But in this case it’s the all-important Whitbread. This week’s winners:

Novel: Ali Smith, The Accidental
First Novel: Tash Aw, The Harmony Silk Factory
Poetry: Christopher Logue, Cold Calls
Children’s Book: Kate Thompson, The New Policeman
Biography: Hilary Spurling, Matisse the Master

We’re still working on Segundo #17. Yes, we made a pledge to you yesterday and we broke it (hanging heads down low). But there were some unexpected ambient noise issues and since we are quite anal about tweaking audio and we don’t like the nice people who appear on the show sounding as if they’re talking into a tin can, the attention was needed. However, last night, we slept about six hours, which was more zees than we’ve had in some weeks (at least in one sitting). And it was too good an opportunity to pass up. Bear with us. We’re dancing as fast as we can.

Okay, the holidays have made us extremely lazy and we really have very little to say that might be construed as witty and/or urbane. Like our homeboy Golden Rule Jones, we suspect we’ve gone over the deep end and, if it keeps up like this, we may start consorting with top ten kvetchers who know their stuff and aren’t afraid to flaunt it. Perhaps all this was because the coffeehouse was inordinately packed yesterday and we grew slightly claustrophobic typing meaningless nonsense into our laptop on a small round table. And instead of concentrating upon the work at hand, we then started writing about the attractive young lady who was sitting near us. The text became Byronic and slightly provocative. (I’m sure you’ve experienced this.) This was when we had to stop writing, and we deleted the file and slammed the laptop shut. The streams of consciousness were crossed, so to speak. We then stared into our warm cup of green tea and imagined that we could detect its soothing smell (reminiscent of haiku) permeating from just outside, followed by a veritable tsunami of green tea flooding through the coffeehouse and soaking the sartorial garb of all, some of the folks producing rubber ducks and toy boats instead of being offended by the destruction, all this of course being personified in torrential size and undulations by our harmless thoughts. The laptop was then packed. And we proceeded to lie for a long while. Not bored. Just perplexed. Slightly fatigued. What was it that was turning us into such lazy asses? Then we dumped audio, did dishes, responded to a few emails that looked interesting, and began trying to prod the indolent individual who was probably reacting this way.

The point of all this:

1. We’re not going to bed tonight until we give you a new podcast. The conversation involves hypothesizing about violence.

2. The LBC is dormant, but will reawaken on January 15 with the new set of nominees and the winner. We have something extremely ambitious and special planned, which will be cross-posted here. As does the incredible Dan Wickett.

3. Because of our general inability to concentrate, posting will be light until we recover. Unless of course we are pushed over the edge (likely) by some ungodly literary topic. Should you wish to serve as a momentary muse, emails, of course, are welcome.

Janet Maslin, The New York Times: “‘Dog Days’ manages to be doubly conventional: it follows both an old-fashioned love-betrayal-redemption arc and the newer, bitchier nanny-Prada chick-lit motif. Melanie is a myopic and self-interested heroine by the standards of either genre. The reader will learn about Melanie’s expensive shoes, Melanie’s drinking, Melanie’s buying of groceries at drugstores, Melanie’s playing with sushi and Melanie’s first shirt with French cuffs. Then there are Melanie’s descriptions of cellphone noises, the Delta shuttle terminal and Washington’s byzantine parking laws. Throughout all this, the ‘Berry’ – a word used as both a noun and a verb – is never more than a pesty ping away.”

USA Today: “The novel has a stripped-down story line and limited character development. The plot is predictable and matter-of-fact. But it does have a blunt, albeit tawdry, honesty.”

Publishers Weekly: “Fans of Wonkette’s wit will find themselves better served by her blog.”

The Book Standard: “[R]eaders hoping for some real-life dirt (or at least a salacious facsimile) will be dealt nothing more than lightweight fluff and throwaway farce.”

Okay, so I’m deliberately discounting the fact that I finished up the two last-minute LBC reads over the long weekend. (You’ll unearth the results of that very soon.)

In the meantime:

Book #1: Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent. Vincent disguises herself as a man, infiltrating male support groups, strip clubs, bowling alleys and monasteries (!) to try and understand masculinity. Now admittedly this is the kind of quasi-anthropological stunt that I’m interested in, particularly since I’m very interested in gender perceptions (likely due to being situated in San Francisco and counting a transgender individual as a friend, but that’s another story). But Black Like Me this ain’t. Vincent’s conclusions are neither terribly groundbreaking, nor are they entirely persuasive. She’s at her best when she’s investigating love and sex, but when it comes to supposed “earth-shattering” conclusions that men enjoy the cruel power of Glengarry Glen Ross-style balls-busting vocations and are capable of being emotionally sensitive too, this isn’t really news at all (and it actually doesn’t tell the whole story of masculinity). And it stops short of the kind of penetrating insight that I had hoped for. Vincent hints at a major emotional divide that separates the two genders, a folkway concerning the expression of sentimentality that seems to lock current gender roles in place, but she fails to offer a constructive analysis of why this exists — all this despite a philosophical background. In the end, Self-Made Man comes across as an entertaining stunt, but hardly the kind of soul-searching implied by the title.