Judging Book Awards

If like me, you've ever wondered how a judge can read all the books eligible for an award then a paragraph in Kate Muir's latest column in The Times reveals how one person did it (or not in fact):

Indeed, it turns out that even people judging book prizes don’t read. I talked to someone who judged one of our grander prizes last year and he said: “Of course you don’t have time. You tip the boxes of books out on the floor, put the names you know in a pile, and then you do the first-and-last chapter test on the rest. You only really read the shortlist. We have day jobs too, you know.”