Merry Christmas and a New Year of good reading to all our bloggers!
Every year the residents of Waverton make an award to the best British debut novel published in the previous 12 months. 68 novels were submitted for the 2012/13 award and more than 90 for the current 2013/14 award. Full details can be found at www.wavertongoodread.org.uk
Readers write comments on the books and mark them on a scale from 0 to 10. However they do not have an easy way of exchanging comments so we have started this blog to share our thoughts on each year’s books.
Please add your comments: first click on one of the menu items above (or here) – either COMMENT ON THE BOOK YOU ARE READING or COMMENT ON THE GOOD READ ITSELF
WGRA blog 
Great news that Nathan Filer has won the First Novel Costa Award. He was so entertaining when he spoke to us in November – let’s hope he wins the overall Costa award (Book of the Year, from among the five class winners) in due course.
I was saddened to hear of the death of Paul Torday today. Paul is the first of our winners to die. He was a most charming man, and I fear that he might have already known his fate when he came to the dinner to receive his award. Thanks for Salmon Fishing, and perhaps I should now read some of his subsequent novels.
It is very difficult to agree on what a mark of zero or a mark of ten should mean. My own scale starts with a zero for a book which I cannot finish because it is extremely badly written, moves through 5 or 6 for one which is well written but not to my taste, and ends with ten for a book which is well crafted and both gripped me and taught me something new. What are your criteria?