins on my favorite books of the year—this one's for Salon, on Don Paterson's Best Thought, Worst Thought: “You get the sense that Paterson both stakes his life on every sentence and wants to distance himself from it almost before the ink has dried...”

(Dear Salon, it is not too late to review Personal Days!)

* * *

Also in ’08 best-of round-uppery: a nice mention of PD on Ed Champion's year-end list (though what exactly he thinks I'm censoring is still a mystery to me...perhaps the fact that [DELETED]?)...

Brrr! The Independent names it one of the 50 best "winter reads"...ahead of The Inimitable Jeeves?!

And finally—in the latest issue of Commonweal, one of its "Christmas Critics" had this to say about PD:

The mystery of language, addendum II

"Every word was once an animal."
—Emerson

"Every morning the writer should go to the window, look out and remind himself of this fact: aside from his own species, not one thing he sees—not one bird, tree or stone—has in its possession the name he gives it." —Don Paterson, Best Thought, Worst Thought