2013 National Book Award Shortlists Released

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October 16, 2013 | 15 books mentioned 4 2 min read

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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:

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Nonfiction:

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Poetry:

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Young People’s Literature:

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This is the byline used for site announcements and for articles by more than one Millions contributor.

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2011 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalists Announced

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January 21, 2012 | 15 books mentioned 2

The finalists for the annual National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Award have been announced. The fiction list includes one of the biggest fiction releases of last year, but all five of the finalists got a fair amount of ink. No huge surprises. In fact, as we’ve noted in the past, the NBCC seems to do a better job of catching the zeitgeist than other major prizes like the National Book Award and the Booker, which like to play kingmaker by annointing less well known titles. Here are the finalists for fiction and non-fiction with excerpts and other links where available. As a side note, the NBCC award is particularly interesting in that it is one of the few major awards that pits American books against overseas (usually British) books.

Fiction

Teju Cole, Open City (our review, excerpt)
Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot (How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Write The Marriage Plot, our review, excerpt [pdf])
Alan Hollinghurst, The Stranger’s Child (our review, The Millions Interview: Alan Hollinghurst Answers his Critics, excerpt)
Edith Pearlman, Binocular Vision (excerpt)
Dana Spiotta, Stone Arabia (our review, excerpt)

Nonfiction

Amanda Foreman, A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War (excerpt)
James Gleick, The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (Ben Marcus on The Information, excerpt)
Adam Hochschild, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 (excerpt)
Maya Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary War (excerpt)
John Jeremiah Sullivan, Pulphead (Staff Pick, excerpt [pdf])

For more on the NBCC Awards and the finalists in the other categories, visit the NBCC.

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4 comments:

  1. Strong list in fiction, but personally I think it’s an epic fail that THE WOMAN WHO LOST HER SOUL by Bob Shacochis isn’t included. That is one fantastic, important and relevant novel….

  2. I haven’t read any of these books or these authors but I would like to. Thanks for sharing, I have been wanting to read Lahiri’s novels for awhile.

  3. I only read George Saunders’ Tenth of December from this list. I don’t recall any of the stories really gripping me the way that a short story by Flannery O’ Connor would grip me and stay with me forever. Saunders is an interesting fellow, writing from the have nots perspective and the minds of corporate middle managers. This is a useful and relevant perspective today, and a much needed Point of View. He made an interesting graduation speech at a University I cannot recall, much in the same vein as David Foster Wallace’s graduation speech. I’m a fan of Pynchon, but reluctant to read the Bleeding Edge until I make my way through Against the Day and Mason & Dixon, which keep getting pushed to the middle of my reading queue. I’ve never read Jhumpa Lahiri and don’t think that I ever will because I don’t care about the experiences of Indians trying to assimilate in the West. This list overall, seems frightfully tame.

  4. Pingback: The TBR List: October 18 | PAPER/PLATES

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Digging into the 2013 IMPAC Longlist

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November 13, 2012 | 15 books mentioned 1 2 min read

The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award has unveiled its massive 2013 longlist. Recall that libraries around the world can nominate books for the prize, and these nominations, taken together, comprise the longlist. This year there are 154 novels on the list, nominated by 120 libraries in 44 countries. All of the books must have been published in English in 2011 (including translations).

Because of the award’s global reach and egalitarian process, it’s always interesting to dig deeper into the longlist. Taken as a whole, the literary tendencies of various countries become evident, and a few titles recur again and again, revealing which books have made a global impact on readers.

Overall favorites: books that were nominated by at least seven libraries.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes (15 libraries representing Australia, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, England, Germany, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the United States)

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach (9 libraries representing Belgium and the United States)

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt (9 libraries representing Canada, Ireland, and the United States)

The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht (9 libraries representing Austria, Ireland, Norway, and the United States)

The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje (7 libraries representing Belgium, Canada, and the United States)

The Stranger’s Child by Alan Hollinghurst (7 libraries representing Belgium, the Czech Republic, England, Greece, New Zealand, Russia, and the United States)

You can also look at the list and see which books are favorites in different countries. Several books were nominated by multiple libraries in the same country. Here’s a few:

In Canada, Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan

In Australia, Autumn Laing by Alex Miller

In New Zealand, The Conductor by Sarah Quigley

In the Netherlands, Julia by Otto de Kat, The Book of Doubt by Tessa de Loo, and Caesarion by Tommy Wieringa

There were also several countries with only one library nominating just one or two books. Here are a few of those:

From Iceland, The Map of Time by Félix J. Palma

From India, The Sly Company of People Who Care by Rahul Bhattacharya

From Jamaica, The Goat Woman of Largo Bay by Gillian Royes

From Mexico, My Two Worlds by Sergio Chejfec

From Sweden, The Dewey Decimal System by Nathan Larson

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| 15 books mentioned 1 2 min read
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