Lightning Round

My favorite video from our Best of the National Book Awards-anniversary blog: literary criticism at Twitter Speed!

 

In this video, Harold Augenbraum, Executive Director of the National Book Award renders summary judgment on 15 past winners of the National Book Award for Fiction. Some are well known, some now rather obscure -- captured with the clock ticking.



More videos:
The Collected Stories of William Faulkner
Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man
The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor
Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
The Stories of John Cheever
Fifteen Books in 15 Seconds

Don't forget to vote for your choice among the six finalists for "Best of the National Book Award for Fiction" at www.nationalbook.org.

May 23: Girolamo Savonarola was hanged on this day in 1498 and then incinerated in the same piazza in which the citizens of Florence had earlier attended more than one "bonfire of the vanities." George Eliot's 1863 novel Romola,

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Books CDs, DVDs to know about now
Paris, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down

When a job at a French ad agency landed in his lap, novelist Rosecrans Baldwin had the chance to fulfill a lifelong dream of living la vie Parisienne. And though cold réalité  -- in the form of financial struggles and an office culture where his rudimentary Francais didn't quite cut the mustard -- intruded, the result was a more mature take on the city of his fantasies, flaws included.

Why Cats Land on Their Feet

The feline acrobatics and other mysteries of everyday physics that Mark Levi explores in this charming book are just the beginning. A fun and enlightening workout for your gray matter.

Dead Men

Scott's doomed Antartic expedition and the haunting mysteries surrounding its failure lead to obsession in Richard Pierce's debut novel. As painter Birdie Bowers pursues her fascination with the explorer and his death, she risks both her body and her heart for answers.