Waterstones Book of the Year

   

    This is rather lovely: Waterstones Book of the Year, 2013, is Stoner by John Williams, which was first published in 1965, quickly fell out of print and was almost forgotten, but has in the last year or so become a word-of-mouth success. You can find the award's shortlist here, and as you'll see there the winner had competition from the likes of Julian Barnes and Kate Atkinson, not to mention Nina Stibbe's Love, Nina: Despatches from Family Life about which I've heard great things.

    For more on Stoner itself, here's my interim post to give you a flavour of it, and here's my summing up; as I say there, its beauty and clarity mean it is a joy to read.