Everyone at the office is still pounding champagne and hugging over Eli's much-deserved Pulitzer win, but I have to note that the book world is currently up in arms over the fact that the committee awarded no Pulitzer Prize for fiction this year. The shortlist—Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, Swamplandia by Karen Russell, and The Pale King by David Foster Wallace—is a strong one, but the jury reportedly just couldn't agree on a winner.

The book blogosphere is naturally up in arms over this—the Pulitzer winner for fiction is a huge driver of sales for bookstores and publishers—but let's be honest: 2011 wasn't the best year for fiction. There were obviously some great books, but there weren't a whole lot of great Pulitzer books. The Pulitzer jury traditionally chooses a big-hearted, populist masterpiece for the prize, and quite frankly, I didn't read any of those kinds of novels last year.