In the scheme of things, this is just plain weird. Normally, the Book Review goes to press early and ships out to subscribers the Monday before its stamped date, and sometimes, a feature will migrate onto the Times' site for online obsessives to get a sneak peek. So imagine my surprise when I hit the Books section last night (around 7 PM, my usual time) and what's this? A super-special on the Best American Fiction of the last 25 years, as picked by a list of judges that puts pretty much everyone else to shame.

To which I ask: why?

As in, why bother? So a compendium of authors and other literary luminaries have settled upon Toni Morrison's BELOVED as the overall choice (and wow, I don't see Oprah on that judge's list!) So the runners up are, surprise surprise, a bunch of graying white males who also appear a bunch of times in the "multiple votes" list. So A.O. Scott gets to pontificate endlessly on what went on behind the scenes. But why do this now? Why is it so important for the NYTBR to anoint its choice a mong choices, have people debate about it endlessly on blogs and online sites and boost the paper's Technorati ratings and -

Ah, I get it now. Especially because by the time the paper version comes out, we'll have moved on to the next literary scandal or few and this will be hopelessly old news. Nice work, Mr. Tanenhaus & Co.!