Compiling best-of lists requires sweat and courage—-you’re never going to make everyone happy. Modelled after Bob Mersereau’s comprehensive The Top 100 Canadian Albums, Trevor Adams and Stephen Patrick Clare embarked on the challenging task of culling Atlantic Canada’s 100 Greatest Books (Nimbus), from an amazing list of over 2,000 titles voted on by 700-plus authors, editors and critics (including myself). But where Mersereau used a fairly rigid point system (final results be damned!), Adams and Clare made several major overriding editorial decisions, e.g. pulling out poetry and including books like The Chrysalids and The Book of Negroes, which are
