Best books of 2011!

As we inch our way towards December, we enter the season for 'best book of the year' lists. The leaves have changed color, so it must be time for the lists.

These types of lists are typically for fiction and trade non-fiction, so they don't tend to recognize university press books of the kind I and many of my colleagues publish. But I'm going to be following these more closely this year than I sometimes do, because I think Alex Shakar's novel Luminarium is contender to wind up on any and all lists of the best novels of the year.

And sure enough, here's one: Publishers Weekly has just issued its lists of best books of 2011, and Luminarium is one of the novels honored!

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And speaking of Publishers Weekly, they also recently ran this strong, starred review of Janice Harrington's The Hands of Strangers: Poems from the Nursing Home, describing the poems as
"pellucid, scary, morally resonant."