Lists, lists, lists

Good piece by Todd Swift over at Eyewear, talking about the usual glut of year-end book lists. I tend to agree with a lot of what Todd's saying, although it is fair to point out once again that I'm always a bit underwhelmed by Don Paterson. I bought Rain the other day, along with John Burnside's The Hunt In The Forest, and although I will take time to digest and re-read them, I'd have to say I prefer the latter. As usual with Paterson, I find myself thinking "it's good, but is it really that good?"

Meanwhile, Peony Moon is featuring mini-lists from a wide variety of poets. They make very interesting reading, and it's good to see Andrew Philip's wonderful The Ambulance Box and Clare Crowther's The Clockwork Gift cropping up with such regularity. I found it very difficult to narrow things down to three books, because I get the impression it's been a pretty strong year.

With that in mind, I'll be doing my usual round-up of favourite books some time after December 25th, but in the meantime, look out later this week for reviews of Simon Armitage and Tim Dee's anthology The Poetry Of Birds, and the similarly themed US anthology Bright Wings, edited by Billy Collins.

Current reading includes John James' Collected Poems, George Ttoouli's splendid Static Exile, and a selection from Francis Kilvert's diaries (I'd been looking for a cheap paperback of the latter for ages, and found one for £2 in Leicester on Friday).