Thoughts of no particular interest to anyone but myself:

• The National Book Awards will be handed out tonight. My predictions? Mark Z. Danielewski won’t win for Only Revolutions, as much as I’d like him to. Expect Richard Powers to win for The Echo Maker. (No, I haven’t read the book; I’ll just wait until after he wins. Isn’t that usually how it goes anyway?)
• I’m going to make one more prediction: Taylor Branch’s At Canaan’s Edge, the final volume of his three-part history on America during the Martin Luther King years, will win in the non-fiction category. The first volume, Parting the Waters, was nominated for a National Book Award and won the Pulitzer Prize. There’s no reason why the third volume shouldn’t win; it would be like awarding the series as a whole.
• There. I said it. We’ll soon find out if I’m an idiot or not.
• I’m starting to notice a pattern with Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s The Club Dumas: for every interesting chapter, there are one or two boring chapters. I can’t help but wonder if the author was just trying to fill the book out. It’s almost as if I could skip every other chapter without losing the story.
• I really can’t say I’m disappointed with the book. I’m just indifferent. I certainly won’t be shouting about it. Sure, it has its moments, but since it’s a thriller, I’d expected it to be much like every other thriller on the bookshelves. The plot twists are unsurprising and the characters aren’t particularly original or interesting. The Club Dumas just gets the job done, even if the presentation is convoluted and unspectacular. Don’t go into this one with high expectations.