Awards, award-winners, hockey

Just a couple of quickies before I go laptop shopping so I can blog on the back deck or in coffee shops or in the middle of a forest or wherever the kids blog these days.  Got to stay hip, you know.

--Save the Deli author David Sax sent me a very kind note about my recent posting on his book.  It's nice to know authors actually check their own websites.  Thank you again, David.

--The National Book Critics Circle award winners were announced.  Fiction award goes to Hilary Mantel for Wolf Hall.  If memory serves, when the book won another award a few months ago, I posted that I needed to read her.  I've still no idea who she is but I had better get on it. 

http://bookcritics.org/awards/

Finally, had you told me I'd ever utter a phrase with 'Margaret Atwood' and 'goalie' in it, I'd have never believed you.  Check out this absolutely delightful video of the Man Booker prize winner in the crease:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkkwEXi-zZI&feature=player_embedded

(While I'm at it, check this vid from America's favorite all hockey rock 'n' roll band, the Zambonis:

http://www.cnchockey.com/videos/hockey-monkey)

Many thanks

I really appreciate the feedback about the look of the blog.  It has been very positive and quite helpful.  I've made a few more tweaks per your suggestions and think I might be done tinkering for now.

 

Also, I'd like to thank the nice folks at Bloomsbury USA for the copy of Reporting at Wit's End, a collection of pieces by St. Clair McKelway.  I've just started it and am taken back to an old New York and an old New Yorker.  The intro is by Adam Gopnik so the right tone is set right away.  At just over 600 pages, it'll take a while but I look forward to posting my thoughts about it.  The book just came out. 

Another big thanks to my friend at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for a recent care package.  I've finished Save the Deli by David Sax (just completed a draft of my forthcoming post) and am fifty pages deep in Howard Norman's upcoming novel, What Is Left the Daughter.  I've never read him but have always heard good things and am happy to report I'm most intrigued so far.