Dear sinister, tis the season for end of year lists/polls, especially ones about your favourite records or albums of the year. there are lists of certain publications favourite 10/20/50/100 albums from this year all over the shop. am i the only one who finds them annoying and pointless? "but they're just a bit of fun" i hear you cry, well maybe. but i personally think that any list like that seems to stop people talking about the actual records in the list, and instead the conversation will turn to pointless 'this should've been higher than that' or 'wheres...?' type statements. such lists are not conducive to good conversation. plus these lists always ignore more left-field choices in favour of whatever has been fashionable this year - as shown by the strokes/white stripes topping almost every single list i've seen. so maybe the 'wheres...?' claims are not that unjustified, but what i mean is that people tend to start picking apart the lists rather than the records themselves. so neither the artists nor the music benefit particularly. why are the white stripes better than sparklehorse? because they are higher in the chart. seems rather silly and self-defeating if you ask me. nobody did ask me, but i'm saying it anyway. what i'd prefer is if people picked their favourite records of the year (whether it's just one or more than 500) and said what they like about them, rather than playing radically different records off against eachother. am i being overly harsh on list compliers, or is the whole concept of best of the year lists inherently flawed? are such things symbolic of a society obsessed with quantifying everything - having to turn art into sport? do IPC subeditors dictate our youth? answers on a postcard please joe pancake/rachel vester said something along the lines of: "Jeanette Winterson, who is the most abrasive and disagreeable author I can think of offhand. She writes in an irritating way and just takes herself far too seriously while generally being pretentious. And being a total bitch." all of which seems fair enough. she is certainly abrasive and very pretentious (especially some bits of 'the passion' i found that book very difficult to get to grips with), though i would say someone like Joseph Heller was more disagreeable, not because of his politics or anything, but more because of his 'clever' style; which i find almost impossible to like. while jeanette winterson is definitely pretentious and abrasive, i think you have to admire the singularity of her vision - and i think her writing is very affecting at times. i'm not a huge fan of hers though, so perhaps someone who is could do a better job of defending her. i only mentioned her in my post because she seems the complete opposite of JK Rowling and her awful harry potter books which are so fashionable. i'd much rather someone like winterson was en vogue (though i don't think ms winterson herself would enjoy it). the kids reading harry potter could do with an injection of pretension i think, if only so they know what it looks like. JK Rowling once did a visit to the library where i work to promote the first harry potter book (before my time there though i'm afraid), apparently it wasn't very well attended or anything - whereas now just putting on a crappy 'harry potter activity day' basically consisting of the books on tape (the steven fry ones) being played at considerable volume, and an amateur party wizard bloke coming in draws out all the local kids and whips them up into a potter induced frenzy. how times have changed. thats enough for now i think i'm listening to autechre at the moment - thats not very twee is it? i must try harder at that yours faithfully kieran _________________________________________________________________ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+