National Book Critics Circle Award Finalists Named

My goodness, all these awards are making me dizzy. On the heels of the Oscar nominations (Revolutionary Road, by the by, was robbed! Benjamin Button can kiss my furry snarkbutt), the National Book Critics Circle Award (NBCC) finalists have been announced.

The NBCC was founded in 1974 at the famed Algonquin and is comprised of 700 active book reviewers. Not surprisingly, I am not a member.

Past winners include Junot Diaz (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao), Ian McEwan (Atonement), Philip Roth (The Counterlife and Patrimony: A Love Story), Toni Morrison (Song of Solomon), and Mark Doty (My Alexandria).

Here are this year’s nominees.

Fiction Finalists
Roberto Bolaño, 2666. (Farrar, Straus)
Marilynne Robinson, Home (Farrar, Straus)
Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project (Riverhead)
M. Glenn Taylor, The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart (West Virginia University Press)
Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kittredge (Random)

Poetry Finalists
August Kleinzahler, Sleeping It Off in Rapid City (Farrar, Strauss)
Juan Felipe Herrera, Half the World in Light (University of Arizona Press)
Devin Johnston, Sources (Turtle Point Press)
Pierre Martory (translated by John Ashbery), The Landscapist (Sheep Meadow Press)
Brenda Shaughnessy, Human Dark with Sugar (Copper Canyon Press)

Criticism Finalists
Richard Brody, Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life Of Jean-Luc Godard (Metropolitan Books)
Vivian Gornick, The Men in My Life (Boston Review/MIT)
Joel L. Kraemer, Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization’s Greatest Minds (Doubleday)
Reginald Shepherd, Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry (University of Michigan Press)
Seth Lerer, Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History: Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter (University of Chicago Press)

Biography Finalists
Paula J. Giddings, Ida, A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching (Amistad)
Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family In An American Century (Penguin Press)
Patrick. French, The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul (Knopf)
Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (Norton)
Brenda Wineapple, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson & Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Knopf)

Autobiography Finalists
Rick Bass, Why I Came West (Houghton Mifflin)
Helene Cooper, The House On Sugar Beach (Simon and Schuster)
Honor Moore, The Bishop’s Daughter (WW Norton)
Andrew X. Pham, The Eaves Of Heaven (Harmony Books)
Ariel Sabar, My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq (Algonquin)

Nonfiction Finalists
Dexter Filkins, The Forever War (Knopf)
Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the Civil War (Knopf)
Jane Mayer, The Dark Side (Doubleday)
Allan Lichtman, White Protestant Nation (Atlantic)
George C. Herring, From Colony to Superpower: US Foreign Relations Since 1776 (Oxford University Press)

Balakian Finalists (for excellence in reviewing)
Michael Antman
Ron Charles (winner)
Kathryn Harrison
Laila Lalami
Todd Shy

This year’s winner of the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award is the Pen American Center.

 

Story Source  NBCC  |  Image Source  Discovery Education

January 26, 2009 | Filed Under Eyes on the Prize | Leave a Comment 

Edgar Nominees Announced

Each year, the Mystery Writers of America hold the Edgar Allan Poe Awards, celebrating the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction, television, and film from the previous publishing year. On Friday, the group announced their 2009 nominees.

Best Novel Nominees

  • Missing by Karin Alvtegen (Felony & Mayhem Press)
  • Blue Heaven by C.J. Box (St. Martin’s Minotaur)
  • Sins of the Assassin by Robert Ferrigno (Simon & Schuster - Scribner)
  • The Price of Blood by Declan Hughes (HarperCollins – William Morrow)
  • The Night Following by Morag Joss (Random House – Delacorte Press)
  • Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz (Simon & Schuster)
Best First Novel by an American Author
  • The Kind One by Tom Epperson (Five Star, div of Cengage)
  • Sweetsmoke by David Fuller (Hyperion)
  • The Foreigner by Francie Lin (Picador)
  • Calumet City by Charlie Newton (Simon & Schuster - Touchstone)
  • A Cure for Night by Justin Peacock (Random House - Doubleday)

Best Paperback Original

  • The Prince of Bagram Prison by Alex Carr (Random House Trade)
  • Money Shot by Christa Faust (Hard Case Crime)
  • Enemy Combatant by Ed Gaffney (Random House - Dell)
  • China Lake by Meg Gardiner (New American Library – Obsidian Mysteries)
  • The Cold Spot by Tom Piccirilli (Random House - Bantam)

Best Critical/Biographical

  • African American Mystery Writers: A Historical and Thematic Study by Frankie Y. Bailey (McFarland & Company)
  • Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories by Leonard Cassuto (Columbia University Press)
  • Scene of the Crime: The Importance of Place in Crime and Mystery Fiction by David Geherin (McFarland & Company)
  • The Rise of True Crime by Jean Murley (Greenwood Publishing – Praeger)
  • Edgar Allan Poe: An Illustrated Companion to His Tell-Tale Stories by Dr. Harry Lee Poe (Sterling Publishing – Metro Books)

There are several other categories, all of which can be viewed at The Edgars website.

The winners will be announced on April 30 at the Grand Hyatt in New York City. James Lee Burke and the awesome Sue Grafton will be Grand Masters of the ceremony.

 

Story Source  The Edgars  |  Image Source  about.com

January 19, 2009 | Filed Under Eyes on the Prize | Leave a Comment 

Pimp My [Book] Ride

Unshelved has chosen its picks for their 2008 contest, Pimp My Bookcart. The competition, sponsored by Smith System, encouraged any institutions that utilized the almighty book cart to deck out the rolling shelving units and enter the running. The contest received over 100 submissions this year from places all around the globe — schools, libraries, bookstores, even a jail. 

First prize was awarded to the pimpiest bookcart, Food for Thought, by Student Employees of Columbia University Library. They expanded on the hot dog vendor theme to create a unique literary transporter that looked like Oscar Mayer-on-wheels, but was actually loaded with delicious books. Good on you, Student Employees of Columbia University Library!

Second Prize went to Phoenix Rising by Harlem High School Welding 3. These ingenious students transformed a boring old bookcart into a pretty impressive miniature firetruck. Also notable is the expandable ladder on top of the cart, which has a cherry picker-like bucket on the end — complete with a stuffed, and presumably freshly-rescued, cat.

There was also a Kid’s Special Prize, as well as a whole slew of runners-up. My personal favorite is Joad’s Jalopy, by the Briargate Branch of Pikes Peak Library District. The entry, inspired by Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, is a bookcart pimped out to look like an old-fashioned whitetrashmobile. Yee-haw!

Visit Unshelved to see photos of all the big winners.

 

Story Source  Unshelved  |  Image Source  Bookcases Galore

November 26, 2008 | Filed Under Eyes on the Prize | 1 Comment 

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