Inspiration: award winner

One of the fun things about reading award-winning books is that they've already been vetted for you - a committee decided it was good! You're always allowed to disagree, but at least somebody thinks it's a good book, and that's never a bad jumping-off point.

I promise that no matter what you enjoy reading, there's an award for it: literature, romance, fiction, poetry, sci-fi, teen book, kid's lit, horror, and on and on. Here are a few links to the sites for various awards:

• Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction
• Nobel Prize for Literature
• Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction and Nonfiction and Biography and Poetry
• Hugo Awards for science fiction, horror and fantasy
• Man Booker Prize for Fiction
• National Book Awards for fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people's literature
• Caldecott Medal for picture books
• Newbery Medals for children's literature
• YALSA's awards for teen literature
• Odyssey Award for audiobook produced for children/young adults
• Sibert Medal for children's nonfiction
• Stonewall Book Award for juvenile books relating to the GLBT experience
• Edgar Awards for mystery 
• National Book Critics Circle Awards for fiction, nonfiction, biography, autobiography and criticism
• PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
• Costa Book Awards for first novel, novel, biography, poetry, and children's book in the UK and Ireland

and then I decided maybe I'd just give you the list on Wikipedia of world literary awards because this is so much fun to browse and look for inspiration!

Have you ever read an award-winning book and thought it was total crap? Tell us about it in the comments!