The thing about an anthology such as Great Sporting Moments: The Best of Sport Magazine 1988-2004, (VUP, $29.95) is that it really shouldn’t be reviewed. It should be discussed. It should be the subject of a night out with coffee or drinks, in which one person tries to speak over the next.

'No, no, that was good, but what I liked was X.'

'X? X was pure mental masturbation.'

'What about Y? Y was funny. Now that was a story.'

'I’m sick of stories. I only read the poems.'

And so on and so forth.

The book is 575 pages long, including credits. In it are Sport editor and novelist Damien Wilkins’ picks of the best of 30 years of one of the country’s undoubtedly best literary journals. How he and publisher Fergus Barrrowman made their selections from so much material is hard to imagine. It must have been all the work that stuck in their dreams – or craw, or overstuffed brains.

Many of the writers are well known, some are new. All show the collective health and vitality of this country’s writing life. I didn’t wince once – except when Mr. Barrowman told me at a party that I ought to read it cover to cover. Maybe it’s the first time I’ve ever done so with such an anthology. There’s no need to, really. It’s organised alphabetically by author and there’s actually no prize for the straight read-through.

Still, it was worth it. This is not your usual staid high school collection. It is, as they say all good writing is, something alive. It is a collection that might contain that piece of work you’ll actually read to someone else – that paragraph you will copy and put on your wall.

Personal favorites, (for the discussion that might one day be) for me include poems by Chris Price, Emma Lew, Frances Samuel and Peter Bland. If you buy any collection this holiday, this should be the one.