The Quill Award Must Die
In all the excitement over the announcement of the Booker Prize, I completely missed that the 2006 Quill Awards were awarded the very same night. The Quill Awards are some manufactured corporate bullshit People’s Choice-style awards that are at least 87% ridiculous. The Awards view themselves this way:
The Quill Awards pair a populist sensibility with Hollywood-style glitz and have become the first literary prizes to reflect the tastes of the group that matters most in publishing-readers.
What that means in practice is that the Book of the Year is Tyler Perry’s Don’t Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings: Madea’s Uninhibited Commentaries On Love and Life. You heard me. Book. Of. The. Year. That’s just offensive to me, as the most important person in publishing – a reader.
Marley and Me won Best Audio Book and Best Memoir (it was my pre-event favorite to win best book at this travesty). Best Business Book? The Girl’s Guide to Being A Boss (Without Being a Bitch) (Ladies – is that title at all offensive?). I keep waiting for the companion book for men – How to Be A Boss Without Being a Complete Douche. So far, nothing. Best Cooking Book author? Rachel Ray.
On the plus (non-BS) side, Al Gore won for An Inconvenient Truth, and If You Throw a Pig A Party is pretty awesome.
Seriously. Madea won Best Book of the Year. That’s just F-ed up.
Awards, Books, Moral Outrage | Tim | 
October 13, 2006 6:49 am
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By Herman Glimscher, October 13, 2006 @ 9:39 am
If one takes the Q in Quill and raises it to an R, one gets R-U-ill, which seems to sum up the entire enterprise.
By DJ Cayenne, October 13, 2006 @ 10:46 am
If you bump up the R to an S, then bump up the U to a W, you get swill. That works, too.