National Book Award Finalists!

National Book Award finalists were announced yesterday, and I haven't read any of them....

Fiction

The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
Telex from Cuba by Rachel Kushner (Click here to read an excerpt or here to view a reading group guide)
Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen (Click here to read an excerpt)
Home by Marilynne Robinson (Click here to read an excerpt or here to view a reading group guide)
The End by Salvatore Scibona


Non-Fiction

This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust (first woman President of Harvard; click here to read an excerpt or here to view the table of contents)
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed
The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer (Click here to view the table of contents)
Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives by Jim Sheeler (Click here to view the table of contents)
The Suicide Index: Putting My Father’s Death in Order by Joan Wickersham (Click here to view the table of contents or here to read an excerpt)

Poetry

Watching the Spring Festival by Frank Bidart
Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems by Mark Doty
Creatures of a Day by Reginald Gibbons
Without Saying by Richard Howard
Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith

Young People's Literature

Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson
The Underneath by Kathi Appelt (Click here to read an excerpt or here to read a reading group guide)
What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
The Spectacular Now by Tim Tharp (Click here to read an excerpt)

Winners will be announced November 19.

Best of the Booker - Salman Rushdie

Just read that Salman Rushdie won the "Best of the Booker" prize last Thursday, which was decided by an online poll.

I haven't read either of his Booker (winning books -- Midnight's Children or The Satanic Verses -- and now I think I will have to finally read one or both of these famous books.

The only other nominees were Pat Barker (The Ghost Road), Peter Carey (Oscar and Lucinda), J.M. Coetzee (Disgrace), J.G. Farrell (The Siege of Krishnapur) and Nadine Gordimer (The Conservationis).

Carey (True History of the Kelly Gang) and Coetzee (Life & Times of Michael K) had each won two Booker Prizes -- it is awarded each year to the best novel each year by a writer from Britain, Ireland or a Commonwealth country.

Thoughts on Salmon Rushdie? Particularly on the controversial Satanic Verses?

Junot Díaz wins Pulitzer for 'Oscar Wao'

Yay for MIT (my alma mater)!

MIT Professor Junot Díaz won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction his first novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I think it started out as a fiction piece for the New Yorker and became his debut novel; the book received great reviews in the NYTimes Book Review.

I haven't read it yet, but will be sure to add it to my very long list of books to read.

Click here to read the full article from the MIT News Office.

Or click here to read the release form the Pulitzer Prizes.