Booker 2006: Kiran Desai Takes Home A 'Manny'

The envelope, please: Kiran Desai bests David Mitchell, Sarah Waters to take the Booker Prize. I requested it at my local library as soon as I heard -- did you? Meanwhile, the Nobel Prize sucks, says Salon (via Largehearted Boy). Notable sentence from that piece: Perhaps we shouldn't be so surprised when the [Nobel] blows up in our faces. (Among other things, Alfred Nobel invented dynamite. Classy.