Michelle Miller and Rachel Knudsen, the outgoing and incoming Fiction Editors for PRISM International, have set up a summer book bucket, listing the favourite books of this year's UBC MFA grads. It's a fun idea, and you can check out the site here. The site's set up as a blog, and they encourage you "to comment, review, ridicule and cajole." Check it out. You might find something new to read that just might blow you away.

Anyway, here are my picks:

Top Five Books of the Moment

1. Cory Doctorow - Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
   People living in Disney World - what's not to like?
   
   
2. Tim Winton - Cloudstreet
   good and gritty Australian writing
   
   
3. Keri Hulme - The Bone People
   set in New Zealand - hey, I used to live there
   
   
4. Alistair MacLeod - No Great Mischief
   been to most of these places - love the writing
   
   
5. Lori Lansens - Rush Home Road
   keeping up with the geography thing - this is where I grew up

Top Five Books of All Time

1. David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas
   the most meticulously-crafted structure I've ever seen
   
   
2. John Fowles - The Collector
   flipping POVs, utterly creepy
   
   
3. Tennessee Williams - The Glass Menagerie
   the first time I read this play, my reaction was "holy crap!"
   
   
4. Edward Albee - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
   time to go to the euphemism (read the play, it'll make sense)
   
   
5. Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita
   one of the all-time most unreliable narrators
   
   (and because Rachel said Nabokov, too:)
   
   
6. Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale
   well written SF - 'nough said