In all the hoo-ha about this year's Nobel Peace Prize, I've been thinking about my now-standard annoyance at the Nobel Prize for Literature. I'm astounded that someone like JM Coetzee could win it, yet writers who've actually made a real contribution to human culture haven't.
I'm talking about people like Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco, Chinua Achebe, Bertolt Brecht, Philip Roth.
I'm not alone. Great Book Guide have a wonderful list up of "alternate" Nobel Literature laureates, listing the real winners alongside the should've-been winners. (They include Bob Dylan. Brilliant!)
Maybe we'll have a similar Alternate Peace Prize list up sometime.