1. I've never read 2009 Nobel Prize winner Herta Mueller, but I know a few people who recommend her work (Harold Bloom, meanwhile, is unimpressed). The Literary Saloon has more substantial coverage.

I had a great time at the National Book Awards ceremony last year, but I'm skipping the show this year, partly because I can't get excited by these nominations. I'm predicting that Marilynne Robinson will win for Home and Jane Mayer will win for The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, but neither possibility has me jumping up and down.

Kenyon Review asks:

1. Random House, trying something new, is giving away free PDF copies of Charles Bock's acclaimed novel Beautiful Children. Like every other blogger who has talked about this, I think Random House is doing a very good thing (The Millions blog even asked them to explain why they're doing it). Bud Parr says the future is here.

As I hoped and repeatedly predicted (here, as early as September 2), Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke won the National Book Award for Fiction last night at the Marriot Marquis in Times Square, New York City. Denis Johnson is on a writing assignment in Iraq, so here's his wife Cindy Lee Johnson accepting his award with a brief, gracious speech:

1. The three-year-old Quill Book Awards don't get a lot of respect in the book biz.

Bono is still the undisputed savior of the Earth, Paul is not dead and Kanye rolled out yet another performance of 'Golddigger' ... that must mean the Grammys are over. But before we put away our red carpets and martini glasses, there are still plenty of book awards flying around and coming up. Take ol' Zadie Smith, for instance. Her On Beauty recently picked up another accolade.

Okay, so it's not the Man Blooker prize ... it's just the Blooker Prize, a new annual award for blog-based books, and LitKicks' Action Poetry: Literary Tribes for the Internet Age is in the running.

In fact, through the happy accident of alphabetism, our book is at the very top of the list, and we like the way that feels. We believe we should win this award, and in a vain attempt to drum up a huge groundswell of popular support I'd like to talk about what this book is and how it came about.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong about this, but I've read several reactions to Harold Pinter's aggressive Nobel Prize acceptance speech, and I get the feeling I'm the only one here who actually knows Pinter's work.

Harold Pinter has spent his career studying the way human beings lie. It is his obsession, his medium. A play is called "Pinteresque" when the audience cannot trust a single character on stage. His working class Brits deceive, intimidate and overpower each other in tightly packed, oppressive rooms. They speak with great volume and speed, but they never mean anything they say -- their words are either weapons of cruelty or pathetic pleas for help.

By the time a Pinter play ends, at least one character has been completely destroyed, and at least one character has won a petty, hollow victory. The audience shuffles out of the theater feeling both excited by the naked display of power and guiltily complicit in the depraved brutality of human aggression.