Showing how flimsy the judging process is, Charles McGrath describes in the New York Times combing over 407 National Book Award nominees as a modern day torture fest:
"It's not humanly possible for an individual, no matter how well intentioned, well disciplined and critically astute, to read 407 books with the care and consideration they deserve. ... So you do the best you can. You don't skim exactly, but you race, driving your eyes across the page, in the process forgoing much of the ordinary pleasure of reading. I sometimes thought of it as chain-sawing through books, tearing into them, grinding them up, leaving a wake of fluttering pages and bits of binding. Maybe that's why my retina ripped."
By the way, James McBride won the 2013 National Book Award for fiction.
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