Lit Mag Announces Nominees For Year's Worst Sex Scenes In Literature

Via Huffington Post Books: 

The Literary Review has announced its list of nominees for the prestigious (and divisive) Bad Sex in Literature award. 

Each year, the UK-based magazine celebrates the most poorly-written sex scenes in literature outside of straight-up porn and erotica. And they're not worried about alienating the high-minded literary types, either. Past nominees have included Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, and Jonathan Franzen. Among this year's nominees are Haruki Murakami, Stephen King, and Lee Child. 

"In a year in which literary awards have come under fire for parochialism and dumbing-down, Literary Review is proud to uphold and recognize literary excellence from around the world," the Literary Review said. "Authors in the running hail from, among other nations, the USA, Hungary, Japan, and Australia. Two are annually mentioned in the same breath as the Nobel Prize."

Here's the full list of nominees:

• 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
• On Canaan’s Side by Sebastian Barry
• The Final Testament of the Holy Bible by James Frey
• Parallel Stories by Péter Nádas
• 11.22.63 by Stephen King
• Ed King by David Guterson
• The Land of Painted Caves by Jean M. Auel
• The Affair by Lee Child
• Dead Europe by Christos Tsiolkas
• Outside the Ordinary World by Dori Ostermiller
• Everything Beautiful Began After by Simon Van Booy
• The Great Night by Chris Adrian

This year's winner will be announced on Dec. 6 at the Naval & Military Club in London.

In case you're curious, The Huffington Post has a couple of choice excerpts from the nominees, but my favorite, by a mile, is from Guterson:

In the shower, Ed stood with his hands at the back of his head, like someone just arrested, while she abused him with a bar of soap.

The more I think about it, the funnier it gets.