So much overdue work is piling up on my desk there is only one thing to do. Open the blinds to see the snow and procrastinate by blogging a news round-up. The American Library Association have awarded the Newbery Medal for the best book for young readers to The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. Already a best-seller, The Graveyard Book tells of an abandoned child called Nobody, who is raised by ghosts.  On Gaiman’s blog, he writes of his somewhat befumbled and sleepy reception of the good news. While on the subject of prizes, the National Book Critic Circle Award nominees have been announced and the fiction list includes both the well-known such as 2666 by Robert Bolano and Home by Marilynne Robinson, and the up-and-coming such M. Glenn Taylor’s The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart and The Lazarus Project by Alexsander Hemon. My money is on the wonderful Olive Kitteredge by Elizabeth Strout, though it is dumb of me to say so considering I haven’t actually read all the nominees!