Novelist and USC Prof Marianne Wiggins on the recent National Book Awards:

This year, I was a judge. What that means is that between the beginning of May and the middle of August, I (and my four fellow judges) read 258 books. Each. The same 258 novels. To put that in perspective, it’s pertinent to note that outside of a Bible and a phone book, many households in the United States probably own (and read) zero works of serious fiction.

Nonfiction outnumbers fiction in new titles published each year by 4 to 1, so the nonfiction judges read twice what we did — 500 submissions. One judge remarked that she came home one day to find her children had constructed a fort out of them. In my case, I constructed an elaborate system of piles: read, unread, couldn’t get past Page 10, crap, bloated, vomitous, kill-me-now and praise God.

Read more of her essay in the LAT’s Book Review.