I am here talking with Harold Augenbraum, the Executive Director of the National Book Foundation.

Me: Who do you use instead of PricewaterhouseCoopers?

Augenbraum: DB Bistro Moderne. [HA has confused my question with the caterer, but this is also interesting and he is a convivial fellow.] One of the perks of being a judge is that they get to pick the restaurant they get to go to. They get $2,500 for six months’ worth of work. Fortunately, Per Se is not open for lunch.

The Almighty Five Bloggers now have their own table here. There was a last-minute pitstop to Best Buy, but we’re all ready to go. More meaningful journalism coming soon.

Denis Johnson, incidentally, isn’t here. He’s in Iraq. The first of many swipes against the good people here at the National Book Foundation. More to come.

As you may or may not know, five bloggers are employing various journalistic experiments tonight using an arsenal of technology — some of it theirs, some of it borrowed, some of it having no apparent origin of acquisition that we can trace — at least, not legitimately. But however successful or unsuccessful our efforts, we’ll be covering tonight’s National Book Awards as it happens (and sometimes after it happens).

The following bloggers will be there tonight:

Levi Asher
Jason Boog
Marydell
Sarah Weinman
Yours truly

So if you want to check out what’s happening tonight on these pages, keep refreshing this page. I’ll be putting up everything under the “National Book Awards” category, reporting impressions, observations, and being an all-around wiseacre. Plus, we’ll be getting up the winners as they are announced.

Stay tuned! It’s just like the Oscar Blog, except we’re actually going to have people attending the ceremonies!