Christie Blatchford's book on the Canadians in Afghanistan wins the G-G in non-fiction. She'll do fine with it, but the Globe is going to be insufferable; their John Ibbitson won the Children's Lit prize.
Yesterday at the Writers' Trust award, the non-fiction winner was young Taras Grescoe for his book Bottomfeeder, a history, you might say, of how we have eaten our way down the aquatic food chain. Grescoe writes that there's hope... but we may have to learn to love the peanut butter and jellyfish sandwich.
As a longtime habitue of these award shindigs (on the audience side, I mean!), I was quietly pleased to see Grescoe give the best of the unrehearsed, spontaneous thank-you speeches. For some reason, non-fiction does that every time.
Late update: Bookninja links to a comment about the conflicts of loyalty and interest that show up in book judging. Sounds right to me, and it does come up too often. Seems to me you should not even review a book if you are thanked in the acknowledgments, let along judge it for honours and cash. But it happens, it happens. Best way to stop it: just keep saying it should not happen.
