Over the holidays, the folks at carte blanche are getting ready to read your submissions by warming up their editorial muscles. Here is a brief list of some of the books they are using for their stretches.

Editor/creative nonfiction – Maria Schamis Turner
Solar by Ian McEwan
The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk
The Crossroads by Niccolo Ammaniti
Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli
And I just finished Bright-sided: How positive thinking is undermining America by Barbara Ehrenreich (which I thought was great).

Managing Editor – Alexandra Pasian
I Do Not Think that I Could Love a Human Being by Johanna Skibsrud
Beowulf A New Verse Translation Bilingual Edition by Seamus Heaney
Memory Wall: Stories by Anthony Doerr
Tokyo Unlimited (Photographs) by Renato D’Agostin

Translation – Rhonda Mullins
Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay
The Lost Art of Walking by Geoff Nicholson
The Fiddler in the Subway by Gene Weingarten

Fiction – Joni Dufour
Great House by Nicole Krauss
Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It by Geoff Dyer
Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier

Poetry – Patrick McDonagh
The New Atalantis by Francis Bacon
Leviathan and the Air Pump by Steve Shapin & Simon Schaffer
Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris
Stanley Park by Timothy Taylor
The Last Hero – A Discworld Fable by Terry Pratchett
Tales from the Moominvalley by Tove Jansson

Graphic Fiction – Salgood Sam
Essex County by Jeff Lemire
Suddenly Something Happened by Jimmy Beaulieu
Grey Supreme by Mark Laliberté
Parker: The Outfit by Darwyn Cooke

Contributing Editor – Len Epp
The holiday issue of The Economist, which has the best summary and transparently loaded analysis of this year’s big events around the world.
The holiday issue of The New York Review of Books, which covers a wide range of current political topics in a way the 24 hour news cycle does not.
Defending Poetry by David Williams