by JULIET WATERS

This time last year, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking rose pretty fast to the top of the must-read list. So this year we have its eerily perfect clone Blank: The Power of Not Actually Thinking At All (A Mindless Parody) by Noah Tall.

Parody aside, never underestimate the power of not thinking, acting, or—according to pollster Michael Adams—voting. In Montreal this week to promote American Backlash: The Untold Story of Social Change in the United States, Adams argues that the most significant group of Americans are neither Republicans nor Democrats, but “disengaged, non-voting Americans.” Unfortunately, there won’t be much time for apathy after the release of Australian scientist Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth. A scary call to arms.

If only publishers were as unpredictable as the weather, but as usual, the first few months of the year are the slowest, reserved for first novels that will soon be forgotten and American writers with enough of a fan base to sell themselves. It’s no surprise to see: a post-9/11 New York novel by Jay McInerney, The Good Life; a new book of essays by David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster, which starts out with a typically meandering essay about the AVN awards (the Oscars of porn, for anyone who hasn’t already read 10 articles on this subject); The Brooklyn Follies, a new novel by Paul Auster; and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, a new novel by Michael Chabon.

As for the debut novels: J. Milligan’s Jack Fish, looks fun. “Secret Agent Jack Fish, an operative of the Elders of Atlantis, is dispatched to New York City to locate a rogue agent and spear him.” More serious-minded readers might check out D.Y. Bechard’s Vandal Love, which sounds both grand and weird. It follows the stories of two generations of French Canadians with a genetic quirk that makes them either giants or little people. Look for a reading in February by Bechard, who currently lives in Montreal.

Family fuck-ups

If you know what to look for, these are good months for North American releases of European bestsellers. Utterly Monkey by Irish writer Nick Laird is getting a lot of positive buzz as the lad lit author to watch. An earlier work by Toby Litt, Deadkidsongs, was considered a black comedy tour de force by British critics. Mammals by French writer Pierre Merot has a great opening line: “Every model family should have a fuck-up: a family without a fuck-up is not truly a family, because it lacks an element that challenges it, thereby reinforcing its legitimacy.”

Big releases by women writers tend to come out closer to spring and summer, the season when books sell better. Winter is usually a good time for second novels by women writers whose first novels didn’t entirely die from neglect. Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach did extremely well, so Blood Sports, set in the criminal underworld of East Vancouver, is a good bet. Irish writer MJ Hyland’s first novel, How the Light Gets In was a critical favourite last year, so her second novel Carry Me Down looks promising. Rebecca Godfrey’s, The Torn Skirt was a big hit with teenagers and the adults who like to read about them, so keep an eye out for her non-fiction debut Under The Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk. The safe money says that Globe and Mail columnist Leah McLaren’s first novel, The Continuity Girl, about a “sperm bandit,” a desperate heroine looking to get knocked up, is as bad as it sounds.

As we get nearer to Valentine’s day, Montreal-based travel writer Taras Grescoe’s third book seems appropriate, The Devil’s Picnic: Around the World in Pursuit of Forbidden Fruit. Meanwhile, the not so epicurean or romantic might want to keep an eye out for the release of of Dave Feschuk’s Every Highway: Riding Shotgun in the Big Rigs.