ÀÏ»¢»úÎÈÓ®·½·¨

There are several places here to post book related news. Use which ever one strikes your fancy. This thread was created with announcements like awards et al in mind.

June 30, 2013

Richard Ford and Timothy Egan, winners of literary medals presented by the American Library Association, both credit libraries for making their work possible.

Ford and Egan are this year's recipients of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence for the best works of fiction and nonfiction. Ford was cited for the novel "'Canada,' narrated by the teen son of bank robbers. Egan won for 'Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher,' a biography of photographer Edward Curtis, who compiled an encyclopedic archive of North American Indians.

Read more:

Canada by Richard Ford



Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis by Timothy Egan

Other books mentioned in the article:

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan

This is How You Lose Her by Junot D¨ªaz

The Round House by Louise Erdrich

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen

The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death by Jill Lepore

For more about an author, select the book and then the author.

Canada is available today (7/1/13) at Amazon in Kindle format for $2.99.

July 31, 2013

I find learning a bit about various literary archives can be rather interesting:

"McSweeney¡¯²õ Archive Acquired by Ransom Center in Austin"

Article today in NYT related to the story of Henrietta Lacks we read last year.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

July 23, 2013
Announcement of the Long List for the 2013 Man Booker Award:



Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw (Fourth Estate)
We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo (Chatto & Windus)*
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (Granta)*
Harvest by Jim Crace (Picador)*
The Marrying of Chani Kaufman by Eve Harris (Sandstone Press)
The Kills by Richard House (Picador)
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri (Bloomsbury)**
Unexploded by Alison MacLeod ( Hamish Hamilton)
TransAtlantic by Colum McCann (Bloomsbury)
Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson (Mantle)
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki (Canongate)*
The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan (Doubleday)
The Testament of Mary by Colm T¨®ib¨ªn (Viking)*

- See more at:

(Note that Richard House has also written a book with the title The Kill.)

See also: (Shows book covers, has links to more information.)

* Indicates short list winner, announced September 10.
Entered here 9/17/13.

** And bold indicates 2013 winner, announced October 15.
Entered here 12/3/13.

"NORMAN, Okla. (July 16, 2013) ¨C World Literature Today, the University of Oklahoma¡¯²õ award-winning international literature and culture magazine, today announced the shortlist of nominees for the 2014 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. The Neustadt Prize is the most prestigious international literary award given in the United States, often cited as 'the American Nobel,' and is chosen solely on the basis of literary merit. On this year¡¯²õ shortlist are C¨¦sar Aira, Mia Couto, Duong Thu Huong, Edward P. Jones, Ilya Kaminsky, Chang-rae Lee, Edouard Maunick, Haruki Murakami, and Ghassan Zaqtan. For the first time ever, authors have been nominated from Mauritius, Mozambique, Palestine and Ukraine. Additionally, Jones is the first male African American writer to be nominated in the 44-year history of the prize." Bold added.

More here:

C¨¦sar Aira
Mia Couto
D??ng Thu H??ng
Edward P. Jones
Ilya Kaminsky
Chang-rae Lee
Edouard Maunick
Haruki Murakami
Ghassan Zaqtan

Here is information on the 2013 Orange Prize for Literature:

Winner: A.M. Homes

"19.30, London, 5th June 2013 ¨C American author A.M. Homes has won the 2013 Women¡¯²õ Prize for Fiction with her sixth novel May We Be Forgiven (Granta).

"2013 marks the eighteenth year of the Women¡¯²õ Prize for Fiction, known from 1996 to 2012 as the Orange Prize for Fiction, which celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women¡¯²õ writing from throughout the world.

"At an awards ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London ¨C hosted by Chair of the Women¡¯²õ Prize for Fiction board, Kate Mosse ¨C the 2013 Chair of Judges, Miranda Richardson, presented the author with the ?30,000 prize and the ¡®Bessie¡¯, a limited edition bronze figurine. Both are anonymously endowed.

"Miranda Richardson, Chair of Judges, said: 'Our 2013 shortlist was exceptionally strong and our judges¡¯ meeting was long and passionately argued, but in the end we agreed that May We Be Forgiven is a dazzling, original, viscerally funny black comedy ¨C a subversion of the American dream. This is a book we want to read again and give to our friends.'

"The Women¡¯²õ Prize for Fiction was set up in 1996 to celebrate and promote fiction written by women throughout the world to the widest range of readers possible. The Women¡¯²õ Prize is awarded to the best novel of the year written in English by a woman."



The short list and the long list can be seen here:


Here's the ÀÏ»¢»úÎÈÓ®·½·¨ version for the 2013 prize:

http://www.goodreads.com/award/show/1...

More on the Orange Prize, previous winners:

"Known as the Orange Prize for Fiction between 1996 and 2012, previous winners include
Madeline Miller for The Song of Achilles (2012),
T¨¦a Obreht for The Tiger's Wife (2011),
Barbara Kingsolver for The Lacuna (2010),
Marilynne Robinson for Home (2009),
Rose Tremain for The Road Home (2008),
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for Half of a Yellow Sun (2007),
Zadie Smith for On Beauty (2006),
Lionel Shriver for We Need to Talk About Kevin (2005),
Andrea Levy for Small Island (2004),
Valerie Martin for Property (2003),
Ann Patchett for Bel Canto (2002) -- BC selection 10/2002,
Kate Grenville for The Idea of Perfection (2001),
Linda Grant for When I Lived in Modern Times (2000),
Suzanne Berne for A Crime in the Neighborhood (1999),
Carol Shields for Larry's Party (1998),
Anne Michaels for Fugitive Pieces (1997), and
Helen Dunmore for A Spell of Winter (1996)."



(Should be completely edited now, barring errors.)

Here are some links for the 2013 Pulitzer Prizes:

2013 Awards:

2013 Finalists:

Fiction winner: The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson (Random House)

Fiction finalists:

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank by Nathan Englander (Alfred A. Knopf)

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey (Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown)

This author is featured on Book Talks BBC TV Show.
Adichie.

Charlie Rose did an interview with the author of Transatlantic and PBS Newshour spoke with him.

Janet

Janet wrote: "This author is featured on Book Talks BBC TV Show.
Adichie."

J -- I used moderator privilege to delete your note that had no visible information in it. Do know that you can do the same yourself by using "delete" in the lower right. Hope it wasn't a place holder to which you planned to return to add later -- which you can do to your own notes by using the "edit" option in the same position.

I finally read Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun after having a loaned copy long enough it may well never find its way back to the original owner. A story of revolution in Nigeria, it is well written IMHO. I participated in discussions of it on both B&N a year plus ago and on ÀÏ»¢»úÎÈÓ®·½·¨ 21st Century board more recently.

C.C. has suggested Adichie's new book Americanah as a book group read. She has read it and believes it would provide a good discussion.

Adichie was a Hodder fellow at Princeton University during the 2005-2006 academic year according to her ÀÏ»¢»úÎÈÓ®·½·¨ description -- perhaps someone in the group knows the significance of that.

Her picture and more are here:

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

September 10, 2013
Announcement of the Short List for the 2013 Man Booker Award:



We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo (Chatto & Windus)*
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (Granta)**
Harvest by Jim Crace (Picador)*
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri (Bloomsbury)*
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki (Canongate)*
The Testament of Mary by Colm T¨®ib¨ªn (Viking)*

- See more at:

See also: (Shows book covers, has links to more information.)

Short list also indicated now on Msg 6, which includes the long list nominees.

Winner marked in bold, announced 10/15/13, entered here 12/3/13.

2012 Man Asian Literary Award

The winner, Tan Twan Eng for The Garden Of Evening Mists, was announced March 15, 2013.

Judging panel

Maya Jaggi, chair (United Kingdom)
Monique Truong (Vietnamese-American)
Vikram Chandra (India)

Shortlist (announced 9 January 2013)

Musharraf Ali Farooqi, Between Clay and Dust (Pakistan)
Hiromi Kawakami, The Briefcase (Japan)
Orhan Pamuk, Silent House (Turkey)
Tan Twan Eng, The Garden Of Evening Mists (Malaysia)
Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis (India)

Also longlisted:

Benyamin, Goat Days (India)
Anjali Joseph, Another Country (India)
Uzma Aslam Khan, Thinner Than Skin (Pakistan)
Kim Th¨²y, Ru (Vietnam)
Kim Young-ha, Black Flower (Republic of Korea)
Nayomi Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors (Sri Lanka)
Elif Shafak, Honor (Turkey)
Sheng Keyi, Northern Girls (China)
Roma Tearne, The Road to Urbino (Sri Lanka)
ÌúÄý (Tie Ning), The Bathing Women: A Novel (China)

From:

September 18, 2013

What do you think about opening Man Booker to any English writing author published in the UK?









-- includes comment by our author this month, Kazuo Ishiguro.

Is this a ploy for authors by UK publishers, since they will still provide the nominees?

"Canadian writer Alice Munro, a thorough, but forgiving documenter of the human spirit, won the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday for being a 'master of the contemporary short story,' the Swedish Academy said."











Slide show has Peter Englund of the Swedish Academy making the announcement

Article on new actor for the role of Christian Grey in Fifty Shades of Grey movie:

Death of Doris Lessing:

(Don't know why statements here about Philip Roth, because contenders are not revealed for some set number of years which I don't believe have occurred yet.)





I found the video here rather hilarious.

One time when we went to a Master Class with Philip Glass at NJPAC, he spoke of his delight in having worked with Doris Lessing.

Man Booker, 2013

Sorry I missed the announcement date (10/15/13) by so much:

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

See also messages 6 and 14 for long list and short list.

2014 Neustadt International Prize for Literature

Another award announcement has slipped past our attention:

"Noted Mozambican Author Mia Couto Wins 2014 Neustadt International Prize for Literature"
Friday, November 1, 2013



Mia Couto

"...Couto began his literary career in the struggle for Mozambique¡¯²õ independence, during which time he edited two journals. Raiz de Orvalho, Couto¡¯²õ first book of poetry, was published in 1983. His first novel and the novel that was the representative text for the Neustadt, Sleepwalking Land , was published in 1992 to great acclaim and is widely considered one of the best African books of the 20th century."

The 10 Best Books of 2013

The year¡¯²õ best books, selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review.

FICTION

1. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

2. The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner.

3. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.

4. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson.

5. Tenth of December: Stories by George Saunders.

NONFICTION

1. After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead by Alan S. Blinder.


2. Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House by Peter Baker.


3. Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink.


4. The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Munro Clark.

5. Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala.



Will try to return later to add more ÀÏ»¢»úÎÈÓ®·½·¨ links.

Michiko Kakutani¡¯²õ 10 Favorite Books of 2013



1) The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (Little, Brown & Company).

2. The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves by Stephen Grosz (W. W. Norton & Company).

List brought to our attention by D.

3. Thank You For Your Service by David Finkel (Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux).

4. Claire of the Sea Light by Edwidge Danticat (Alfred A. Knopf).

5. After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead by Alan S. Blinder (The Penguin Press).

6. Johnny Cash: The Life by Robert Hilburn (Little, Brown & Company).

7. MY BELOVED WORLD by Sonia Sotomayor (Alfred A. Knopf).

8. Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Cukier (Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

9. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid (Riverhead Books).

10. Tenth of December: Stories by George Saunders (Random House).

From D. via P.S.

Janet Maslin¡¯²õ 10 Favorite Books of 2013



1. Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson (Doubleday).

2. The Unknowns by Gabriel Roth (Reagan Arthur Books/Little, Brown and Company).

3. Someone by Alice McDermott (Farrar, Straus & Giroux).

4. The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert (Viking).

5. Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson by Jeff Guinn (Simon & Schuster).

6. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson (Reagan Arthur Books).

7. Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell Jr. (Ballantine).

8. Johnny Carson by Henry Bushkin (Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

9. NOS4A2 by Joe Hill (William Morrow).

10. Never Go Back by Lee Child (Delacorte Press).

(Too tired to add links tonite.)

Links completed 12/28/2013

Dwight Garner¡¯²õ 10 Favorite Books of 2013



1. The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner(Scribner).

2. The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer (Farrar, Straus & Giroux).

3. Men We Reaped: A Memoir by Jesmyn Ward (Bloomsbury).

4. Critical Mass: Four Decades of Essays, Reviews, Hand Grenades, and Hurrahs by James Wolcott (Doubleday).

5. Country Girl: A Memoir by Edna O'Brien (Little, Brown & Company).

6. MY PROMISED LAND: THE TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY OF ISRAEL by Ari Shavit (Spiegel & Grau).

7. MARGARET FULLER: A NEW AMERICAN LIFE by Megan Marshall (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

8. THE WET AND THE DRY: A DRINKER¡¯S JOURNEY by Lawrence Osborne (Crown Publishers).

9. THE SKIES BELONG TO US: LOVE AND TERROR IN THE GOLDEN AGE OF HIJACKING by Brendan I. Koerner (Crown Publishers).

10. I WANT TO SHOW YOU MORE: STORIES by Jamie Quatro (Grove Press).

This is an annotated copy of the announcement here:


Jan-13-2014

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE ANNOUNCES ITS FINALISTS FOR PUBLISHING YEAR 2013

First-ever John Leonard Prize goes to Anthony Marra for ¡°A Constellation of Vital Phenomena.¡±

New York, NY, January 13 ¨C¨C The National Book Critics Circle today announced its 30 finalists in six categories ¨C¨C autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry ¨Cfor the best books of 2013. The winners of an additional three prizes were announced as well. The National Book Critics Circle Awards, founded in 1974 at the Algonquin Hotel and considered among the most prestigious in American letters, are the sole prizes bestowed by a jury of working critics and book-review editors. The awards will be presented on March 13 at the New School, in a ceremony that is free and open to the public. (Bold added.)

Anthony Marra¡¯²õ novel A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (Hogarth) is the debut recipient of the John Leonard Prize, established this year to recognize outstanding first books in any genre. Named to honor the memory of founding NBCC member John Leonard, the prize is uniquely decided by a direct vote of the organization¡¯²õ nearly 600 members nationwide, whereas the traditional awards are nominated and chosen by the elected 24-member board of directors.

The recipient of the 2013 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing is Katherine A. Powers, contributor to many national book review sections, including the Boston Globe, the Washington Post and the Barnes and Noble Review. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is the editor of Suitable Accommodations: An Autobiographical Story of Family Life: The Letters of J. F. Powers, 1942-1963. For the second time in its 27-year history, the Balakian Citation carries with it a $1,000 cash prize, generously endowed by NBCC board member Gregg Barrios.

The recipient of the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award is Rolando Hinojosa-Smith. At 84, Hinojosa-Smith is the dean of Chicano authors, best known for his ambitious Klail City Death Trip cycle of novels. He is also an accomplished translator and essayist, as well as a mentor and inspiration to several generations of writers. A recipient of the 1976 Premio Casa de las Americas, Hinojosa-Smith is professor of literature at the University of Texas, Austin, where he has taught for nearly three decades.

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE FINALISTS, PUBLISHING YEAR 2013:

NONA BALAKIAN CITATION FOR EXCELLENCE IN REVIEWING

Katherine A. Powers

Finalists:

Ruth Franklin

James Marcus

Roxana Robinson

Alexandra Schwartz


IVAN SANDROF LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Rolando Hinojosa-Smith


JOHN LEONARD PRIZE

Anthony Marra, A CONSTELLATION OF VITAL PHENOMENA (Hogarth)


AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Sonali Deraniyagala, WAVE (Knopf)

Aleksandar Hemon, THE BOOK OF MY LIVES (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Rebecca Solnit, THE FARAWAY NEARBY (Viking)

Jesmyn Ward, MEN WE REAPED (Bloomsbury)

Amy Wilentz, FAREWELL, FRED VOODOO: A LETTER FROM HAITI (Simon & Schuster) 2014 Winner in Autobiography


BIOGRAPHY

Scott Anderson, LAWRENCE IN ARABIA: WAR, DECEIT, IMPERIAL FOLLY AND THE MAKING OF THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST (Doubleday)

Leo Damrosch, JONATHAN SWIFT: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORLD (Yale University Press) 2014 Winner in Biography

John Eliot Gardiner, BACH: MUSIC IN THE CASTLE OF HEAVEN (Knopf)

Linda Leavell, HOLDING ON UPSIDE DOWN: THE LIFE AND WORK OF MARIANNE MOORE (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Mark Thompson, BIRTH CERTIFICATE: THE STORY OF DANILO KIS (Cornell University Press)


CRITICISM

Hilton Als, WHITE GIRLS (²Ñ³¦³§·É±ð±ð²Ô±ð²â¡¯²õ)

Mary Beard, CONFRONTING THE CLASSICS: TRADITIONS, ADVENTURES AND INNOVATIONS (Liveright)

Jonathan Franzen, THE KRAUS PROJECT: Essays by Karl Kraus, translated and annotated by Jonathan Franzen with Paul Reiter and Daniel Kehlmann (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Janet Malcolm, FORTY-ONE FALSE STARTS: ESSAYS ON ARTISTS AND WRITERS (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Franco Moretti, DISTANT READING (Verso) 2014 Winner in Criticism


FICTION

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, AMERICANAH (Knopf) 2014 Winner in Fiction

Alice McDermott, SOMEONE (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Javier Mar¨ªas, THE INFATUATIONS (Knopf)

Ruth Ozeki, A TALE FOR THE TIME BEING (Viking)

Donna Tartt, THE GOLDFINCH (Little, Brown)


NONFICTION

Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy, WHITEY BULGER: AMERICA¡¯S MOST WANTED GANGSTER AND THE MANHUNT THAT BROUGHT HIM TO JUSTICE (Norton)

Sheri Fink, FIVE DAYS AT MEMORIAL: LIFE AND DEATH IN A STORM-RAVAGED HOSPITAL (Crown) 2014 Winner General Nonfiction

David Finkel, THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE (Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

George Packer, THE UNWINDING: AN INNER HISTORY OF THE NEW AMERICA (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Lawrence Wright, GOING CLEAR: SCIENTOLOGY, HOLLYWOOD AND THE PRISON OF BELIEF (Knopf)


POETRY

Frank Bidart, METAPHYSICAL DOG (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) 2014 Winner in Poetry

Lucie Brock-Broido, STAY, ILLUSION (Knopf)

Denise Duhamel, BLOWOUT (University of Pittsburgh Press)

Bob Hicok, ELEGY OWED (Copper Canyon)

Carmen Gimenez Smith, MILK AND FILTH (University of Arizona Press)

(Please add a note if you see any errors. I have not double checked authors names and it is possible an incorrect name is paired with a book. Also, there is some uncertainty about the ÀÏ»¢»úÎÈÓ®·½·¨ links for the Nona Balakian Citation.)

Remember -- to reach a bookseller and its reviews, one can use the tabs at the bottom of the book description on ÀÏ»¢»úÎÈÓ®·½·¨.

Another Book Award. Use link for now. May add more later.

Finalists for the 2014 Tournament of Books:

At Night We Walk in Circles by Daniel Alarc¨®n
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
The Tuner of Silences by Mia Couto
The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid
The Dinner by Herman Koch
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
Long Division by Kiese Laymon
The Good Lord Bird by James McBride Winner
Hill William by Scott McClanahan
The Son by Philipp Meyer
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara
[Winner of the Pre-Tournament Playoff Round]

Pre-Tournament Playoff Round

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
Woke Up Lonely by Fiona Maazel

See link here for a fascinating list of books to watch in 2014 (well down in the article):

The Folio Prize (Winner to be announced 3/10/2014 -- marked below.)





Shortlist:

Red Doc> by Anne Carson (Random House/Jonathan Cape)
Schroder by Amity Gage (Faber & Faber)
Last Friends by Jane Gardam (Little, Brown)
Benediction by Kent Haruf (Picador)
The Flame Throwers by Rachel Kushner (Random House/Harvill Secker)
A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride (Galley Beggar Press)
A Naked Singularity by Sergio De La Pava (Maclehose Editions)
Tenth of December by George Saunders (Bloomsbury) -- Winner

Another book prize for our awareness (2014 Winner in bold below):

¡°°Õ³ó±ð Wellcome Book Prize celebrates the topics of health and medicine in literature. It awards ?30,000 each year to the winning author, and aims to stimulate interest and debate about medical science through books and reading.

¡°°Õ³ó±ð Prize crosses genres: fiction and nonfiction are both eligible, so its shortlists can include biography, crime, historical fiction, current affairs, sci-fi and more. Its judging panels include scientists, writers, journalists and public figures, and past chairs have included Jo Brand, Clive Anderson and Mark Lawson.

¡°°Õ³ó±ð Prize shortlists six books every February, and the winner is announced in April.¡±



Wounded by Emily Mayhew

Wounded: From Battlefield to Blighty, 1914-1918

Creation by Adam Rutherford

Creation: How Science Is Reinventing Life Itself

Far from the Tree by Andrew Solomon

Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity 2014 Winner

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

Inconvenient People by Sarah Wise

Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian England

Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks

2012 Winner

Circulation by Thomas Wright

Circulation: William Harvey¡¯²õ Revolutionary Idea

Judges:
Sir Andrew Motion
Hadley Freeman
Michael Mosley
Lisa Appignanesi
James Runcie

Once again, dating of the prizes is mysterious. The shortlist is indicated as for a 2014 prize. The 2012 winner is called "Last year's winner." Go figure.

Can recommend the Elizabeth Strout book, including the excellent audio. Suggestion came from one of our Southern sisters.

Nebula Award information:



I just finished reading Karen Joy Fowler's We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. Reviews don't recommend it for sensitive animal activists. I found it thoughtful and of interest. For someone who wrote a book with so inauspicious a title as The Jane Austen Book Club, I was pleasantly surprised.

Since we have at least one science fiction reader among our midst, here is a bit more on the Nebula Award:

Best Novel

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler
The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman
Fire with Fire, Charles E. Gannon
Hild, Nicola Griffith
Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
The Red: First Light, Linda Nagata, Sofia Samatar
The Golem and the Jinni, Helene Wecker

Best Novella

¡®¡®Wakulla Springs,¡¯¡¯ Andy Duncan & Ellen Klages (Tor.com 10/2/13)
¡®¡®The Weight of the Sunrise,¡¯¡¯ Vylar Kaftan (Asimov¡¯²õ 2/13)
¡®¡®Annabel Lee,¡± Nancy Kress (New Under the Sun, Arc Manor/Phoenix Pick)
¡®¡®Burning Girls,¡¯¡¯ Veronica Schanoes (Tor.com 6/19/13)
¡®¡®Trial of the Century,¡¯¡¯ Lawrence M. Schoen (lawrencemschoen.com, 8/13; World Jumping)
Six-Gun Snow White, Catherynne M. Valente (Subterranean)

Best Novelette

¡®¡®Paranormal Romance,¡¯¡¯ Christopher Barzak (Lightspeed 6/13)
¡®¡®The Waiting Stars,¡¯¡¯ Aliette de Bodard (The Other Half of the Sky)
¡®¡®They Shall Salt the Earth with Seeds of Glass,¡¯¡¯ Alaya Dawn Johnson (Asimov¡¯²õ 1/13)
¡®¡®Pearl Rehabilitative Colony for Ungrateful Daughters,¡¯¡¯ Henry Lien (Asimov¡¯²õ 12/13)
¡®¡®The Litigation Master and the Monkey King,¡¯¡¯ Ken Liu (Lightspeed 8/13)
¡®¡®In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind,¡¯¡¯ Sarah Pinsker (Strange Horizons 7/1 ¨C 7/8/13)

Best Short Story

¡®¡®The Sounds of Old Earth,¡¯¡¯ Matthew Kressel (Lightspeed 1/13)
¡®¡®Selkie Stories Are for Losers,¡¯¡¯ Sofia Samatar (Strange Horizons 1/7/13)
¡®¡®Selected Program Notes from the Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer¡¯¡¯ (audio recording) Kenneth Schneyer (Clockwork Phoenix 4)
¡®¡®If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love,¡¯¡¯ Rachel Swirsky (Apex 3/13)
¡®¡®Alive, Alive Oh,¡¯¡¯ Sylvia Spruck Wrigley (Lightspeed 6/13)

Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation

Doctor Who: ¡®¡®The Day of the Doctor¡¯¡¯ (Nick Hurran, director; Steven Moffat, writer) (BBC Wales)
Europa Report (Sebasti¨¢n Cordero, director; Philip Gelatt, writer) (Start Motion Pictures)
Gravity (Alfonso Cuar¨®n, director; Alfonso Cuar¨®n & Jon¨¢s Cuar¨®n, writers) (Warner Bros.)
Her (Spike Jonze, director; Spike Jonze, writer) (Warner Bros.)
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (Francis Lawrence, director; Simon Beaufoy & Michael deBruyn, writers) (Lionsgate)
Pacific Rim (Guillermo del Toro, director; Travis Beacham & Guillermo del Toro, writers) (Warner Bros.)

Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, Holly Black (Little, Brown; Indigo)
When We Wake (excerpt), Karen Healey (Allen & Unwin; Little, Brown)
Sister Mine, Nalo Hopkinson (Grand Central)
The Summer Prince, Alaya Dawn Johnson (Levine)
Hero, Alethea Kontis (Harcourt)
September Girls, Bennett Madison (Harper Teen)
A Corner of White, Jaclyn Moriarty (Levine)

Damon Knight Grand Master Award: Samuel R. Delany

Here is a link for information about the Hugo Award, another premier award for science fiction, along with the Nebula Award in the previous post:



2014 nominees et al seem not to yet be available. My best guess is the final awards are made in September.

Well, maybe at the big convention in London in August. See video linkable from above.

2014 Pen/Faulkner Award

(Winner marked in bold.)

The finalists for the 2014 Pen/Faulkner award in fiction were announced March 7, 2014 --

The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is a national prize which honors the best published works of fiction by American citizens in a calendar year.

The finalists are:

At Night We Walk in Circles by Daniel Alarc¨®n

Percival Everett by Virgil Russell by Percival Everett

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler 2014 Winner

Fools: Stories by Joan Silber

Search Party: Stories of Rescue by Valerie Trueblood

The winner, to be announced on April 2, will receive $15,000 and the other finalists will receive $5,000 each.

2014 Baileys Women¡¯²õ Prize for Fiction

Today, June 4, 2014, the winner was announced. Marked in bold below and repeated here:

A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing by Eimear McBride

The short list for the 2014 Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction was announced in early April. The selections are marked below by the inclusion of their covers.

On March 7, 2014 the longlist for the 2014 Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize) was announced. Winner to be announced June 4.

There are 20 books on the list, a number of which have appeared on other prize lists in the recent past. The prize was first awarded in 1996. At least four of the authors have been on previous short lists for this prize - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (won 2007, Half of a Yellow Sun; nominated 2004, Purple Hibiscus); Margaret Atwood (nominated: 1997, Alias Grace; 2001, The Blind Assassin; 2004, Oryx and Crake); Elizabeth Strout (nominated 2000, Amy and Isabelle); and Donna Tartt (nominated 2003, The Little Friend).

The longlist books are (short list winners show covers):
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood
The Dogs of Littlefield by Suzanne Berne
The Shadow of the Crescent Moon by Fatima Bhutto
The Bear by Claire Cameron
Eleven Days by Lea Carpenter
The Strangler Vine by M.J. Carter
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
Reasons She Goes to the Woods by Deborah Kay Davies

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Undertaking by Audrey Magee

A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing by Eimear McBride (Winner)

Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson
Still Life with Bread Crumbs by Anna Quindlen
The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld

The judges for the 2014 Baileys Women¡¯²õ Prize for Fiction are:

Helen Fraser, (Chair), Chief Executive of the Girls¡¯ Day School Trust
Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge
Denise Mina, Writer
Caitlin Moran, Times columnist, Author and Screenwriter
Sophie Raworth, BBC Broadcaster and Journalist

See also:

On March 17, 2014, it was announced that NoViolet Bulawayo won the PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award (for debut fiction) for We Need New Names.



The prize, established in 1976 by Mary Hemingway in memory of her husband, Ernest Hemingway, honors distinguished first books of fiction, and includes a $10,000 award, a one-week residence at the University of Idaho, and a fellowship at the Ucross Foundation, a retreat for artists and writers in Wyoming. I did not find that PEN/Hemmingway award is connected with the PEN/Literay awards.

The other finalists were:
Mitchell S. Jackson for The Residue Years (Bloomsbury USA)
Anthony F. C. Wallace for The Old Priest (University of Pittsburgh Press)

Authors/Books receiving "honorable mention" were:
Jasmine Beach-Ferrara for Damn Love (Ig Publishing),
Kristopher Jansma for The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards (Viking), and
Ethan Rutherford for The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories (Ecco/ HarperCollins).

Click on book cover for more information.

Today's (4/14/2014) announcements of 2014 Pulitzer Prizes in the areas of:

Letters, Drama, and Music

Fiction
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (Little, Brown)

Drama
The Flick by Annie Baker

History
The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 by Alan Taylor (W.W. Norton)

Biography or Autobiography
Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Poetry
3 Sections: Poems by Vijay Seshadri (Graywolf Press)

General Nonfiction
Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation by Dan Fagin (Bantam Books)

Music
Become Ocean by John Luther Adams (Taiga Press/Theodore Front Musical Literature)

Winners in journalism, et al, may be found here:



Also:

From D: After a terrorist bomb explodes in an art museum, the young narrator of Donna Tartt¡¯²õ new novel, ¡°°Õ³ó±ð Goldfinch,¡± becomes the protector of a 17th-century painting.



Comment from CB: YES!! It's absolutely worth the time it takes to read it!

Comment from J/NC: Interesting review-thanks for sending! Worth the "big" bk.!

Comment from another ÀÏ»¢»úÎÈÓ®·½·¨ poster (from 21st century board):

Julia: I'm also excited for Megan Marshall's win, since Margaret Fuller has always interested me, both as a woman and a member of the Transcendentalists:

Former Radcliffe Fellow¡¯²õ book 'Margaret Fuller: A New American Life' honored
Harvard Gazette, April 14, 2014

Megan Marshall ¡¯77 was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Margaret Fuller: A New American Life (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2013), her richly detailed biography of the 19th-century author, journalist, and women¡¯²õ rights advocate who perished in a shipwreck off New York¡¯²õ Fire Island.

Her book The Peabody Sisters was a Pulitzer finalist in 2006.

Marshall, 59, was a 2006-07 fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. At Harvard College, she studied American literature and poetry, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and earning the Harvard Monthly Prize, an award given to the most promising student writer.

She currently teaches nonfiction writing and historical research at Emerson College in Boston.

For more about the author, read Radcliffe Magazine¡¯²õ interview with Marshall. To hear Marshall read from her book, an audio clip is also available.

/topic/show/...

The Pulitzer seems to publish "finalists" at the same time as "winners", as a separate category. (Someone please comment if they are aware of publication of either long lists or short lists for this prize.)

Letters, Drama, and Music Finalists

Fiction

The Son by Philipp Meyer (Ecco)

The Woman Who Lost Her Soul by Bob Shacochis (Atlantic Monthly Press)

Drama

The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence by Madeleine George

Fun Home by Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori

History

A Dreadful Deceit: The Myth of Race from the Colonial Era to Obama's America by Jacqueline Jones (Basic Books)

Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser (The Penguin Press)

Biography or Autobiography

Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World by Leo Damrosch (Yale University Press)

Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life by Jonathan Sperber (Liveright)

Poetry

The Sleep of Reason by Morri Creech (The Waywiser Press)

The Big Smoke by Adrian Matejka (Penguin)

General Nonfiction

The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide by Gary J. Bass (Alfred A. Knopf)

The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War by Fred Kaplan (Simon & Schuster)

Music

The Gospel According to the Other Mary by John Adams (Boosey & Hawkes)

Invisible Cities by Christopher Cerrone (Outburst-Inburst Musics)

Repeat:

The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

The 152 entry longlist is down to 10 finalists.

Ten White Geese (titled The Detour in the UK) by Gerbrand Bakker
Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser
Absolution by Patrick Flanery
A Death in the Family by Karl Ove Knausgaard
Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye
Traveler of the Century by Andr¨¦s Neuman
The Light of Amsterdam by David Park
The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan
The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng
The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel V¨¢squez 2014 Winner

The prize of €100,000 was announced on June 12.

The "contenders" are chosen by libraries around the world. The books eligible for the 2014 award must have been first published in English in calendar year 2012. The long list is available at . It has 152 selections, but the short list of 10 books came out in April! At 100,000 Euros, the award is worth winning.

The organization that provides the "Rooster Award" published this list of books to watch in 2014:

(a ways down)

(Links have now been added where available. 6/14/14)

"John: So, I promised that I¡¯d try to compile an officially unofficial, purely personal, not-at-all-meaningful ¡°watchlist¡± for ToBXI. These are books that came or will come out this year that have gotten on my radar for one reason or another. I make no claims, warranties, or guarantees for this list. It¡¯²õ a doozy."

Go to work and do your job. Care for your children. Pay your bills. Obey the law. Buy products. by Noah Cicero
The Brunist Day of Wrath by Robert Coover
Thirty Girls by Susan Minot
The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld
Redeployment by Phil Klay
Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi
The Heaven of Animals: Stories by David James Poissant
The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt
Mannequin Girl by Ellen Litman
Missing You by Harlan Coben
Orfeo by Richard Powers
The Ballad of a Small Player by Lawrence Osborne
Hidden by Catherine McKenzie
Love & Treasure by Ayelet Waldman
Frog Music by Emma Donoghue
Steal the North by Heather Brittain Bergstrom
The Steady Running of the Hour by Justin Go
The Giraffe's Neck by Judith Schalansky
Wonderland by Stacey D'Erasmo
Delicious! by Ruth Reichl
Magnificent Vibration by Rick Springfield
Married Life by David Vogel
Bellweather Rhapsody by Kate Racculia
Remember Me Like This by Bret Anthony Johnston
A Moveable Famine by John Skoyles
The Lobster Kings by Alexi Zentner
The Vacationers by Emma Straub
We Are Called to Rise by Laura McBride
All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu
I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You by Courtney Maum
The Divorce Papers by Susan Rieger
No Country by Kalyan Ray
Abroad: A Novel by Katie Crouch
All Fall Down by Jennifer Weiner (8/28/14)
Losing in Gainesville by Brian Costello
The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing by Nicholas Rombes
A Life in Men by Gina Frangello
Made to Break by D. Foy
The Possibilities by Kaui Hart Hemmings
The Illusionists by Rosie Thomas
Waiting for the Electricity by Christina Nichol
The Myth of Solid Ground: A Novel by Stephanie Kegan
Road Ends by Mary Lawson
An Untamed State by Roxane Gay
The Hundred-Year House by Rebecca Makkai
Evergreen: A novel by Rebecca Rasmussen
Panic in a Suitcase by Yelena Akhtiorskaya
Beneath the Neon Egg: A Novel by Thomas E. Kennedy
When the World Was Young: A Novel by Elizabeth Gaffney
Three Bargains by Tania Malik
Before, During, After by Richard Bausch
Henna House by Nomi Eve
Your Face in Mine: A Novel by Jess Row
The Story Hour by Thrity Umrigar
We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas
An Italian Wife by Ann Hood
Wittgenstein Jr. by Lars Iyer
Hold the Dark by William Giraldi
Ballroom by Alice Simpson (9/9/2014)
The Ambassadors by George Lerner
Wallflowers by Eliza Robertson
The Fever by Megan Abbott
The High Divide by Lin Enger
The Betrayers: A Novel by David Bezmozgis
A Brief History of Seven Killings: A Novel by Marlon James
Quartet for the End of Time by Johanna Skibsrud
Brood by Chase Novak
Beautiful You by Chuck Palahniuk
The Disappearance Boy by Neil Bartlett
Mermaids in Paradise by Lydia Millet
The Happiest People in the World by Brock Clarke
Let Me Be Frank With You by Richard Ford
The Scent of Pine by Lara Vapnyar
Silence Once Begun by Jesse Ball
Friendship by Emily Gould
Casebook by Mona Simpson
Off Course: A Novel by Michelle Huneven (Find out more.)
Every Day is for the Thief by Teju Cole [2]
My Struggle: Book Two: A Man in Love by Karl Ove Knausg?rd**
Lost for Words by Edward St. Aubyn
Dear Committee Members: A novel by Julie Schumacher
Be Safe I Love You by Cara Hoffman
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris

** This author has begun showing up on my radar screen.
[2] Am reading his Open City -- first book, pretentious, little plot, character study, fine sentences, explores NYC.

DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2014
.

Anand: The Book of Destruction (Translated by Chetana Sachidanandan; Penguin, India)
Benyamin: Goat Days (Translated by Joseph Koyippalli; Penguin, India)
Cyrus Mistry: Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer (Aleph Book Company, India) 2014 Winner
Mohsin Hamid: How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin, India)
Nadeem Aslam: The Blind Man's Garden (Random House, India)
Nayomi Munaweera: Island of a Thousand Mirrors (Perera Hussein Publishing, Sri Lanka)

The US $50,000 prize is awarded for the best work of fiction pertaining to the South Asian region, published in English, including translations into English. In case a translated entry wins the award, the prize money would be shared equally between the author and the translator.

Antara Dev Sen (Jury Chair)-- founder editor of The Little Magazine, independent journal of ideas & letters
Arshia Sattar -- translator, writer and teacher
Ameena Saiyid -- Managing Director of Oxford University Press in Pakistan
Rosie Boycott -- journalist and editor.
Paul Yamazaki -- U.S. bookseller

-- more on the jury members



The last three winners of the DSC Prize have been H.M. Naqvi from Pakistan ( Home Boy : Harper Collins, India), Shehan Karunatilaka from Sri Lanka (Chinaman: Random House, India) and Jeet Thayil from India ( Narcopolis : Faber & Faber, London).

2014 RSL Ondaatje Prize

Another prize you may be interested in knowing about. May not develop this totally today, but here are a few highlights:

The 2014 shortlist and winner:

Nadeem Aslam The Blind Man's Garden (Faber)

Patrick Barkham Badgerlands: The Twilight World of Britain's Most Enigmatic Animal (Granta)

Mark Dapin Spirit House (Tuskar Rock Press)

Tim Dee Four Fields (Jonathan Cape)

Alan Johnson This Boy (Bantam Press) 2014 winner

Esther Woolfson Field Notes from a Hidden City (Granta)

Judges:

Imtiaz Dharker
A.L. Kennedy
Jenny Uglow

Previous winners:

2013 Philip Hensher Scenes from Early Life

2012 Rahul Bhattacharya The Sly Company of People Who Care

2011 Edmund de Waal The Hare with Amber Eyes

2010 Ian Thomson The Dead Yard: Tales of Modern Jamaica

2009 Adam Nicolson Sissinghurst, an Unfinished History

2008 Graham Robb The Discovery of France

2007 Hisham Matar In the Country of Men

2006 James Meek The People's Act of Love

2005 Rory Stewart The Places in Between

2004 Louisa Waugh Hearing Birds Fly


Of these, we read as a group Rory Stewart's The Places in Between, which took us with him on his trek deep into Afghanistan.

Web site for RSL Ondaatje Prize:

The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

This single page gives a good overview of the 2014 award (?10,000), short list, long list, and judges.



The Iraqi Christ by Hassan Blasim

An older article by Mark Sarvas that I found here:


February 24, 2009
JAMES WOOD'S BEST BOOKS SINCE 1945 (Circa 1994)

Back in 1994, prompted by Harold Bloom's The Western Canon, James Wood presented Guardian readers with his own list of the best British and American writing since 1945. (He found Bloom a "fine, if prejudiced, reader of poetry, but an unreliable reader of prose.") The list was offered as a mild corrective, an exercise Wood considered "amusing." He was careful with his own caveats and omissions - he pled an "ignorance of the theatre" and realized that by omitting the category, he was overlooking the likes of Harold Pinter. He also excluded journalism other than essays and book reviews. And, finally, he cut the whole thing off around 1985 - unless "keeping to it would have meant omitting a writer's best work so far." The list is especially interesting given that Wood says he sough to "avoid the 'representative', 'important' or 'influential' and chosen, instead, books which I like, which seemed to me deep and beautiful, which aerate the soul and abrase the conscience ... "

I had never seen the list - it's not available online - until Nicholas Richards, one of my readers, forwarded me a PDF of the original article. I've decided to go ahead and reproduce Wood's list in its entirety for a few reasons.

First, it seemed as good a way as any to remind my New York readers that Wood will be appearing this evening at Queens College with Peter Carey and E.L. Doctorow.

Second, I thought the list was pretty damned interesting, and I know many of you will, too, and, since it isn't online, well TEV is all about the public service.

But finally, I'm offering it as a corrective of its own to some of the foolishness that has cropped up around Wood of late. He certainly doesn't need me to defend him but this list should give the lie to the popular cliche of Wood as the hidebound dean of realism who thinks fiction stopped with Flaubert. The list appears in its entirety after the jump, typed up exactly as it ran (with its idiosyncrasies), but I think you'll find some surprises. Pynchon! Barthelme! DeLillo! And quite a few others. On Wood's best writing list. (One wonders whether Zadie Smith bothered to read through this list before kneecapping Wood in the pages of the NYRB.) Check it out - and discuss.

J.G. Farrell: The Siege of Krishnapur
Jane Bowles: The Collected Works Of Jane Bowles
L.P. Hartley: The Go-Between
Norman Mailer: The Naked and the Dead;The Armies of the Night 12474
Walter Abish: How German Is It?
Harold Brodkey: Stories in an Almost Classical Mode
Cynthia Ozick: The Messiah of Stockholm; Art and Ardor
William S. Burroughs: Naked Lunch
Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse-Five
Elizabeth Bishop: Complete Poems
John Cheever: Collected Stories; Falconer
Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man
Angus Wilson: The Wrong Set; Hemlock and After; Anglo-Saxon Attitudes
Fred Exley: A Fan's Notes
Randall Jarrell: Poetry and the Age
Robert Lowell: Life Studies; For the Union Dead; Near the Ocean: Poems
Bernard Malamud: The Assistant; The Stories of Bernard Malamud
William Trevor: Collected Stories
James Baldwin: The Fire Next Time; Giovanni's Room
Toni Morrison: Sula; Beloved
Henry Green: Loving; Concluding; Nothing
Howard Nemerov: Collected Poems
A.S. Byatt: Still Life
V.S. Naipaul: A House for Mr Biswas; In a Free State; The Enigma of Arrival: A Novel in Five Sections
Tim O'Brien: If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home
Kazuo Ishiguro: The Remains of the Day
Flannery O'Connor: A Good Man Is Hard To Find
Frank O'Hara: Selected Poems
Sylvia Plath: The Collected Poems
Ezra Pound: The Pisan Cantos
John Barth: The Sot-Weed Factor
Saul Bellow: The Adventures of Augie March; Seize the Day; Herzog; Humboldt's Gift
John Berryman: The Dream Songs: Poems; The Freedom Of The Poet and Other Essays
Thomas Pynchon: The Crying of Lot 49; V
Philip Roth: Goodbye, Columbus; The Counterlife; Reading Myself and Others
J.D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye
Donald Barthelme: Sixty Stories
Susan Sontag: Styles of Radical Will
Wallace Stevens: The Collected Poems
Robert Penn Warren: All the King's Men
Eudora Welty: The Collected Stories
William Carlos Williams: Paterson
Edmund White: A Boy's Own Story
Amy Clampitt: The Kingfisher
Don DeLillo: White Noise
W.H. Auden: The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays; Collected Poems
Paul Bailey: Gabriel's Lament
Angela Carter: The Magic Toyshop; Nights at the Circus
Bruce Chatwin: On The Black Hill
James Fenton: The Memory Of War: Poems, 1968-1982
William Golding: Lord of the Flies; The Spire
W.S. Graham: Collected Poems 1942-1977
Raymond Carver: The Stories Of Raymond Carver.
Martin Amis: Money, Money; The Moronic Inferno
Jean Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea
Graham Greene: The Heart of the Matter
John Ashbery: Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror; Selected Poems
Geoffrey Hill: Collected Poems
Doris Lessing: The Golden Notebook
Ivy Compton-Burnett: A Heritage and Its History
Muriel Spark: Memento Mori; The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Malcolm Lowry: Under the Volcano
Walker Percy: The Moviegoer
Philip Larkin: Collected Poems
Ian McEwan: First Love, Last Rites; The Cement Garden
Andrew Motion: Secret Narratives
Iris Murdoch: Under the Net; The Bell; The Nice and the Good
George Orwell: 1984; Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Vol. 4. In Front of Your Nose: 1945-1950 (4 vols)
Carson McCullers: The Ballad of the Sad Cafe
J.G. Ballard: Concrete Island
Anthony Powell: A Dance to the Music of Time: 1st Movement (3 Movements total)
John Updike: Of the Farm; The Centaur; The Rabbit Quartet; Hugging the Shore: Essays and Criticism
Jeanette Winterson: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Ted Hughes: Selected Poems, 1957-1981
V.S. Pritchett: Complete Collected Stories; Complete Collected Essays
Craig Raine: Martian Sends a Postcard Home
Marianne Moore: Complete Poems
Elizabeth Taylor: The Wedding Group
Salman Rushdie: Midnight's Children; The Satanic Verses
Tom Paulin: Fivemiletown
Joseph Heller: Catch-22
Christine Brook-Rose: The Christine Brook-Rose Reader
Anthony Burgess: Earthly Powers
Alan Sillitoe: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner
Graham Swift: Waterland
Iain Sinclair: Downriver
Evelyn Waugh: Brideshead Revisited; The Ordeal Of Gilbert Pinfold; Through a Cloud
Jack Kerouac: On the Road
Denton Welch: A Voice Through a Cloud

Originally printed in the Guardian on Oct. 7, 1994.

Found links have been added. 7/20/14.

2014 Man Booker Longlist

And the nominees are:

To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, Joshua Ferris (Viking)
The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan (Chatto & Windus)
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler (Serpent's Tail)
The Blazing World, Siri Hustvedt (Sceptre)
J, Howard Jacobson (Jonathan Cape)
The Wake, Paul Kingsnorth (Unbound)
The Bone Clocks, David Mitchell (Sceptre)
The Lives of Others, Neel Mukherjee (Chatto & Windus)
Us, David Nicholls (Hodder & Stoughton)
The Dog, Joseph O'Neill (Fourth Estate)
Orfeo, Richard Powers (Atlantic Books)
How To Be Both, Ali Smith (Hamish Hamilton)
History of the Rain, Niall Williams (Bloomsbury)

"The first Man Booker prize to admit novels from across the globe as long as they are written in English has published its longlist. Following much discussion, the six judges chaired by philosopher Anthony Grayling chose 13 books by four Americans, six Britons, two Irish writers and one Australian.

"One former Man Booker winner, Howard Jacobson, is on the longlist along with two previously shortlisted authors, Ali Smith and David Mitchell. Also on the list are David Nicholls, whose previous novel, One Day , was filmed with Anne Hathaway, and the Anglo-Indian writer Neel Mukherjee.

"The American writers longlisted include Richard Powers, Siri Hustvedt, Joshua Ferris and Karen Joy Fowler."

- See more at:

Bailey's ThisBook Campaign:

"Back in May 2014, the Baileys Women¡¯²õ Prize for Fiction launched the #ThisBook campaign. The aim was simple: to find out which books, written by women, have had the biggest impact on readers.

"We enlisted nineteen inspirational women ¨C from Dawn O¡¯Porter to Jennifer Saunders, Sandi Toksvig to Joanna Trollope ¨C to launch the campaign and tell us about the books that most impacted, shaped or changed their lives.

"The reasons for their choices varied greatly ¨C while Kate Mosse attributes Wuthering Heights by Emily Bront? to kick-starting her writing career, for Edith Bowman, The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold helped her deal with a personal loss. Saffron Burrows said that I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou made her fall in love with storytelling, while Zawe Ashton¡¯²õ experience of The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison made her truly understand just how books can really change you.

"Following the launch, we took to Twitter to ask the general public to share their submissions and we were overwhelmed with the response. Thousands used the #ThisBook hashtag to take part and nominate the book that changed their life, and the final top twenty list, revealed today, features a diverse and eclectic mix of literary greats.

"Harper Lee¡¯²õ timeless classic To Kill a Mockingbird took the top spot as the most influential book written by a woman, with Margaret Atwood¡¯²õ dystopian fiction The Handmaid's Tale and Charlotte Bront?¡¯²õ Jane Eyre taking second and third place respectively.

"Interestingly, nearly half of the top 20 books, as nominated by the public, were published before 1960, including Louisa May Alcott¡¯²õ Little Women (8th place) and Middlemarch (16th place) by George Eliot ¨C confirming that classic novels continue to inspire readers today.

The full #ThisBook top 20 is as follows:

1. To Kill a Mockingbird ¨C Harper Lee
2. The Handmaid's Tale ¨C Margaret Atwood
3. Jane Eyre ¨C Charlotte Bront?
4. Harry Potter ¨C J.K. Rowling
5. Wuthering Heights ¨C Emily Bront?
6. Pride and Prejudice ¨C Jane Austen
7. Rebecca ¨C Daphne du Maurier
8. Little Women ¨C Louisa May Alcott
9. The Secret History ¨C Donna Tartt
10. I Capture the Castle ¨C Dodie Smith
11. The Bell Jar ¨C Sylvia Plath
12. Beloved ¨C Toni Morrison
13. Gone with the Wind ¨C Margaret Mitchell
14. We Need to Talk About Kevin ¨C Lionel Shriver
15. The Time Traveler's Wife ¨C Audrey Niffenegger
16. Middlemarch ¨C George Eliot
17. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings ¨C Maya Angelou
18. The Golden Notebook ¨C Doris Lessing
19. The Colour Purple ¨C Alice Walker
20. The Women's Room ¨C Marilyn French


"Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty and announced today as Chair of the Baileys Women¡¯²õ Prize for Fiction 2015 judging panel, took part in the campaign launch in May and selected To Kill a Mockingbird as her #ThisBook. She comments, 'With human rights under attack the world over, the enduring appeal of Harper Lee¡¯²õ great tale gives hope that justice and equality might yet triumph over prejudice.'


"Keep an eye on our Facebook and Twitter pages for the chance to win a complete set of the #ThisBook top 20."

This is considered a genre (mystery) award rather than a literary award. It was announced in May, 2014:



"Each Spring, Mystery Writers of America present the Edgar? Awards, widely acknowledged to be the most prestigious awards in the genre."

23 Contemporary Writers You Should Have Read by Now

"In a fair world, these critically acclaimed authors would be rocking the bestseller list. If you haven't discovered them yet, our Books Editor has set you up for some incredibly memorable reads."

Read more:

1. Daniel Woodrell
Start with: The Death of Sweet Mister , Recent: The Maid's Version

2. Frederic Tuten
Start with: The Green Hour , Recent: Self Portraits: Fictions
Reputation: The Adventures of Mao on the Long March

3. Kate Bernheimer
Start with: The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold , Other: Horse, Flower, Bird

4. Elizabeth Spencer
Start with: The Light in the Piazza , Other: Starting Over

5. Diane Williams
Start with: Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty , Recent: Excitability

6. Karen Tei Yamashita, Start with: I Hotel

7. Brian Evenson. Start with: Fugue State .
Recent: Immobility , Last Days , Windeye

8. Terese Svoboda. Start with: Trailer Girl and Other Stories .
Other: Bohemian Girl , Black Glasses Like Clark Kent

9. Joan Wickersham. Start with: The News from Spain .
Other: The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order

To be continued.

Haruki Murakami Is Releasing a New Book



"Famed Japanese author Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood,The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84) will come out with a new book in December: a slender, 96-page work called The Strange Library.

"...In a press release, Knopf chairman and EIC Sonny Mehta called the book 'as scary and surprising as anything he has ever written.'"