As a reader recently noted, there are now so many major awards being announced that it is often difficult to keep track. Tomorrow at 2:00 PM EST, this year’s National Book Award finalists will be announced. If we had to hazard a guess, we believe Louise Erdrich’s The Painted Drum will be one of the finalists. Of course, the truly distressing part of tomorrow’s nominations is that they will be announced by John Grisham. Which is a bit like inviting someone as crass and as obnoxious as Gilbert Gottfried to be the keynote speaker at an Evelyn Waugh conference.