Count best-selling novelist James Patterson among the admirers of the Washington Center for the Book at the Seattle Public Library. Count him an admirer to the sweet tune of $100,000.

That's the amount that the Florida writer will contribute to Center for the Book over the next four years, as it is the top winner of Patterson's second annual PageTurner Awards.

The awards, funded by the writer from his own pocket, honor organizations and individuals who spread the joy and excitement of books across the country.

"The Washington Center for the Book do what they do better than anyone else submitted for this year's awards," Patterson said this week from his home in Palm Beach. "The 'Seattle Reads' program and the Washington State Book Awards are both big to me. But the primary reason they won the top award is that they are so good at getting authors there; it's really important they do such a good job locally."

The Center for the Book was the sole winner of a $100,000 Page Turner Award; there were four winners of $50,000, six of $10,000 and 26 of $5,000. Among the $50,000 winners was 826 National, the San Francisco-based program of youth writing centers founded by best-selling author Dave Eggers; it includes an outpost in Greenwood -- 826 Seattle.

That a fifth of Patterson's half-million dollars in PageTurner money goes to the Center for the Book is just the latest honor for the program that originated the notion of an entire community reading and discussing a single book. That "Seattle Reads" program has now been copied in about 500 cities, towns, counties, campuses and countries.

Patterson's PageTurner Award was a complete shocker to Chris Higashi, the program manager of the Center of the Book, who has run its programs since the departure of uber-librarian Nancy Pearl.

The center owes its continued existence to government and foundation grants that usually require exhaustive applications.

"This Patterson award came out of the blue," Higashi said Wednesday. "That's why when the award call came, I was sort of flabbergasted. This is a huge thrill and honor for us. And it comes with no strings attached -- a true gift."

Higashi estimates that the center's direct programming costs are about $100,000 a year, so Patterson's award will cover roughly one-quarter of those expenses over the next four years.

That should help continue the "Seattle Reads" program, which resumes May 14-15 when the featured book will be Jhumpa Lahiri's acclaimed novel, "The Namesake." A much-anticipated feature film version of the novel is scheduled for release March 16.

The 59-year-old Patterson is a mega-selling colossus whose books sold more than 12 million copies in North America during the past year. His work has sold an astonishing 130 million copies worldwide.

Among Patterson's popular detective series are those featuring Alex Cross ("Kiss the Girls") and Lindsay Cross ("The 5th Horseman"). Patterson has even written a book for children ("Maximum Ride") that made him the first author to have No. 1 best-sellers for adults and children simultaneously on The New York Times' list.

But the writer was not much of a reader in his own early years. That was one of his motivations for starting the PageTurner Awards.

As he explained, "I was a very good high school student, but I didn't like to read. Then while I was working in college, I started reading like crazy. It was tremendously stimulating, and I was reading serious stuff, not junk like I write. It just struck me, at some point, that there were a lot of people doing terrific things to spread the joy about reading books, and there ought to be some way to honor them."

It took a couple of years to set up the program, which largely relies on recommendations from booksellers and librarians. Patterson and a handful of people pick the final winners from several hundred nominees.

Patterson funded the inaugural awards in 2006 with $100,000. He increased that to $500,000 this year. As he emphasized, "What I liked about the first year was that it drew attention to those who got the awards and helped them get more volunteers."

Additional information on the awards can be found at www.pattersonpageturner.org.