Clever Magazine, Vol. 6, #2 "2003 Clever Book Awards " (www.clevermag.com)

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The Clever Magazine
Book Awards for 2003

by Diannek, editor

It's time once again for the Clever Magazine Book Awards. The committee has met and the tough decisions have been rendered. This year's award winners are books that will appeal to a wide reading audience but some are books that may not make it onto the best-seller lists. And the thing that makes the Clever Awards different from other awards is that there are no publication restrictions on our choices, since it's impossible for us to read everything that comes along every year. As most readers know, there are bountiful book years and drought book years, but rarely a week goes by without some interesting title that merits our attention.

Here's this year's list:

Fiction:
The Winner: Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, an odyssey

The Runners-up:
House of Sand and Fog, by Andre Dubus, III
On Green Dolphin Street, by Sebastian Faulks
Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd

Non-Fiction:
The Winner: Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich

The Runners-up:
Yellow Wind, David Grossman
Longitudes and Attitudes, Thomas Friedman

Biography:
The Winner: Benjamin Franklin, an American Life, by Walter Isaacson

Nature Writing:
The Winner: A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold

Mystery:
The Winner: Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown
Runner-up: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith

Travel Essay:
The Winner: Blue Latitudes: Boldly going where Captain Cook has gone before,
by Tony Horwitz
The Runners-up:
Dark Star Safari, Paul Theroux
No Place for a Lady: Tales of Adventurous Women Travelers,
by Barbara Hodgson

Inspiration:
The Winner: A Year at the Movies: one man's film-going odyssey, by Kevin Mrphy

Best Classic (that I probably only read part of but I'm a better person for):
The Winner: The Moon is Down, by John Steinbeck

So there you have it. A round of applause for the Phantom, who all deserves a new pair of reading glasses and a nice cup of tea for all her hard work.

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