Orange Prize Short List

Here's the short list for this year's Orange Prize.The Orange Prize honors female writers of any nationality for the best full-length novel written in English:

The Very Thought of You, Rosie Alison

The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver

Black Water Rising, Attica Locke

Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel (it's already won the National Book Critic Circle Award and Man Booker Prize)

A Gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle, Monique Roffey

Marilynne Robinson's Home, her sequel of sorts to her wonderful novel Gilead, was last year's winner.

I've read Gilead, and I've bought Home but haven't gotten around to reading it yet. But summer's coming! I think I may use this list as a guide for upcoming audiobooks, if the novels are available in that format.

2010 Newberry Award Winner

I love Newberry Award winning books. I've read quite a few of them, often out loud to my own children. This year's winner is Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me. Sounds intriguing.

From School Library Journal
Sixth-grader Miranda lives in 1978 New York City with her mother, and her life compass is Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. When she receives a series of enigmatic notes that claim to want to save her life, she comes to believe that they are from someone who knows the future. Miranda spends considerable time observing a raving vagrant who her mother calls the laughing man and trying to find the connection between the notes and her everyday life. Discerning readers will realize the ties between Miranda's mystery and L'Engle's plot, but will enjoy hints of fantasy and descriptions of middle school dynamics. Stead's novel is as much about character as story. Miranda's voice rings true with its faltering attempts at maturity and observation. The story builds slowly, emerging naturally from a sturdy premise. As Miranda reminisces, the time sequencing is somewhat challenging, but in an intriguing way. The setting is consistently strong. The stores and even the streets–in Miranda's neighborhood act as physical entities and impact the plot in tangible ways. This unusual, thought-provoking mystery will appeal to several types of readers.

National Book Awards 2009

Wednesday night, the National Book Foundation announced this year's winners:

Fiction: Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann

Nonfiction: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, TJ. Stiles

Poetry: Transcedental Studies: A Trilogy, Keith Waldrop

Young people's literature: Claudette Colvin, Phillip Hoose.

Additionally, Flannery O'Connor's The Complete Stories was named Best of the National Book Awards Fiction. I'm really glad because that's the book I voted for. (And, yes, I know that sentence ends in a preposition, but consider the alternative: " . . . because that's the book for which I voted." Hmmm. I don't think so. It's like the Winston Churchill quote: "That is something up with which I will not put.)

2009 National Book Award Finalists

The finalists have been revealed. The winners will be announced November 18 at the National Book Foundation's 60th anniversary celebration. Additionally, Gore Vidal and Dave Eggers will be honored with lifetime achievement awards.

Fiction
Bonnie Jo Campbell, American Salvage (Wayne State University Press)
Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin (Random House)
Daniyal Mueenuddin, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (W.W. Norton & Co.)
Jayne Anne Phillips, Lark and Termite (Alfred A. Knopf)
Marcel Theroux, Far North (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Nonfiction
David M. Carroll, Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Sean B. Carroll, Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt)
Adrienne Mayor, The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy (Princeton University Press)
T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (Alfred A. Knopf)

Poetry
Rae Armantrout, Versed (Wesleyan University Press)
Ann Lauterbach, Or to Begin Again (Viking Penguin)
Carl Phillips, Speak Low (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Open Interval (University of Pittsburgh Press)
Keith Waldrop, Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy (University of California Press)

Young People’s Literature
Deborah Heiligman, Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith (Henry Holt)
Phillip Hoose, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
David Small, Stitches (W.W. Norton & Co.)
Laini Taylor, Lips Touch: Three Times (Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic)
Rita Williams-Garcia, Jumped (HarperTeen/HarperCollins)

Your Vote Counts

Want to help choose The Best of the National Book Awards Fiction winner? You can place your vote HERE and enter your email address to win two tickets to the National Book Awards ceremony on Nov. 18.

And the nominees are . . .

The Stories of John Cheever

Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

The Collected Stories of William Faulkner

The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor

Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon

The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty

I voted. But I don't vote and tell.