As I stared at that first tranche of books, my overriding feeling was apprehension... awarding a prize with the power to transform literary history isn't a task to take lightly.
The reading was indeed relentless... I read every book... though I'll confess that in the interests of time I was grateful whenever I came across a short novel, or a terrible one.
What distinguished this reading experience was the edifying company I kept... reading with their voices in my head... made it more interrogative but also more sensitive.
Over the course of the year, what had always been an inherently private act began to feel deeply communal... we learned of Nitin's heart attack and emergency surgery.
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