The Johnny Bingo Awards - 2024

 My Favorite Books of this Reading Year

Once again, it is time for the least-anticipated literary awards of the year…The Johnny Bingo Awards!

These prestigious awards are awarded annually in a variety of categories that change constantly.  There is only one constant, one rule, which I've been using for nearly 20 years:

Eligible books are those I read this year (see below for full list). It could’ve been written by a blind Greek poet in the 8th century BCE or be an unpublished galley hacked from an MFA candidate’s MacBook in a Brooklyn cafe.  As long as I read the last paragraph before the ball drops in Times Square, it can be a winner.

The literarily literate among you understand that “the blind Greek poet in the 8th century BCE” refers to Homer, author of The Iliad and The Odyssey.  This week it was announced that the acclaimed director Christopher Nolan’s next project will be a movie version of The Odyssey, starring Tom Holland and Zendaya.  The social media reaction to this was filled with so much literary ignorance it made me want to strap myself to the mast…

On to this year’s awards!

Best Historian at Capturing BIG Subjects in a Single Volume

Andrew Roberts 

When it was announced that Ridley Scott would be making a film about Napoleon Bonaparte, I was nervously excited.  I knew from Gladiator that historical accuracy wasn’t exactly Scott’s strong suit, but still – the chance to see a master filmmaker put things like Austerlitz and the invasion of Russia on screen…

The film was awful but its release inspired me to brush up on my Napoleon and that’s how I came across Andrew Roberts.  His Napolean: A Life is a masterpiece.  Scott couldn’t skillfully fit 22 action-packed years into 3 hours of celluloid, but Roberts splendidly tells the entire story of Napoleon’s life and era in fewer than a thousand pages.  

It was so good I read his single-volume history of WWII, The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War, and I can say with confidence it is the best single-volume history of this enormous subject I’d ever read.  It might be subtitled “Hitler Could Have Won the War if He Wasn’t Such an Ideological Idiot.”

I intend to work my way through Baron Roberts’ (yes, he is a Baron) entire bibliography over the next few years.  

Best Book by Someone I Hadn’t Read Yet

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Gabrielle Zevin

It seems much of the book-loving world has read Zevin’s Tommorow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow – but I went back a few years and sampled one of her earlier works.  An absolutely charming book written by, about, and for book lovers.  

Best Old-Fashioned Novel by an Underrated Novelist

The Ocean and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

Mark Helprin

Mark Helprin has had a curious literary career.  Early on, he took the expected steps of the Next Great Writer: acclaimed short story collections, regularly published in The New Yorker, the breathlessly reviewed debut novel (A Winter’s Tale), and the breakthrough novel (A Soldier of a Great War).

Then he seemed to fade from cultural view.  Partly it’s because he had politics well out of step with the literary gatekeepers – he is a passionate supporter of Israel’s right to existence (even served in the IDF) and was revealed to be a speechwriter for Bob Dole.  But it’s also because the next few novels didn’t live up to the promise of his earlier works. Often it seemed like a powerful literary gift was being wielded in the service of unworthy plots.

The Ocean and The Stars was, for me, a return to form.  It is  an old-fashioned novel about honor and courage and love, and a welcome respite from the cynical solipsism of the modern literary novel.

Best History Book About a Subject of Which I was Shockingly Ignorant

Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia

Michael Korda

Current historical events often influence my history reading.  For example, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 inspired me to finally pluck that unread biography of Peter the Great from the shelf (and it won a Johnny Bingo that year!).

The Israel-Hamas war had me brushing up on the origins of the Middle East’s manufactured map, and made my realize how little I knew of T.E. Lawrence, aka Lawrence of Arabia.

I don’t know if Korda’s 2011 work is the best biography, but it is thorough, well-written, and has the advantage of being written late enough to capture some recent history.  (and, unlike earlier biographies, late enough to be frank about Lawrence's, oh what's the right word, unusual sex life).

There is so much to Lawrence's life.  He was a critical figure - for better and worse - in the making of the modern Middle East.  And you'll learn much about the unique situation the passing of the Ottoman Empire created, and how it led to the creation of problems that plague the world today.

But it is also one of the great adventure stories of all time, and perhaps a story about the first truly global celebrity.  At the heart of it is the endlessly fascinating figure of T.E. Lawrence.  If I ever get to host one of those ‘if you could invite anyone’ dinner parties, I’d be hard-pressed to not offer a seat to Lawrence of Arabia.

Best Book by the Best Writer

The Passenger

Cormac McCarthy

As I age, and my heroes pass, this blog runs the risk of turning into an Obituaries pages.  Two of my last three posts have been tributes to Pete Rose and Dickey Betts.  And yet, I never quite got around to writing an homage to my favorite writer, Cormac McCarthy, who passed in June of 2023.

In some ways, his career arc was the opposite of Helprin’s.  His first 5 novels were praised in obscure literary journals, but found no readers.  His fifth novel, the much-acclaimed Blood Meridian, had a small press run of 5000 copies.  

But then he went on a run.  His Border trilogy found a much larger audience, and the first book (All the Pretty Horses) was turned into a Matt Damon movie.  In 2005, No Country for Old Men became an Oscar-winning Coen Brothers movie, and 2006 The Road was picked for Oprah’s book club and won The Pulitzer.  This notoriously difficult writer had, against all literary odds, become a mainstream success story.

And that was it.  Or so it seemed.  For the next decade and a half Cormac fans waited.  And then, in late 2022, McCarthy published not one, but two linked novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.  Six months later he was dead.

One night, not long after McCarthy's death, I sat on my deck with a bottle of Basil Hayden, a Montecristo cigar, and Van Morrison’s Veedon Fleece album - and contemplated the career of Cormac McCarthy.  As the bottle emptied and the ashtray filled, my thoughts got more profound, and I was struck with an epiphany about the role of the artist, and how The Passenger and Veedon Fleece were sister works of art that encapsulated both of the careers of these Great Artists, and perhaps even explained Art.   I jotted a bunch of notes down in my phone, stream-of-consciousness style,  bursting with intellectual energy.

Apparently I didn’t save it.  Oh well.  

Hopefully my kids will remember that I have a first edition of Blood Meridian, and while I hope they pass it down through the generations, if they ever get in a tight financial bind, it might be worth something some day.

 Honorable Mention

Here’s the full list of books I read this year, along with some quick comments on other favorites…

Napoleon: A Life, Andrew Roberts

The Passenger, Cormac McCarthy

Two Nights in Lisbon, Chris Pavone

The 39 Steps, John Buchan

Running Blind (Jack Reacher #4), Lee Child

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle,Stuart Turton

Without Fail (Jack Reacher #6), Lee Child

Stella Maris, Cormac McCarthy

Dave Barry Turns 50, Dave Barry

The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, & Happiness, Morgan Housel

Sometimes I give out an award titled "The Book Most Likely to Make My Wife Kick My Shin Under the Table", because I go on and on about lessons learned.  This is one of those books.

The Power of the Dog: Power of the Dog Book 1, Don Winslow

The only reason I didn't honor Winslow again this year is that I gave his book The Force an award last year, and wrote about him with some length.  But this is even better than The Force.

The Man Who Was Thursday, G.K. Chesterton

Red Sparrow: Book 1 of Red Sparrow Trilogy, Jason Matthews

The Summer Game, Roger Angell

The Return of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting, William Goldman

A great read about screenwriting and moviemaking - or at least, screenwriting and moviemaking in the 70s and 80s.  Particularly recommended if you loved Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War, Malcolm Gladwell

The 6:20 Man (6:20 Man #1), David Baldacci

The Innocence of Father Brown, G.K. Chesterton

The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War, Andrew Roberts

Dress Her in Indigo: (Travis McGee #12), John D. MacDonald

The It Girl, Ruth Ware

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, Gabrielle Zevin

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

Daisy Jones & The Six, Taylor Jenkins Reid

A fictional oral history of a Fleetwood Mac-like band.  Excellent book, I should have given it a JB!

Swordpoint: The WWII Collection, Max Hennessey

Samuel Adams: The Revolutionary, Stacy Schiff

Adams is on the short list of Underrated Americans, and Schiff is on the short list of underrated historians.  For more on Schiff, see my previous post about the Benjamin Franklin series on Apple TV.

A Discovery of Witches (All Souls #1), Deborah Harkness

I'm two books into this series and I haven't experienced this kind of thrill around vampires since Anne Rice's heyday.

The Edge (6:20 Man #2), David Baldacci

The Thin Man, Dashiell Hammett

Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, Sebastian Junger

The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett

The Resurrection Walk (Lincoln Lawyer #7), Michael Connelly

The Ocean and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story, Mark Helprin

Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth, Noa Tishby

The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, Keith Law

Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia, Michael Korda

Flashman (The Flashman Papers 1), George MacDonald Fraser

A Wizard of Earthsea (The Earthsea Cycle #1), Ursula K. Le Guin

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King

Case Histories: Jackson Brodie 1, Kate Atkinson

In Sunlight and in Shadow, Mark Helprin

Think Twice: Myron Bolintar #12, Harlan Coben

The Lion's Game: John Corey #2 , Nelson DeMille

Not DeMille's best - it should be a few hundred pages shorter and perhaps have a more wrapped up ending.  But DeMille passed this year, and he gave me many hours of reading pleasure.  The outpouring of support on social media from the giants of thriller writers suggest he was also a beloved and generous man.  Long Island really produces some winners.

Shadow of Night (All Souls #2), Debora Harkness

The Collector (Gabriel Allon #23), Daniel Silva

The Johnny Bingo Awards - The 2010s

My Favorite Books of the Decade


Authors, agents, publishers, and readers: it’s time for the 2019 Johnny Bingo Awards!

Wait, what’s that you say?  I didn’t give out the 2018 Awards?  Or 2017, 2016…jeez, when was the last time I did these things?  2009?!  Well, that’s embarrassing.  I have long mocked the Nobel Prize in Literature for their curious choices, but at least they remember to give out their awards every year (whether the winner shows up or not is another question entirely).

There’s only one option here:  claim it was my intention all along to skip ten years and hand out The Johnny Bingo Awards for the Decade!

These awards have flexible rules.  Indeed there is only one that matters (to which I will make a slight update):

“The Johnny Bingo Award(s) have one judge – me – and one rule: all eligible books must have been finished by me this year decade.   It could’ve been written by a blind Greek poet in the 8th century BC or be an unpublished galley hacked from an MFA candidate’s MacBook in a Brooklyn cafe. As long as I read the final paragraph before the calendar turns, it's eligible.”

I’m going to do this Oscar style: start with some fun awards, then get into the long weird section, and close out with the big ones.  And away we go:

Best Rock & Roll Book
The 2010s brought us a lot of books about classic rock.  I read the “The English Guitarist Memoir Trilogy” (Keith Richards’ Life, Pete Townshend’s Who I Am, and Clapton: The Autobiography).  I enjoyed Pamela Des Barres’ delightful groupie memoir, I’m With the Band.  And Stephen Hyden's Twilight of the Gods was...well, I don't know what it was exactly - part memoir, part classic rock history, but mostly hanging out with a smart and interesting guy who has thought entirely too much about classic rock and what it means to people of a certain age.

But the winner here is The Trouble Boys: The Story of the Replacements.  Bob Mehr’s chronicle of this brilliant but self-destructive band has all the sex, drugs and rock and roll the genre promises.  And it has one of my favorite components of rock books – encounters with other musicians (in particular, the members of REM, who are a steady presence as competitors, counterpoint, and comrades).

It also gave me what I was really looking for: an insight into the creative process.  Townshend’s book does that too, but in a self-consciously intellectual way.  Clapton’s music is ultimately too derivative – his inspiration is other musicians – to provide creative insight.  And Keith Richards, bless his pirate soul, seems to have no earthly idea where the music comes from.

But these drunken nuts from Minneapolis were true artists, and the journey with them was fascinating.

Best Book from a Binge Read
The 2010s brought us binge-watching, and perhaps not coincidentally I did some binge-reading this decade.  Not on authors, but on subjects.

Ben McIntyre’s A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal sent me down a Cambridge Five Spy Ring rabbit hole.  T.H. White’s Once and Future King inspired a quest to learn everything I could about King Arthur and Arthurian legend.  (Bernard Cornwell’s Warlord Chronicles is a wonderful imagining of how a possibly historical medieval warlord could’ve evolved into the English legend).  And Sherlock Holmes – wow, did I go full Sherlock this decade.   I read every word Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote, and numerous non-canon Sherlock books by everyone from Michael Chabon to Caleb Carr*.

*  I highly recommend Graham Moore’s The Sherlockian.  Moore published this exceedingly clever novel in 2010, then four years later won the Academy Award for writing The Imitation Game, starring none other than Benedict Cumberbatch, my favorite on-screen Sherlock.

But my most rewarding binge was on Alexander the Great.   And the winner here is Mary Renault’s Alexander trilogy (Fire From Heaven, The Persian Boy, Funeral Games).   Reading Renault's work alongside more traditional biographies (and a bit of Arrian) makes you wonder how Oliver Stone could have possibly made such a boring movie from such thrilling material.

Sidebar
I read hardcovers, eBooks on a Kindle, eBooks on an iPhone, and I listen to audiobooks.  I consider all of this to be "reading".  For example, I listened to the entire English Guitarist Memoir trilogy on audiobook, which I highly recommend.  Pete Townshend reads his own book, and he comes off as much more self-effacing and able to laugh at himself than I suspect he would in print, where his tendency to pomposity would be more obvious.  And Keith Richards' audiobook is a delightful mess: it starts with Johnny Depp, who must have gotten bored halfway through.  Then a replacement bloke with a cockney accent jumps in.  Then Keith decides, what the hell, I'm gonna read a few chapters!   It's all so...Keith.


Best Stephen King Book Not Written By Stephen King
Upon its publication in 2010, Justin Cronin’s The Passage was immediately compared to The Stand.  Followed by The Twelve and The City of Mirrors, King himself called it “a trilogy that will stand as one of the great achievements in American fantasy fiction.”


Worst Stephen King Book Written By Stephen King
I read a lot of fantasy series this decade.  A Song of Ice and Fire (which you may recognize as Game of Thrones).  All 15 books of The Wheel of Time.  Lev Grossman's The Magicians.  His Dark Materials.  The aforementioned Once and Future King*.

So I thought, hey, Stephen King is one of the great storytellers of modern times.  Let's give his fantasy series, The Dark Tower, a shot.  It must be good.

Spoiler:  It is not good.

*  Arthurian legend is the foundation story of all modern fantasy stories, from The Lord of the Rings to Star Wars to Harry Potter. And let's be clear: Star Wars is fantasy, NOT science fiction.  It has knights and swords and magic and princesses.  Obi-Wan Kenobi is Merlin and Luke is Arthur.  In the prequel trilogy Yoda is Merlin and Anakin is Arthur.  And in the new trilogy Luke is Merlin and Rey is Arthur.  Got it?  Good.  


The Book Most Likely to Make My Wife Kick Me Under the Table
There's a certain kind of book - non-fiction, well-written, a colon in the title, and a Big Idea at its heart  - that will make me talk about it for months afterwards.   Eventually, I'm out to dinner with other people and am rambling on for entirely too long about how ancient Romans used memory palaces to commit multi-hour speeches to memory and - thwack! - my wife will deliver a well-placed blow to my shin. 

Here are the nominees:

The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance
David Epstein

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
Joshua Foer

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
Steven Pinker

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Won't Stop Talking
Susan Cain

Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth
Reza Aslan

If you're an introvert and want to understand yourself better OR an extrovert who lives and works with introverts and wants to understand them better, read Quiet.

If you think the age you live in is the worst ever and am open to being proven dramatically wrong, read Better Angels.

And if you really want to get kicked under the table, read Moonwalking. 


Sidebar
I've kept a book log for 19 years, which is how I'm able to do this ridiculous "awards" program.  But I'm sure these awards are suffering from recency bias.  For example, I just read The Passage trilogy  so it's top of mind.  But back in 2012 I read a novel called The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach.  I remembered loving it.  I remember it was kinda sorta about baseball and college.  I remember it was beloved by critics.  But alas, I don't remember anything else about it.

If I had just read it, it probably would have won a coveted J-B Award.  Alas, it just gets a quick mention here.

Best Books I Didn't Actually Read
Over the course of several Christmases Santa brought me The Landmark Thucydides, The Landmark Herodotus, and The Landmark Caesar.  These are beautiful books, objets d'art, that present ancient historical texts in a setting for non-scholars.

For example, The Landmark Thucydides presents a translation of  The Peloponnesian War, complete with maps and introductions and same-page footnotes.   But it also includes a dozen essays by noted scholars on everything from naval warfare in the 5th century BCE to the structures of Athenian government.

I haven't read all the ancient texts from end to end.  But they are books I pick up, read an essay, read some passages - the Athenians' disastrous invasion of Sicily, the Spartans at Thermopylae - and move on.  Perhaps in retirement I'll really dig into these things.


Best Novel
Let's be clear:  every book in this category is better than The Passage and the Replacements book and pretty much everything else.  A great novel is hypnotic - when lost in its pages you miss train stops and meals and deadlines - the world stops around you.  It makes you think and it teaches you things about humanity and philosophy and morality and history and everything that matters.

As Hilary Mantel, one of this year's nominees said, "A novel should be a book of questions, not of answers." 

The nominees are:

The Son
Phillip Meyer

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Anthony Marra

Lincoln in the Bardo
George Saunders

A Visit from the Goon Squad
Jennifer Egan

Wolf Hall
Hillary Mantel

Matterhorn
Karl Marlantes

Since I have a bias for history wrapped up in literature, particularly history that I'm dreadfully ignorant of, the coveted JB Prize goes to Wolf Hall.  The first book in a trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, it stands alongside Robert Caro's biographies as a masterwork about how power is gained and wielded.  And it's a helluva story too.


Best History Book
Let's get right to it:

The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson Volume IV
Robert Caro

Speaking of Robert Caro's biographies...

I assume there are people will read all 4000 pages of Caro's monumental biography of LBJ (he's at 4 volumes and 3000 pages now).  I doubt I'll be one of them.  

But this volume, covering his last years in the Senate through the assassination of JFK and the first tumultuous year of his Presidency, covers a fascinating period of American history told by a master historian.

Gettysburg: The Last Invasion
Allen Guelzo

What elevates this from a good battle history to a great work of history are the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of little stories he tells.   Stories of valor, tragedy, folly, humor.  Stories of generals and privates, but also of the citizens of a Pennsylvania town that was visited for 3 days by an inferno of death.

Among all these portraits and stories emerges a coherent narrative of this enormous battle. 

Paul Revere's Ride
David Hackett Fischer

Sometimes the legend is true.  Sometimes the truth is even more interesting than the legend.

Paul Revere's midnight ride achieved its legendary status thanks to Henry Wadworth Longfellow's famous poem ("Listen, my children, and you shall hear, Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.")  What followed was a century of revisionists correcting Mr. Longfellow.

But Fischer rescues the true story, and it is a damned good one.   (He did the same thing for Washington in Washington's Crossing and corrects the myth of American's "Puritan founding" in The Seeds of Albion.)

Grant
Ron Chernow

If Robert Caro isn't our finest biographer, perhaps it's Ron Chernow?

I don't expect this book to get the same Broadway musical hit treatment as his 2004 biography of Alexander Hamilton, but it may be a better book - or at least, a more interesting subject.

Grant's reputation doesn't need reviving - and yet Chernow does just that.  He makes you realize he was a greater military strategist than he is often given credit for; nothing like the butcher he is often accused of; and a far better President than historians usually accord him.

And it's a great read taking you everywhere from pre- and postwar Mexico, antebellum California, gilded age New York, a grand tour of Europe - and of course, the great battlefields of The Civil War.

The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-45.  Volume 3 of The Liberation Trilogy
Rick Atkinson

When An Army at Dawn, the first volume of Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy came out in 2002, it was clear that the Second World War had found its Bruce Catton.  Just as Catton focused on the Army of the Potomac in his great trilogy (Mr. Lincoln's Army, Glory Road, A Stillness at Appomattox), Atkinson zeroes in on the Allied triumph in Europe.

The Guns at Last Light is the concluding volume of this great work, and is the winner of the Johnny Bingo Award for History.


LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS
Two of my writing heroes passed away this decade.

Tom Wolfe
Tom Wolfe became my writing hero early in college. "Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers" opened up my eyes to what non-fiction writing could be. Then I read "The Right Stuff", and all of the pyrotechnics from his earlier work was gone, and its absence made me realize how good the work was - indeed, how one might go about doing this. If you want to write well, forget all of the books about writing; just read "The Right Stuff" and pay attention.

And then he thought, after proving himself as possibly the greatest non-fiction writer of the century, what the hell, he'd write a novel. 500 years from now, when historians and cultural archaeologists want to know what the greatest city in the world was like before the internet changed the world, they need only read "Bonfire of the Vanities".

(If you care about the novel as an art form, read his essay, "Stalking The Billion-Footed Beast".)


Elmore Leonard
Elmore Leonard is almost certainly the writer I've been reading the longest.  I was checking out 52 Pickup and Hombre from the Farmingdale Library bookmobile as a kid.   I read nine of his books this decade - the last one, Fire in the Hole*, in 2013.

*  Hollywood has always loved Leonard.  Hombre was turned into a Western starring Paul Newman.  52 Pickup was a Roy Scheider movie.  And Fire in the Hole is a collection that includes the story that inspired the excellent FX series Justified.   My favorite movie from an Elmore Leonard book is the wildly underrated Out of Sight.

The best way to honor Elmore Leonard is to share with you his ten rules of writing.

1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said"…he admonished gravely.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

Well, that's it for the Johnny Bingo Awards.  See ya in 2030.  Happy Reading!

The 2009 Johnny-Bingo Awards

The suspense is over. It is time for the 2009 Johnny-Bingo Awards, given annually to the Best Books Read by Yours Truly this year.

(Go here for last year’s awards)

The award is named for the first book I remember calling my favorite – something about two boys, a dog, and a bank robber. Or maybe it was two bank robbers, a boy and a dog. Or maybe two dogs…anyway, the point is that I am the judge, jury and executioner for this, the last major literary prize handed out this year.

Okay, maybe it’s not such a major prize. But given the way the other literary prizes have been operating this year, I think I have a chance to pass them in prestige.

Take the Nobel Prize in Literature (please). This year the Nobel folks took a lot of heat for their selection of President Barack Obama for the Peace Prize. But that head-scratcher obscured the fact that the Nobel Prize in Literature went to Herta Muller, a Romanian writer so obscure that the response even in Romania seemed to be “Yay!!! Um…who?”

The Nobel Lit folks have made it clear that they despise American literature and are determined to give Nobels out to every obscure novelist on earth before the likes of Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth, or Joyce Carol Oates grace their stage. The National Book Award on the other hand is, you know, the National book award. For Americans. It states quite clearly in their bylaws that the nominees be American.

Well, here are the nominees for this year’s National Book Award in fiction:

- Colum McCann, an Irishman born in Dublin, currently residing in New York.
- Aleksandar Hemon, a Bosnian who moved to America in 1992.
- Marcel Theroux, son of the American writer Paul Theroux, who was born in Uganda and now lives in London.
- Daniyal Mueenuddin, who grew up in Pakistan and Wisconsin, lives in the southern Punjab, and is currently spending a year in London.
- Jayne Anne Phillips, born in West Virginia and now living in New Jersey.

Can I get a “USA! USA!” chant?

The J-B Rules
I’m not as sophisticated as those other folks. I don’t read obscure Romanian novelists, I’ve never heard of Daniyal Mueenuddin, and am frequently seen with a paperbook thriller in my hand. I’m also ashamed to admit that most of the books I read are written by (gasp!) Americans – and the worst kind of Americans, the ones that are born here, live here, and write about here. Insular bastards. (Maybe I should call these the Johnny-Jingo Awards. The Bonny-Jingo Awards?)

The Johnny-Bingo Award(s) have one judge – me – and one rule: all eligible books must have been finished by me in 2009. As I said last year, it could’ve been written by a blind Greek poet in the 8th century BC or be an unpublished galley hacked from an MFA candidate’s MacBook in a Brooklyn cafe. As long as I read the final paragraph before the calendar turns, it could be a winner.

Let’s look at our finalists:

Best New Crime Novelist
Famed restaurant journalist Peter Romeo was surprised – maybe even embarrassed - to hear I had never read Dennis Lehane or George Pelecanos and pressed copies of their novels on me. I also read the newcomers Josh Bazell and Stieg Larson and tried out Stuart Woods for the first time. The first three get the coveted Keatang recommendations but we can only have one winner in the category and it is…Dennis Lehane! (please hold your applause till all the winners have been announced)

It was a tough race and I suspect that Mr. Pelecanos and I will be spending a lot more time together. But if you like your crime novel heroes hard-boiled, wise-crackin’, and existentially dark, Lehane is your guy. Be prepared though – the capacity for evil in his bad guys, not to mention his good guys, will make you weep for humanity.

Best History Book about Post-War America
I read a lot of history but they tend to cover that short period between 500 B.C. and 1945. I’m less interested, for reasons I can’t defend, in books about the post-war period. But this year I took two plunges into the 60’s (An Unfinished Life: John Kennedy 1917-1963 and Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-1965) and one into the 00’s (Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan).

One thing about history books about the 1960’s…there is a lot of sex! JFK makes Tiger Woods look like the Dali Lama. And MLK – well, this is a worshipful book about the Reverend but there are transcripts from his hotel room romps that made me blush. You don’t see this in books about the Founders. Ben Franklin and Alexander Hamilton both got around but were fortunate enough to do so before tape recording and the FBI.

Pillar of Fire is the greater book of the three and destined for a long shelf life. But I too often got lost in the huge cast of characters and couldn’t find my way out. The book assumes knowledge of racial politics of the period that I don’t have. Horse Soldiers is a terrific story and I heartily recommend it – especially if like me you are sick and tired of the media’s treatment of America’s soldiers as either villains or victims. This is a story of true American heroes. But the writing is a little bit hokey.

Unfinished Life gets the nod. Biographer Robert Dallek doesn’t shy away from the glamorous (and sordid) stories about the Kennedys, but at its heart it’s a study of the Cold War at its peak, and the important role JFK played in it.

Best Book in an Unclassifiable Category
Lev Grossman’s The Magicians is Harry Potter meets Less Than Zero meets The Narnia Chronicles. If that sounds like something you might like, you will.

Christopher Moore’s Fool is King Lear with "gratuitous shagging, murder, spanking, maiming, treason, and heretofore unexplored heights of vulgarity and profanity, as well as non-traditional grammar, spit infinitives, and the odd wank". If that sounds like something you might like, you will.

I enjoyed Fool, but the nod here goes to The Magicians.

Best Big Ideas Book
The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb is one of those books whose big idea – that human history is shaped more by huge unforeseen events rather than occurring in a predictable flow – is one that I totally bought, even if I bickered with Taleb in the margins along the way.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan is one of those books whose big idea – that large-scale modern food production does more bad than good – is one that I totally disagreed with, even though I enjoyed nearly every page of the book.

Nod to Taleb, since his ideas, unlike Pollan’s, are unlikely to lead to global starvation, not to mention federal regulations telling me to eat my locally-grown organic spinach.

Best Book of the Year
And the winner of the Johnny-Bingo Award goes to…none of the above! Scanning over my book log for the year, I keep coming back to Freedomland, a 1998 novel by Richard Price.

Price is one of those writers whose every sentence is so damned good, you give up any hopes of writing a novel yourself. It’s not just the quality of the prose though; underneath that graceful prose is knowledge born of hard-earned reporting. But it’s not just knowledge, gracefully presented. There is wisdom in Price’s work.

The folks who give out Nobel Literature prizes claim American novelists are insular. Freedomland is proof they are wrong.

Congratulations to Mr. Price, who is not only the 2009 Johnny-Bingo Award winner, but the most underrated American novelist working today.

The 2008 Johnny Bingo Awards

Yes, it’s time for the least-anticipated literary awards of the year – the Johnny Bingo Awards!

The nice thing about being judge and jury for an award nobody cares about is I can change the rules every year without protest. And I’m changing the rules again. Last year I gave out a bunch of different awards in different categories. And in the years before that I simply gave out one award. But this year I’m going to name five finalists and then pick a winner. (That’s my plan now anyway; it could change in a few paragraphs)

Luckily, no matter how ridiculous I make it, I can't make it sillier than the Nobel Prize in Literature, bestowed annually on obscurities and mediocrities, the only qualification being that the winner not be American.

This award too has only one criterion – for a book to be eligible, I had to have finished reading it in 2008. It could’ve been written by a blind Greek poet in the 8th century BC or be an unpublished galley hacked from an MFA candidate’s MacBook in a Brooklyn cafe. As long as I read the final paragraph before Dick Clark’s puppeteer walks him through the New Year’s Eve Countdown, it can be a winner.

But before we hand out this year’s awards, I’d like to say a few words about books I don’t read.

A Few Words About Books I Don’t Read
I don’t read books written by people who got famous doing something different. So you’ll see no sensitive novels by Ethan Hawke or counterfactual histories by Newt Gingrich. Kirstie Alley’s How to Lose Your Ass and Regain Your Confidence: Reluctant Confessions of a Big-Butted Star might be a literary masterpiece, but I’ll never know it.

I don’t read current events books. Perhaps I’ll expand this thesis in a larger post, but I don’t think current events lend themselves well to book form. First, not enough time has passed for perspective. And second, events have a way of overtaking the book. I tried to read George Packer’s Assassin’s Gate last year, and while parts of it were excellent, as I got to the last few hundred pages it was clear that the Iraq he was writing about was different than the one that existed by the time of my reading. So I stick to magazines and newspapers for the events of the day.

I don’t read memoirs, particularly memoirs by people who’ve led massively self-(and others) destructive lives, but who’ve now put all the pieces together and found wisdom. Somehow I’ll muddle through life without their wisdom.

I don’t read books by Mitch Albom.

Apparently I don’t read books by women. This isn’t a policy but it appears to be the truth. I didn’t read a single book written by a woman in 2008. I did better in 2007, thanks to Barbara Tuchman and J.K. Rowling. Considering how much I enjoy the works of those two women in particular, as well as the histories of Catherine Drinker Bowen and Doris Kearns Goodwin, I may have to correct that.

Which reminds me – I don’t read books that everybody else is reading. I’ve been a fan of Doris Kearns Goodwin since before she became a television star and I’ve read more Lincoln books than most, but I’ve kind of avoided Team of Rivals because everybody else is reading it. I will read it eventually, but long after the rest of the world has lost interest.

There are all kinds of exceptions to these “rules”. I’ll read Mark Bavaro’s new novel because one of the best presents I got this Christmas was an inscribed copy of it. I read Bill Bryson’s Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir because it was written by Bill Bryson.

I also read Barack Obama’s Dreams from my Father*, which breaks most of my rules: it’s a memoir, it’s a current events book (sort of), it’s written by someone who doesn’t write books for a living, and it’s a book everybody was reading. But I was very interested to read a book written by a Presidential candidate long before he was one.

* a mini review: it started out fascinating and impressive, but became dreadfully boring and self-absorbed. Hopefully not a harbinger for his Presidency…

There is no exception to the Mitch Albom rule.

So, without further ado the five finalists are:

What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1845
Daniel Walker Howe

We tend to think of the years between the War of 1812 and the Mexican War as boring. Not as boring, perhaps, as the Era of Obscure Bearded Presidents (1872-1896), but still pretty boring.

Yeah, Andrew Jackson was a colorful guy, but everyone else seemed small by comparison – dwarfed by the shadow of the Founders (Adams and Jefferson died in 1824) and the specter of the Civil War (Lincoln, Lee and Grant walked the earth, but few knew who they were.).

Even the 2nd most famous guy of the period, John Quincy Adams, was the less famous son of a Founder who can’t even get a monument on the Mall.

But Howe – who has the great gift of weaving diplomatic, political, and economic history into a compelling whole – shows that the period was, as the sub-title says, transformational.

(For an excellent review on WHGW, go here.)

Duma Key
Stephen King
As I said earlier, I tend not to read things everybody else is reading. Thus, I’ve read very little John Grisham and Stephen King through the years.

But this year, in separate acts of airport desperation, I bought Grisham and King paperbacks. The Grisham book – The Brethren – was entertaining but nothing special; it was like one of Elmore Leonard’s lesser works, peopled with quirky Florida lowlifes. But Duma Key grabbed me by the collar and wouldn’t let go.

It’s odd that King is still considered a horror novelist. The Shawshank Redemption, based on a King novella, is by one measure the most popular movie ever made – and there is not a supernatural moment in it. The same is true of Stand By Me, based on a King short story. But I guess it’s hard to shake the image left by books/movies like Carrie, Cujo, and Pet Semetary.

Duma Key is about a middle-aged guy who – like King – was severely injured in an accident. While recovering he discovers he has untapped powers as a painter – well, for a description of the book go here. All I’ll say is that King’s genius stems in part from his storytelling, in part from his ability to tap into our fear – but mostly from his understanding of human emotion.

I realize I might be banned from the unofficial book snobs’ club, but what King is up to in his later years just might be called literature.

The Spies of Warsaw
Alan Furst
Speaking of popular fiction that borders on literature…

There are some authors who sell only a fraction of the books John Grisham sells, but whose fans are even more devoted. Furst’s novels, all set before or in the early years of World War II, has a devoted following and I number myself among them.

The books are formulaic – one or more Europeans, recognizing the impending calamity of war with Germany and presented an opportunity to do something about it, do something about it. Gauloises are smoked, cafes are visited, and Polish countesses slip into bed with French naval attachés.

But Furst’s novels prove that formulas executed with literary style and thorough historical research are as impressive as any higher-brow work.

Blue Latitudes: Sailing Boldly Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before
Tony Horowitz
I think of myself as a knowledgeable guy, historically speaking. But reading Blue Latitudes, I was shocked at how ignorant I was of the accomplishments of James Cook.

Most discoverers happen upon their discovery – the Hudson River, America – and, if they survive, tend to stay in that part of the world looking for more stuff or head home to enjoy their fame. But Cook travelled all over the world, to places untouched by Europeans, multiple times. New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii, parts of Alaska. He circumnavigated the globe multiple times and covered 140 of the 180 degrees of the earth’s longitude.

But most people don’t know Captain Cook from Captain Hook. Tony Horowitz, former foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and author of Confederates in the Attic, sets off to find out why. Part travelogue, part history, Horowitz re-traces Cook’s voyage, and interviews just about anybody he meets along the way in search of Cook’s story and his legacy.

Cook’s is a great story – and Horowitz is wonderful company for the telling of it.


Corelli’s Mandolin
Louis de Bernières
You know the old phrase, “the book was better”. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin was a terrible Nicolas Cage movie, but this is an excellent novel, set on a small Greek island during the Second World War.

It’s kind of hard to describe, but check it out here.


And the winner is…hmmm….well I liked all of them, obviously. But none are books I’ll be talking about five years from now. I’ve already forgotten what The Spies of Warsaw is about (that’s the problem with formulaic fiction – no matter how good it’s executed, the details slip away).

Oh, I’ll give it to What Hath God Wrought. Congratulations, Mr. Howe. You must be proud.