We Consider the Best of Larryville Award Winners / The LC's Book Club: The Tiger's Wife

If there were a Best of Lawrence award for the longest and most drawn out poll, the Best of Lawrence awards would easily win. After months of compiling every possible nominee for every category and months of counting votes, the nominees have finally begun to appear (with winners being rolled out hourly on L.com throughout the day and, yes, we are riveted).

Here are a few of the early highlights.

Unsurprisingly, 715 takes the Best New Restaurant category. 715 is known for its fried bologna, butchery dinners, endless variety of fluffy-bunny dishes, and cheap High Life cans. What's not to love?

The Tap Room won out over The Cave and Abe and Jake's as Best Place to Dance.

Chip: "Obviously, college students did not vote for these awards. Who in their right minds would rather dance to obscure funk with sweaty hipsters than grind with the coeds at Abe and Jake's? Mind boggling."

And in perhaps the biggest upset of the day, the hipster kitties at Love Garden were defeated in the Best Store cat award by Stanley, the cat down at Sunflower Outdoor and Bike. Those Love Garden cats are going to need to drown their sorrows in an extra saucer-full of Hamm's tonight.


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Just when we thought no one could ever possibly write a greater novel than Franzen's Freedom, along comes Tea Obreht, 25, whose debut The Tiger's Wife is earning rave reviews: "every novel that comes after it this year is in peril of falling short in comparison with its uncanny beauty" (Time). We'll be reading Obreht's tale of a "wayward zoo tiger" and "the man whose life's path was formed by the tragic beast" very soon, but in the meantime Obreht moves to the top of our "authors we want to bone" list."

Chip: "Move over, Joyce Carol Oates."

















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Our scenester pick of the day is Seattle band The Head and the Heart at the Jackpot tonight. Are Seattle bands still hip? Who knows, but we like their album cover, which we find strangely terrifying.