quill awards

Today, winners of a new book award will be announced. The Quill Awards come to you from the Quills Literary Foundation. Their website says...

The Quills is the first national book awards program in which the people, not the critics, decide who’s the best of the best.

A page at the site informs us that a nominating committee picked 5 books each from 19 categories [You can see the full list here]. Then the voting was opened to the reading public.

NPR aired a story today about the awards. As with just about everything else, there are naysayers:

"I don't think there's anything wrong with being a snob. If by being a snob you mean you are holding something to a very high standard." - Benjamin Schwartz of the Atlantic Monthly.

When did snobs corner the market on standards?

Quill Winners are announced tonight. A Quill Awards show will air on NBC on October 22.

I'm certainly intrigued by this idea. The list of nominated titles, though it includes few surprises, has some merit. I'm not sure that Deepak Chopra and Joel Osteen deserve placement in the same universe with Ann Lamott and Jim Wallis, however, but that's just me. The only thing I'm worried about is that Quill winners will sport a Q sticker, a la The-Talk-Show-Host-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's Book Club. Ick.

Maybe I'll have more to say once the winners are announced. I know you'll be anxiously anticipating that.