Another week, another list. Following the Observer‘s choice of the 100 Best Novels in English, a new weekly series of complimentary English language non-fiction titles begins next week. “This new list is really part of a continuing investigation,” writes Robert McCrum, “a quest for the classic titles that form the core of Anglo-American literary culture: the 100 key texts that have had a decisive influence on the shaping of the ‘Anglo-American imagination’, economically, socially, culturally and politically.”
[Editor Turns 100 Best Novels List Into 2 Million Hits]
Readers will be invited to debate and discuss the books, beginning next week. The first book on the new list is The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert, an account of how humans have devastated the planet and triggered an extinction event, the sixth such in the last 500 million years. Well, you’re probably snowed in and not going anywhere today, so why not curl up with a jaunty tale of how we’re all doomed because of deforestation, eradication, greenhouse gases, and other sh*tty things we do to Nature.