Quill and Quire

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What an award means (if anything)

How reliable are literary awards as an index of quality? Not very, suggests one Toronto blogger, who argues that Kazuo Ishiguro was robbed in the recent Man Booker race (his Never Let Me Go lost out to John Banville’s The Sea. The same blogger is currently “slogging through” another Booker winner, Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. “All in all,” writes the blogger, “I find that the recommendations from friends, booksellers (just tell them other stuff you like — they can do more than ring up your purchase, you know), and reliable reviewers [are] far more likely to satisfy.”

Related links:
Click here for the BlogTO entry on literary awards