Comments on: One-Sentence Reviews of 2011 National Book Awards Finalists

By: 2011 National Book Awards Predictions – Young People’s Literature « One-Minute Book Reviews

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 02:34:06 +0000

[...] except category poetry, which appears to involve too many judging conflicts of interest to call. My fiction and nonfiction predictions appeared earlier this month. And to judge by the finalists’ [...]

By: 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom

1minutebookreviewswordpresscom — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 21:43:39 +0000

Good question. Just to make sure this was clear: I’m reviewing the excerpts, not the books (the way I’ve sometimes reviewed one poem or short story on One-Minute Book Reviews).

I did the experiment partly because every year a lot of people sound off aggressively about the National Book Awards after having read only one or two finalists. They get outraged when their book loses without trying to see if the winner had something extra.

I knew I couldn’t read all the finalists, so I decided to read at least part of each and all of as many as I could. That seemed fairer than what usually goes on at NBA time. (I’d never suggest that a review based on an excerpt could or should replace a review based on the full book). I’m hoping that these once-a-year micro reviews will encourage people to seek out longer reviews of finalists, some of which I may write.

By: 2011 National Book Award for Poetry – Predictions and More « One-Minute Book Reviews

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 04:20:20 +0000

[...] scrapped my plan to tweet and re-post here micro-reviews of excerpts of its finalists, as I did for fiction and nonfiction. That plan grew out of a hypothesis: that if the judging was fair and the excerpts [...]