Photo: Beowulf Sheehan “For a bunch of writers, you’re pretty sedate,” host Padma Lakshmi joked at the 73rd National Book Awards, which were held in person after two years of virtual ceremonies. Book people manage to keep things an appropriate amount of cheerful, not that the event, or current publishing world, was sleepy at all. Earlier in the day, PEN America published an open letter and spreadsheet tracking book bans in Missouri triggered by a state senate bill 775, which bars schools from giving students books that contain sexual content, a wide and vaguely defined enough net to catch The...