What the Heartland Reads
Posted by: Kaite Stover
The compilation begins in October as Steve Paul, a Senior Editor at The Kansas City Star, emails/texts/badgers all his reading friends for their top titles of 2009. We know he has a deadline, but we’re just as frantic as we page through our reading logs and sort the piles of books we’ve scanned, skimmed, reviewed, and devoured on vacations.
Then he gathers 15 of the most erudite literati into a smoky room with no windows and they all debate, curse, sob, pull out hair, gnash teeth and bleed on tables for the books that will make the Top 100. These actions fall under the heading “unscientific measurements of enthusiasm.”
Today, everyone’s choices hit newsprint in the “100+ Reasons Why Books Still Matter.” There’s plenty of history, biography, memoir, crime fiction and literary fiction to keep any reader busy until the process picks up again in October 2010.
The lists that I turned to first were the Local Notables and Six that Stand Out. I was very pleased to see The Moonflower Vine make the Local Notables list, even though it was published more than 40 years ago. It’s a great read with plenty of topics to ponder and discuss.
Read and feast.
