It just occurred to me that I should start some sort of a book awards awards. We could call them the Wardies. They would go to the most and least important book awards of the year.

A frontrunner for Most Important Wardie would go to The Believer Book Awards, which just named Tom McCarthy’s amazing The Remainder the best book of last year. It wasn’t the best book of the year but, it came pretty goddamned close. You can read a sample over at The Believer’s website. And if you’re interested in buying The Remainder, it’ll be relatively painless, too, because it was a paperback original.

And a frontrunner for Least Exciting Wardie has to be The Rose Tremain winning the Orange Broadband Prize. Since my new motto is “is it true, is it kind, is it helpful”, I will say that I have no further comment on the Orange Broadband Prize or Rose Tremain.