Booker Shortlist Has Big Names But No Mitchell

Prizes
September 7, 2010 | 6 books mentioned 2

Related Books:

Well-known established writers like Peter Carey and Andrea Levy and up and coming author Tom McCarthy made the 2010 Booker shortlist, while David Mitchell, probably the best-known name on the longlist, failed to make the cut. The longlist was offered here with some excerpts a month ago, but since you might not have gotten around to them then, we’ll offer the same with the shortlist below.

Prizes

2007’s Literary Geniuses

Prizes
September 25, 2007 | 6 books mentioned 2

The annual MacArthur “Genius” Fellows have been named. This award gives people from diverse fields $500,000 with “no strings attached,” for “exceptional creativity, as demonstrated through a track record of significant achievement, and manifest promise for important future advances.” There are typically a handful of literary types among the scientists, artists, and musicians who become Fellows. This year, by my count, there are three.Stuart Dybek, as a highly regarded short story writer and novelist, is the best-known among them. When most people think of Dybek, they think of Chicago, where much of his writing is set. He’s also the writer in residence at nearby Northwestern University. I haven’t read any Dybek, but when I do, I’ll likely start with The Coast of Chicago or I Sailed with Magellan.Peter Cole is co-founder and co-editor of Ibis Editions, “a small press and non-profit organization founded in Jerusalem in 1998 and dedicated to the publication of Levant-related books of poetry and belletristic prose. The press publishes translations from Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, French, and the other languages of the region. New writing is published, though special attention is paid to overlooked works from the recent and distant past.” Among Cole’s more recent efforts is The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492Lynn Nottage is a Brooklyn-based playwright. According to the Hartford Courant, “Nottage is developing a workshop production at Chicago’s Goodman Theater of ‘Ruined,’ set in a mining town in the Congo rainforest. She recently workshopped another new play for the Roundabout Theatre Company in New York, an adaptation of slave narratives for the stage. She is also working on a children’s musical ‘Sweet Billy and the Zulus’ for the Philadelphia-based touring company, Colored Girl Productions.” Her most recently published plays are Intimate Apparel and Fabulation.

Prizes
| 6 books mentioned 2
● ● ●
Prizes

Swedish Poet Wins Nobel Prize

Prizes
October 6, 2011 | 6 books mentioned 10

Tomas Transtromer, the 80-year-old poet, became the first Swedish laureate since 1974. The Nobel committee gave Transtromer the award “because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality.” He is the first poet to take the $1.5 million prize since Polish poet Wisława Szymborska in 1996. The Associated Press called Transtromer a “perennial favorite,” and indeed he has ranked high in the betting odds in each of the last several years. The AP also noted that Transtromer suffered a stroke in 1990 that left him half-paralyzed but that he has continued to write. A number of collections of his poetry have been published in translation. Here are a few:

The Half-Finished Heaven: The Best Poems of Tomas Tranströmer
The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems
For The Living And The Dead
Truth Barriers
The Deleted World

Bonus Link: Solitude (I) by Tomas Tranströmer, translated by Robin Robertson

Prizes
| 6 books mentioned 10
● ● ●
Prizes

The Booker’s Dozen: The 2010 Booker Longlist

Prizes
July 27, 2010 | 6 books mentioned 10

With the unveiling of the Booker Prize longlist, the 2010 literary Prize season is officially underway. As is typically the case, the list offers a mix of exciting new names, relative unknowns and beloved standbys. The instant favorites to win for most readers will be David Mitchell, Peter Carey, and, though he is something of a newly minted literary superstar, Tom McCarthy. Several of the books named appeared on our “most anticipated” lists for the first and second halves of 2010.

All the Booker Prize longlisters are below (with excerpts where available):

Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey (excerpt)
Room by Emma Donoghue (excerpt)
The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore (excerpt)
In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut (excerpt)
The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson
The Long Song by Andrea Levy (excerpt)
C by Tom McCarthy
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (excerpt)
February by Lisa Moore (excerpt)
Skippy Dies by Paul Murray (excerpt)
Trespass by Rose Tremain (excerpt [scroll down])
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (excerpt)
The Stars in the Bright Sky by Alan Warner

Prizes
| 6 books mentioned 10
● ● ●

2 comments:

  1. Figures. If Thousand Autumns… had been nominated, it would not have won. David Mitchell got too popular too quickly, which turns off the people who make up these lists. You can also strike off Carey and Levy, the two most prominent names here — the winner will come from among the remaining four nominees.

  2. Tom B — Does the absence of Mitchell foretell that the same thing will happen when Franzen’s name pops up next year for his latest? All right by me. I’m only 20 or so pages into Thousand Autumns and am having trouble trying to pronounce the names of the myriad characters and keep up with who’s who. Hoping not to have to apply the Rule of 50.

Add Your Comment:

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

● ● ●
Prizes

2013 National Book Award Shortlists Released

Prizes
October 16, 2013 | 6 books mentioned 4 2 min read

The contenders for the 2013 National Book Award were pared down to a five nominees in each category today. Winners will be announced in New York City on November 20.

Fans of Jhumpa Lahiri will be excited to know that after missing out on yesterday’s Man Booker Prize, the Lowland author is still squarely in the running for the National Book Award. Of course, in order to attain the honor she’s going to have to beat out former Millions Top Ten member George Saunders and Millions favorite Rachel Kushner – as well as previous NBA winner Thomas Pynchon. On the nonfiction list, Millions readers should recognize George Packer’s The Unwinding, which Chris Barsanti called an “awe-inspiring X-Ray of the modern American soul.”

At the final awards ceremony on November 20, each finalist will receive $1,000, and each winner will receive an additional $10,000. Additional awards will also be goven to E.L. Doctorow and Maya Angelou, who will be receiving the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and the Literarian Award for Outstanding Contribution to the American Literary Community, respectively. The National Book Foundation has also announced that free e-books will be released containing excerpts from each of the works on the shortlist. (We’ll have more on that when it’s available.) Edit: The new e-books are now available for the Fiction Finalists, Nonfiction Finalists, Poetry Finalists, and Young People’s Literature Finalists. (E-books for other platforms are available here.)

Here’s a list of the finalists in all four categories with bonus links and excerpts where available:

Fiction:

The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner (Millions review, Millions interview)
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri (excerpt)
The Good Lord Bird by James McBride (excerpt)
Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon (first page, excerpt)
Tenth of December by George Saunders (Millions review)

Nonfiction:

Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin by Jill Lepore (review)
Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields by Wendy Lower
The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer (Millions review)
The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772–1832 by Alan Taylor (review)
Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, & the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright (review, excerpt)

Poetry:

Metaphysical Dog by Frank Bidart (review)
Stay, Illusion by Lucie Brock-Broido (review)
The Big Smoke by Adrian Matejka (excerpt)
Black Aperture by Matt Rasmussen
Incarnadine by Mary Szybist (review)

Young People’s Literature:

The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp by Kathi Appelt (review)
The Thing About Luck by Cynthia Kadohata (review)
Far Far Away by Tom McNeal
Picture Me Gone by Meg Rosoff
Boxers and Saints by Gene Luen Yang (review)

Prizes
| 6 books mentioned 4 2 min read
● ●