My blog post here on the Coyotes Network on my books and bookstores binge of 2013 is on a list of 50 nominees for the Arts and Literature Prize 2014 at 3 Quarks Daily, a great place on the internet to find good stuff worth reading. Check out the list of posts on the 3QD website here. Over the next week (till June 9), the posts will remain open for public voting from this page. My post is a ways down in the alphabetical list (#46. View from Elephant Hills: Trophies 101: a year of books and bookstores).

Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, is the judge for the prize. I don’t know if my post is going to make the shortlist, but if it does, how nice to think that Mohsin Hamid would be reading it, too. I had read The Reluctant Fundamentalist on my previous book-reading binge during 2011. It was one of the 100 books I read that year, and was a strangely appropriate and compelling read because I read it just a week before the tenth anniversary of 9/11. I did not read any books by Mohsin Hamid in 2013, but one of the books I bought at The English Bookshop, carried a double recommendation: one from the proprietor, Liesl Olivier, and one from Mohsin Hamid, who wrote the foreword. The book, Sostiene Pereira, which I read in English translation, Pereira Maintains, is sheer pleasure to read anytime.

Anyway, do check out the 3QD page for there is a bunch of nice posts there. Happy reading!