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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Digging into the 2012 IMPAC Longlist

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November 8, 2011 | 15 books mentioned 2 min read

The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award has unveiled its massive 2012 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 147 novels on the list, nominated by 122 libraries in 45 countries. All of the books must have been published in English in 2010 (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 proclivities 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.

Room by Emma Donoghue (20 libraries representing Australia, England, France, Ireland, the Maldives, New Zealand, and the United States)

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (13 libraries representing Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the United States)

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (12 libraries representing Canada, England, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, and the United States)

To the End of the Land by David Grossman (10 libraries representing Brazil, Canada, Germany, and the United States)

Purge by Sofi Oksanen (8 libraries representing Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and Switzerland)

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes (7 libraries representing the Czech Republic, Ireland, the Netherlands, 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, Annabel by Kathleen Winter

In Germany, Fame by Daniel Kehlmann

In Ireland, Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

In the Netherlands, Counterpoint by Anna Enquist and The Book Club by Marjolijn Februari

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

From Bermuda, Gorée: Point of Departure by Angela Barry

From Cyprus, A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible by Christy Lefteri

From Hungary, One Amazing Thing by Chitra Divakaruni

From India, Serious Men by Manu Joseph

From Japan, The Book of Heroes by Miyuki Miyabe

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Book Critics’ Nominees Unveiled

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January 22, 2007 | 15 books mentioned 2 min read

The National Book Critics Circle announced the nominees for its annual best of the year awards over the weekend. Ed has stepped up to call the fiction selections in particular “safer than a dinner for four at the Olive Garden.” The relative safety of the books aside, my understanding was that this award was meant to be given to the books that the nation’s critics believe are of the highest quality, regardless of how well known or how obscure they are.While it might have been more interesting to for us to discuss five relatively unknown and incredibly challenging novels, I think that such a slate would have been intellectually dishonest when the critics are charged with picking the books they think are the best. Let us not forget 2004, when the five National Book Award nominees in fiction were basically unknowns across the board. The people behind the Award that year were roundly derided for their selections and those nominees were anything but safe. In that case, and in looking at this year’s NBCC nominees, I would suggest that we debate the books’ quality rather than whether they are too “predictable,” which strikes me as an even more slippery qualifier.For more on how the NBCC makes its picks, check out TEV’s interview with NBCC president John Freeman. Here are this year’s nominees in fiction and nonfiction along with excerpts where available (nominees in other categories can be found at the NBCC site):Fiction:Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (excerpt, an Emerging Writers best of the year)The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai (excerpt)What is the What by Dave Eggers (excerpt, Garth’s review)The Lay of the Land by Richard Ford (excerpt, Noah’s review)The Road by Cormac McCarthyNonfiction:The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq by Patrick Cockburn (One of Cockburn’s Iraq diaries in the LRB)The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe V. Wade by Anne Fessler (NYT review)The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan (Patrick’s review)Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution by Simon Schama (excerpt)The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan (excerpt)

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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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The Madness Approaches

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February 22, 2007 | 15 books mentioned

All sorts of madness is coming in March. Of course, there is the basketball sort, of which it appears my long beleaguered alma mater may finally be taking part (go Wahoos!)But more cogent to this blog and its readers, the literary world’s more refined yet no less raucous brand of madness is on its way, The Morning News 2007 Tournament of Books. If you aren’t familiar, here’s how it works: the TMN editors pick a bunch of books from the past year or so and align them in a bracket, tournament style. However, instead of having these books hash it out on a basketball court, which wouldn’t make much sense, TMN assigns each pair of books to a prominent blogger or reviewer or literary type, who then picks which one goes through to the next round.Why does TMN do this? Well, tournament commissioner Kevin Guilfoile explains it thusly in this year’s introductory essay:Exchanging emails with the TMN editors after a few glasses of Argentinean Malbec, we each confessed that we’re attracted to the sexiness of book awards despite the fact that book awards are also arbitrary and stupid.And so the Tourney was born. Just like with that other tournament, the brackets aren’t out yet, but several candidates have been named, among them a few books that have been reviewed here at The Millions, including Against the Day, which was reviewed by Garth, The Lay of the Land, which was reviewed by Noah, and Kate Atkinson’s One Good Turn, which I wrote about a few months back.Also, at the bottom of that introductory essay, readers can vote to pick which books should be included in the “Readers’ Favorites round.”

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