Obligatory awards roundup

• This year's Nobel Prize winner for literature: Orhan Pamuk.

The selection of Pamuk, whose recent trial for ''insulting Turkishness'' raised concerns about free speech in Turkey, continues a trend among Nobel judges of picking writers in conflict with their own governments. British playwright Harold Pinter, a strong opponent of his country's involvement in the Iraq war, won last year. Elfriede Jelinek, a longtime critic of Austria's conservative politicians and social class, was the 2004 winner.

• The finalists for the National Book Awards include Mark Z. Danielewski, Richard Powers, Ken Kalfus and Lawrence Wright.

A notable lack of the heavy hitters with new books out (McCarthy, Pynchon, Roth, et al). Still, maybe this will turn more people onto Powers' stuff.

• This year's Man Booker Prize goes to Kiran Desai.

She becomes the youngest ever woman to win the prize, doing one better than her mother, Anita Desai, who was nominated for the award three times, most recently in 1999, but failed to win.

Kiran Desai's book [The Inheritance of Loss] was hailed by the judges as "a magnificent novel of humane breadth and wisdom, comic tenderness and powerful political acuteness".

Accepting her award, she praised her mother, to whom she said she owes "a debt so profound and so great that this book feels as much hers as it does mine."

Apparently there's now something called the Quills, which sounds like a rather desperate attempt on the behalf of the publishing industry to sex up its image by tossing celebrities and an NBC television broadcast into the mix. The top book prize went to Tyler Perry. The defense rests.

And somehow I missed this when it was announced, but:

• George Saunders is one of the recent recipients of a MacArthur "Genius" Grant.

Other recipients include writers David Carroll, Atul Gawande, Adrian LeBlanc, David Macaulay and Sarah Ruhl, as well as musician John Zorn (a personal favorite, yay for that).

Saunders strikes again

• George Saunders details his first trip to England in The Guardian.

Hah-larious. Then again, it's Saunders, and you already knew that.

One of the principles of science is that one can, by the careful study of a small data set, form generalised conclusions about a larger population. Based on my observation of the British at Hay, I concluded that the British: 1) are all from London, 2) are extremely literate, and 3) are almost always drunk. It was hard to find a Briton at Hay who was not from London and was not either reading or drunk, or both - ie, reading while drunk. Also, the British in Hay are extremely smart. Based on the quality of my conversations with the British at the Hay Festival, I was forced to conclude that the British are even more intelligent, literary and articulate than us Americans! I know my American readers will find this hard to believe, if they have even made it this far, due to all my big words I have been using. However, my fellow Americans, do not feel bad about our relative stupidity; I have concluded that the British are more intelligent, literary and articulate than us simply because they spend more time reading and studying and reflecting on the world than we do. No doubt if we Americans spent as much time reading, studying and thoughtfully reflecting as the British, we would be every bit as intelligent, literary and articulate as them. But we have better things to do, such as getting more money, and calling in our votes for American's Sexiest Food-Obsessed Midgets, and keeping the world safe from democracy. Or, should I say, safe for democracy. Whatever. What am I, some kind of language scientist or wordologist or whatnot?

What kind of crap are you reading this summer?

It must be the temperature; the higher it goes, the lower the standards sink. Like such a fuddy-duddy I sound, but still... how it is that summertime came to equal dumb, weightless entertainment has always mystified me. Yeah, I like to see girls in bikinis and shit blowing up just as much as the next guy. That's me, down there in the middle of the theatre, hooting at car chases and leering at Keira Knightley, mainlining Skittles and soda like heroin. (Oh, and in case you haven't heard: Snakes on a Motherfucking Plane.)

Still, when it comes to the reading, my habits tend to be inversely proportional to the rest of the world's. (I save the silly crap for the wintertime, when I'm so brain-fried by cabin fever that even a Clive Cussler potboiler could seem stunningly profound.) Last summer was the one I picked to dive into Swann's Way and War and Peace; the summer before, it was Heller's Something Happened and Barth's Coming Soon. I don't know what it will be this summer, but impossible behemoths like Gravity's Rainbow and Life and Fate are keening their siren song. (But please, friends and relations, if you catch me with schnozz a-buried in something gloriously disreputable like Carl Hiassen or Joe R. Lansdale, just pretend I'm mastur-- er, masochistic -- and look away.)

So over at Slate, currently in the midst of a welcome celebration of pulp fiction, authors chime in: Scott Turow is diving into Greg Iles, Michael Connelly and Ridley Pearson; Thomas Mallon is rolling around in Kenneth Anger; Rick Moody is soaking up a Motley Crue tell-all. There are snooty exceptions, of course. Michael Chabon claims that he doesn't "change what I read when I go to the beach or on a vacation. I just read more." Joyce Carol Oates and George Saunders politely refuse to answer the question, with Saunders' explanation being a particular standout (in that unmistakable Saunders fashion):

For my money, the best beach read is How To Get Sand Out of Your Private Areas, by Hitch C. Groyan. Ha ha! No seriously. The best beach book is I Floated Nearby, Full of Envy by Moby Dick. It's the heartbreaking, true-life story of a whale who longs to come up on the beach and befriend the wealthy, joyful people he sees there but can't, because he has no legs and is totally naked. Also, he is a little sensitive about his last name. In the sad conclusion, this cranky guy named Ahab kills "Moby" to make him into lantern oil, only to find that lanterns are no longer used. Then—I haven't read it in awhile—I think Ahab gets so depressed about the lantern thing that he cuts off his own leg, and then this crocodile keeps chasing him around, and the crocodile learns to fly and decides never to grow up, and asks the audience if they believe in fairies, and then gets arrested for using language insulting to gay people. It's sad, but it's also depressing, and really makes you think while totally bringing you down and making you want to have about six more drinks and go for a swim.

Not to be outdone, USA Today asks the same question of writers including Stephen King, Dennis Lehane, Wally Lamb and E. Lynn Harris. Always the straight shooter, King, when asked about his summer selections, cuts to the chase:

Why these authors? "Because they're good!"