Mary Ann Gwinn, book editor for the Seattle Times, describes what it’s like to pick the nominees for the National Book Critics Circle Awards.

The “vote” couldn’t be simpler. Anyone could talk (and did), but only committee members could vote in each category. We wrote down our five preferred titles in each category on little white sheets of paper, folded them up and gave them to the book editor of the Chicago Tribune (I kept thinking of student-council-president elections). She and the NBCC president took the little pieces of paper away and tallied the vote. Invariably one or two books would get a lot of votes.

It was fascinating to see how a good argument could sway the vote. In nonfiction, there were several splendid books that could be categorized as science writing, and one of the board members, a science writer, spoke to just how good these authors were at making something difficult (translating science for the layman) look easy. One of those books, [Michael Pollan's] The Omnivore’s Dilemma, made the finalist list, and one, [D.T. Max's] The Family That Couldn’t Sleep, was a near miss.

It was also a reminder of the subjectivity of criticism. I was gratified to discover that the book editor of the Chicago Tribune agreed with me about one book’s limitations. I was non-plussed to learn that the TIME magazine book critic thought we had missed the point.

The combustible politics of our time complicated things. We are a politically diverse group, and we had to work hard to fairly evaluate the reporting, the writing and the organization of books about Iraq and the Middle East, even though we might not agree with the author’s conclusions.

I’m actually a bit disappointed. I’d always imagined any book award nomination process would involve a bunch of craggy old men, dressed in tweed jackets, sitting at a long table in a dark room, smoking Cuban cigars and carefully reading by candlelight.