Another Streak Begins

Long-time cafe denizens will recall that co-founder C.S. reads and handicaps the entire list of National Book Award finalists each year. This year was no exception, although a combination of factors -- including a power outage last night! -- prevented me from posting his predictions until now.

(The history of this tradition is recounted here.)

C.S. got up at 4:00 a.m. to finish reading the final book. He told me via telephone that he was pretty sure the winner would be either Black Leopard, Red Wolf or Trust Exercise. The former was the stuff of nightmares, filled with brutality, and the latter was incredibly ambiguous. Ultimately he leaned toward Trust Exercise because he believed that the National Book Awards are aiming to become more distinctive and this book would give them an edge.

To that I say, well done! Last year's miss means a new streak has started, but a 14-of-16 overall record of correctly predicting the winner is nothing to sneeze at.