Open Letter has posted a list of 25 contenders for the best translated book of 2008 (into English), which makes a fine guide to recently-published literature from around the world. Ten finalists will be named in late January 27, with the winning titles announced on February 19th at a party at the Melville House offices.Open Letter
Awards
NYT's Top Ten–A Near-Sweep for Random; USAT Gift Picks
The paper has announced their ten best books of 2008, which looks a lot like a Knopf catalog: FictionDANGEROUS LAUGHTER, by Steven Millhauser (Knopf)A MERCY, by Toni Morrison (Knopf)UNACCUSTOMED EARTH, by Jhumpa Lahiri (Knopf)NETHERLAND, by Joseph O’Neill (Pantheon)2666, by Roberto Bolano (FSG) NonfictionTHE FOREVER WAR, by Dexter Filkins (Knopf)NOTHING TO BE FRIGHTENED OF, by Julian Barnes (Knopf)THIS REPUBLIC OF SUFFERING, by Drew Gilpin Faust (Knopf)THE WORLD IS WHAT IT IS, by Patrick French (Knopf)THE DARK SIDE, by Jane Mayer (Doubleday) Separately, USA Today has a guide to holiday books in multiple categories. Among “bestsellers,” the top “critic’s pick” is Dennis […]
UK Prize for The Rest Is Noise
A prize a day keeps the blues away. This time last year Alex Ross’s THE REST IS NOISE was making multiple Top 10 lists in the US and now it is the “the clear and undisputed winner” of the Guardian First Book Prize in the UK. Guardian literary editor Claire Armitstead, said: “In some quarters this book has been seen as not having a popular appeal. Our prize – which, uniquely, relies on readers’ groups in the early stages of judging – proves that, on the contrary, there is a huge appetite among readers for clear, serious but accessible books.”Guardian
People and Awards: $1 Mil "American Nobel"; Telegraph Editor Let Go
Two historians–Princeton’s Peter Robert Lamont Brown and Romila Thapar, emeritus professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University–will share the Library of Congress’s $1 million Kluge Prize. The award “honors lifetime achievement in studies not covered by the Nobel, including history, philosophy, politics, anthropology, sociology, religion, criticism in the arts and humanities, and linguistics.” Brown, called among “the greatest historians of the last three centuries,” is best-known for his book The World of Late Antiquity (Norton) and The Rise of Western Christendom (Wiley-Blackwell), while Thapar’s A History of India (Penguin) and Early India (U.of California Press “were breakthrough works, replacing a static view […]
Award for Tinti; Honors for Galassi
Hannah Tinti won the 2008 John Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize for THE GOOD THIEF The Good Thief, presented last night at the Mercantile Library Center for Fiction’s benefit dinner. But the focus of this Bloomberg piece is on Farrar, Straus publisher Jonathan Galassi, honored with the Maxwell E. Perkins Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Field of Fiction. The Mercantile says, “Galassi was chosen in recognition of his career as both an editor and a publisher who has supported and shaped the work of a dazzling array of writers, carrying on the tradition exemplified so well by Maxwell Perkins.” […]
Newspaper Picks
The NYT has picked and picked and picked. The Book Review posted its list of 100 Notable Books for 2008, and critics Michiko Kakutani and Janet Maslin selected personal top 10 lists. Only 5 of the critics’ picks are on TBR’s list which, as usual, features a number of books by New York Times’ staffers (and at least one NYT company employee at the Boston Globe), if they do say so themselves. It’s less numerically pretty for children, where the Book Review came up with eight notable books. Here are the critics’ lists, asterisked where they overlap with the Book […]