A Momentary Taste of Being

National Book Awards post-mortem Is anyone really surprised when a committee comes up with a camel?  Choosing the best book published is a difficult, maybe even a silly endeavor--best in what way?  Sometimes there is an undoubted winner.  But consider, even in the few books I have read this, I would be hard-pressed to choose the best.  And these poor judges are faced with the task of deciding from a great many such.  It's no wonder we spend so much time pillorying them.

This year's winners of the National Book Award. Odd, didn't hear as much rumble about it this year--perhaps I've grown tone deaf.  Haven't heard of the book, but there is an excerpt posted for those interested. Another report  The Short List  (via Books Inq.)

National Book Award Finalists considered

Here they are again: National Book Award Finalists I've heard of and read part of one of the novels and my son has read one of the nominations for young people's books-- Lockdown .

National Book Award Finalists By now you know that Franzen did not make it. Neither a surprise, nor particularly a slight.

And the winner for fiction is Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin .  I can only hope that this book gets better as one continues to read it, because so far, I'm not particularly impressed. Poetry--Keith Waldrop, Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy Gore Vidal was awarded the medal for distinguished contribution and Dave Eggers took the 2009 Literarian Award. As you can see I left non-fiction for last, as I've placed these roughly in the order of interest (poetry and fiction being somewhat at the same level): T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. National Book Award Site --includes interviews with some of the nominees

Via Hungry Like the Woolf-- This List .