The Nibbies

The Nibbies are the U.K.’s answer to the U.S.’s Oscars, except The Nibbies are given to books, not movies. The actual name is the British Book Awards. This year, Americans took two honors.

President Barak Obama’s memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” was declared the Tesco Biography of the Year.

Obama was also in the running for Borders Author of the Year, but lost to Aravind Adiga, who wrote “The White Tiger.”

Stephenie Meyer won the WHSmith Children’s Book of the Year for “Breaking Dawn,” the latest installment in her best-selling series about the trials of a teenage girl who falls for the charms of a vampire.

Other winning authors included Michael Palin, who walked away with the Outstanding Achievement Award, and Sebastian Faulks, who collected the Sainsbury’s Popular Fiction Award for his James Bond takeoff, “Devil May Care.”

Stieg Larsson, the late Swedish author, won the Books Direct Crime Thriller of the Year award with “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

Tom Rob Smith became the Waterstone’s New Writer of the Year for his best-selling debut, “Child 44,” the story of a child-killing serial murderer in Stalinist Russia.

“The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher,” Kate Summerscale’s real- life whodunit about an 1860 country-house murder, captured both the Play.com Popular Non-Fiction Award and top award, the Galaxy Book of the Year.

Congrats to all.

(To read a full write-up on the big event and to find out why they awards are called The Nibbies, check out the article in Bloomberg.)