Here is another instance wherein a book award just might be meaningless in terms of whether or not the winning book is worth reading. For example, would you care to speculate on how many people who vote for this award will have actually read all three books so that a meaningful comparison and judgment can be made? I would hazard a guess that fewer the 25% will meet that standard. Frankly, I am always skeptical about book awards and prizes, and this one is, I think, little more than a marketing ploy by the mega-merchant in book retailing.
Postscript and Challenge: While we're on the subject of book prizes and awards, and since I am a curmudgeonly skeptic about those kinds of honorifics, I would nevertheless suggest opening up a line of discussion in answer to the following: Is there a book award/prize that is more useful than the others? In other words, which annual award/prize seems most worthy of a discerning reader's attention? Or, asking the questions in a different way, are there particular awards/prizes that have so little value that they ought to be ignored (i.e., the instant case from Amazon comes to mind, but time will tell on that one)?
Here is another instance wherein a book award just might be meaningless in terms of whether or not the winning book is worth reading. For example, would you care to speculate on how many people who vote for this award will have actually read all three books so that a meaningful comparison and judgment can be made? I would hazard a guess that fewer the 25% will meet that standard. Frankly, I am always skeptical about book awards and prizes, and this one is, I think, little more than a marketing ploy by the mega-merchant in book retailing.
ReplyDeletePostscript and Challenge: While we're on the subject of book prizes and awards, and since I am a curmudgeonly skeptic about those kinds of honorifics, I would nevertheless suggest opening up a line of discussion in answer to the following: Is there a book award/prize that is more useful than the others? In other words, which annual award/prize seems most worthy of a discerning reader's attention? Or, asking the questions in a different way, are there particular awards/prizes that have so little value that they ought to be ignored (i.e., the instant case from Amazon comes to mind, but time will tell on that one)?
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