Tune in to National Book Awards on Saturday

The taping of the 60th National Book Awards will be broadcast on C-Span Book TV this Saturday, November 21, at 9 p.m. EST.

Make yourself comfortable before Gore Vidal starts talking -- he'll be a while. Fortunately, Nancy gets across her point and her passion in a scant two minutes. Vidal's and Dave Eggers' awards will come first, then Nancy will be up third to deliver the Young People's Literature Award to 2009 winner Phillip Hoose. So your patience will pay off...

National Book Awards!

Nancy and I are in New York and getting ready before cabbing over to Cipriani's for the National Book Awards. Nancy, of course, will be delivering the award for Young People's Literature, which she is greatly looking forward to. One writer is going to be very happy, and I imagine the other four finalists will have pretty special evenings as well.

My role is to show up and eat, accompany Nancy to the party afterwards, and generally be arm candy. Which I might pull off, if disguised in formal wear. I'm anticipating a good night...

Massachusetts Book Awards honor for Impossible

On Wednesday we'll wander into Boston, where Nancy will be receiving a Children's/Young Adult Honor for Impossible at the 9th Annual Massachusetts Book Awards. Nice for her to be recognized in our own backyard.

October Girls

The High Test Girls had a good-news/bad-news kind of retreat.

The bad: some got sick, a couple had family issues to deal with, and one had what might have been a deal-breaking setback on a project she's working on.

The good: through it all, the HTGs were incredibly productive. Between them they submitted five picture books, made excellent progress on chapter books, and learned a few things. And as always, they had great conversations about books, caught up on each other's lives, and generally shared the love.

Despite the few bumps along the way, the fourteenth retreat was unequivocally a success, just like the previous thirteen.

On the importance of usage

A little perspective on the relative importance of proper usage, from overheardinnewyork.com:

Speaking of Cold...

Guy: I have to say, one nice thing about living here is that the winters are so cold that a lot of the homeless people freeze to death. So, you know, there's a lot less of them.
Girl: Dude, it's "fewer". Not "less".

High Test time again!

It's that time of year, and once again the High Test Girls are descending upon New England for a week of writing, drawing, critiquing, and hob-nobbing. Jane Kurtz is in the vanguard this evening, and we'll scoop up most of the rest of 'em tomorrow. It's always great to see them, and this year I'll get the bonus of meeting Jo Stanbridge for the first time.

I don't yet know what everyone is working on, but I do know that Nancy and Franny Billingsley are coming down the stretch on their latest works. For that reason alone this will be a big week, but then it's always a big week. And after 14 retreats, the biggest part of all is the camaraderie.

Controversy, encapsulated

You can't very well choose five books as finalists for the National Book Award without generating some comment. Even the most conservative choices will leave somebody either shocked or disappointed or envious or outraged, or some similarly negative emotion that will inspire them to object, perhaps strenuously. This list was no different. This time the controversy seemed to focus tightly on one title: Stitches, by David Small. Fortunately, Karen Springen has done a nice job of framing the issue for Publisher's Weekly.