Stephen King recently accepted his honors from the National Book Awards by "grabb[ing] the audience by the lapel early with a speech that spared nothing."

He "called the crowd to arms by asking them to read more genre books. 'Peter Straub,' he said, 'has just written what is one of the best books of his career. Have you read it? Have any of the judges read it?' He ticked off a number of other authors he thought were underappreciated, such as Dennis Lehane and Michael Connelly, and urged both publishers and prize-givers to pay more attention to them. 'Tokenism is not allowed,' he said."

Bravo, Mr. King!