Prize watch: (November 19 update) Congrats to Phil Klay, winner of the National Book Award for fiction for Redeployment. The book is outstanding! I think the National Book Award shortlist may be the best one of all the 2014 awards. I have three more of the finalists here waiting for me to read them, and the last one is on my wish list. Also congrats to Ursula K. Le Guin, who was presented with the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Foundation.

(October 15 update) And now the short list is out!

(September 18) The National Book Awards fiction long list came out yesterday. I’ve heard amazing things about and have been wanting to read All the Light We Cannot See and Redeployment. Special congrats to the only Canadian on the list, Emily St. John Mandel for her novel Station Eleven.