It's good to be reminded, amid the dismal reviews his latest novel is receiving, how amazing Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children is — and so it should come to no surprise to anyone that he was just given the Best of the Booker Award, awarded to the public's favorite novel to win the Man Booker Prize in the award's first 40 years. Rushdie beat out the rest of the short list — Pat Barker's The Ghost Road, Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda, J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace, J.G. Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur, and Nadine Gordimer's The Conservationist. We guess maybe he shouldn't give up writing for his budding acting career quite yet.

Midnight’s Children wins Best of the Booker [Man Booker Prize]