@o_crunk: "Writer Races to Victory From Way Off the Pace (I think Jaimy Gorden is a bit weird in a refreshing way)."

"Though Gordon didn’t expand on 'hope' (indeed, 'expansiveness' was not a word to be applied to any of the writers given medals for new work), the sentiment was clear: Gordon’s was a classic underdog tale, about a little-known writer with a little-seen book who overcame long odds to capture the prize and, at least for one night, revel in the glory (or swoon out of disbelief)."

"Jaimy Gordon’s Lord of Misrule was awarded the National Book Award for Fiction tonight. It’s the second time this year that a high-profile fiction award has gone to a previously very-low-profile novel."

"As I read 'Lord of Misrule,' I was mesmerized by prose like this and intrigued by the accuracy with which the author captured the idiom of the racetrack, the dynamics of backstretch society and the nature of the animals - both their physiology and their personality. How did a university professor know so much about this obscure subculture?"

"Before we had Twitter, before the Internet, and before much of anything beyond the telephone I waited at a newsstand for the arrival of Esquire one February day in 1974. The magazine appeared on time as promised with the article everyone in the Bluegrass couldn’t wait to read. Its title: “How Kentucky Lures the Super Rich.” After a brief, quick reading I was on a pay phone dictating a story about the article to the newsroom in time to make the afternoon deadline."

"Disenchantment sets in, there's some ugliness and then it's pretty much over. But that rapture you can't forget, and the disillusionment, and so there has to be the long goodbye letter, which, because this is Jim Squires, turns into a book. You could call it a swan song, or you could call it a 250-page flip of the middle finger to his one-time love."

Congratulations to TD Thornton on winning the Castleton Lyons-TT award