In his video series, “Totally Hip Book Review,” Washington Post fiction editor Ron Charles reviewed the five fiction finalists in the National Book Awards’ fiction category in less than five minutes. Warning: spoilers follow!
Charles devoted 44 seconds to Jaimy Gordon’s Lord of Misrule, a book set for November 15th release. He exclaimed: “Secret unpublished books? Those bookworm conspiracy theorists will be spinning in their cocoons!” Charles featured books with the same title, like Rachel Caine’s fifth Morganville Vampire novel, Kannan Feng’s fantasy novel, and actor Christopher Lee’s biography.
The other finalists received about 30 seconds apiece. Charles picked Lionel Shriver’s So Much for That as the winner. Charles also noted that popular titles such as Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad Love Story and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad were snubbed.
He concluded: “They even passed up such galaxy-shattering novels such as Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom which as the New York Times keeps telling us, is the whole reason the Chinese eunuch named Tsai Lun invented paper more than 2,000 years ago.”