And so, as the literary year heads into its final furlong, The Specsavers National Book Awards offers us one last chance to don a tux, sip some bubbly and judge the year's new books against one another.
Billing its self as the 'Oscars of the publishing industry', the NBAs is the anti-Booker, a shameless celebration of the year's biggest hits where a corporate sponsor props up each award and readability is king.
JK Rowling has been nominated for UK Author of the Year
Hence on today's newly-announced set of shortlists, 50 Shades Of Grey leads the race for Book of the Year, while in Non-Fiction Book of the Year, comedian Miranda Hart is up against James Bowen (the homeless man saved by a cat in his memoir A Street Cat Named Bob) and Caitlin Moran's great hits collection Moranthology (hoping to land the prize a second time in a row after How To Be A Woman won in 2011).
In 2011, Alan Hollinghurst's disappointment at not making the Booker shortlist for The Stranger's Child was tapered slightly when he won the UK Author of the Year Award - the most 'serious' gong at the NBAs.
This year Zadie Smith could be similarly vindicated for the Booker snub of her novel NW which has put her in the running alongside Booker winner Hilary Mantel (Bring Up The Bodies) and JK Rowling (The Casual Vacancy). That prize has also produced a potentially fascinating tussle between Smith and John Lanchester, whose book Capital was a similar (if far less subtle) stab at a state-of-the-nation novel set in London.
Elsewhere on the shortlists, literary heavyweights including Salman Rushdie and Laurent Binet rubs shoulders with celebrities like Clare Balding, David Walliams and Gok Wan.
Winners will be presented at a ceremony in London on Tuesday 4 December, except for the Book of the Year which will be put to a public vote and announced Tuesday 18 December
The shortlists in full:
UK Author of the Year sponsored by Waterstones:
- Capital by John Lanchester (Faber and Faber)
- Swimming Home by Deborah Levy (Faber and Faber)
- Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel (4th Estate)
- The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling (Little, Brown)
- NW by Zadie Smith (Hamish Hamilton)
Popular Fiction Book of the Year sponsored by Specsavers:
- 1356 by Bernard Cornwell (HarperCollins)
- The Thread by Victoria Hislop (Headline Review)
- The Rose Petal Beach by Dorothy Koomson (Quercus Books)
- Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James (Arrow)
- Citadel by Kate Mosse (Orion)
- Me Before You by JoJo Moyes (Michael Joseph)
Autobiography/Biography of the Year:
- My Animals and Other Family by Clare Balding (Viking Adult)
- Patrick Leigh Fermor by Artemis Cooper (John Murray)
- Back Story by David Mitchell (HarperCollins)
- Joseph Anton by Salman Rushdie (Jonathan Cape)
- Who I Am by Pete Townshend (HarperCollins)
- Camp David by David Walliams (Michael Joseph)
Crime Book of the Year available on iBookstore:
- A Wanted Man by Lee Child (Bantam Press)
- Kind of Cruel by Sophie Hannah (Hodder and Stoughton)
- A Question of Identity by Susan Hill (Chatto and Windus)
- The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz (Orion Fiction)
- Perfect People by Peter James (Pan)
- Gods and Beasts by Denise Mina (Orion)
Food & Drink Book of the Year sponsored by WHSmith:
- Mary Berry's Complete Cookbook by Mary Berry (DK)
- The Great British Bake Off: How to Turn Everyday Bakes into Showstoppers by Linda Collister (BBC Books)
- Hugh's Three Good Things by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (Bloomsbury)
- The Hairy Dieters by Si King & Dave Myers (Weidenfeld & Nicholson)
- Lorraine Pascale's Fast, Fresh and Easy Food by Lorraine Pascale (HarperCollins)
- Gok Cooks Chinese by Gok Wan (Michael Joseph)
International Author of the Year sponsored by Google Play™:
- HHhH by Laurent Binet (Harvill Secker)
- The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt (Granta)
- Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain (Canongate Books)
- The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey (Headline Review)
- Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (Allen Lane)
- The Dinner by Herman Koch (Atlantic)
Non-fiction Book of the Year sponsored by Magic 105.4 FM:
- A Street Cat Named Bob by James Bowen (Hodder and Stoughton)
- Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre (4th Estate)
- Is It Just Me by Miranda Hart (Hodder and Stoughton)
- Moranthology by Caitlin Moran (EburyPress)
- Brazil by Michael Palin (Weidenfeld & Nicholson)
- The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson (Picador)
- Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson (Vintage)
Children's Book of the Year sponsored by National Book Tokens:
- The Wolf Princess by Cathryn Constable (Chicken House)
- The Pirates Next Door by Jonny Duddle (Templar Publishing)
- Pirates Love Underpants by Claire Freedman and Ben Cort (Simon and Schuster)
- Itch by Simon Mayo (Doubleday Children's)
- Tom Gates: Genius Ideas (mostly) by Liz Pichon (Scholastic Children's Books)
- Ratburger by David Walliams (HarperCollins Children's)
Audiobook of the year sponsored by Audible.co.uk:
- Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel, read by Simon Slater (Whole Story Audiobooks)
- Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan, read by Juliet Stevenson (Random House Audiobooks)
- Casino Royale by Ian Fleming, read by Dan Stevens (AudioGO)
- Is It Just Me? by Miranda Hart, read by Miranda Hart (Hodder and Stoughton)
- The Killing by David Hewson, read by Christian Rodska (Macmillan Digital Audio)
- The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year by Sue Townsend, read by Caroline Quentin (Whole Story Audiobooks)
New Writer of the Year:
- The Heart-Shaped Bruise by Tanya Byrne (Headline)
- The Somnambulist by Essie Fox (Orion)
- The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce (Doubleday)
- The Land of Decoration by Grace McLeen (Chatto and Windus)
- The Lighthouse by Alison Moore (Salt Publishing)
- Care Of Wooden Floors by Will Wiles (4th Estate)
Last year's award-winning books:
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