The retailer announced nominees for their 13th annual Original Voices awards in four categories. Winners will be named in January. The fiction candidates are: Dear American Airlines, by Jonathan MilesThe Cellist of Sarajevo, by Steven GallowayThe Good Thief, by Hannah Tinti The Lace Reader, by Brunonia Barry The Somnambulist, by Jonathan BarnesThe White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga Release
Awards
NBA Sales: The Starting Line
By our informal online sales monitoring at Amazon and BN.com, the Obama Book Club recommendations continue to outpace Wednesday night’s National Book Award winners: Doris Kearns Goodwin: 14/17Tom Daschle: 18/49Jonathan Alter: 73/126 with Peter Mathiessen’s Shadow Country the closest contender. But, as more than one observer has pointed out via e-mail, the starting bar for sales of the award winners was pretty modest. According to Nielsen BookScan’s figures for sales through last Saturday, approximate sales for the NBA winners were: The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, by Annette Gordon-Reed: 11,000 copiesShadow Country, by Peter Matthiessen: 6,000 copiesWhat I Saw […]
Trying to "Glam Things Up" at the NBAs
Grove Atlantic publisher Morgan Entrekin and agent Lynn Nesbit chaired the National Book Awards this year, “trying to move it out a little bit for people who are interested in books but aren’t necessarily in the business” as executive director Harold Augenbraum of the National Book Foundation tells the Observer. The article explains how that translated into action: “With the help of veteran literary agent Lynn Nesbit, Mr. Entrekin did the thing the only way he knew how: by moving the dinner from a tacky hotel in Times Square to Cipriani’s Wall Street; spiking the normal guest list of editors […]
Lannan Honorees; New Grand Masters
The Lannan Foundation announced its 2008 literary awards and fellowships: Literary AwardAugust Kleinzahler, Poetry Two-Year Literary FellowshipsCharles D’Ambrosio, FictionKatie Ford, PoetryIlya Kaminsky, PoetryGlenn Patterson, Fiction Notable Book AwardsBlack Mass, by John GrayLiving with Darwin, by Philip KitcherDemocracy Incorporated, by Sheldon S. Wolin Site Separately, James Lee Burke and Sue Grafton were both named Grand Masters of the genre by the Mystery Writers of America.
National Book Awards: Matthiessen, Gordon-Reed, Blundell, and Doty
FictionPeter Matthiessen, Shadow Country (Modern Library)NonfictionAnnette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello (W.W. Norton & Company)Young People’s Literature Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied (Scholastic) PoetryMark Doty, Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems (HarperCollins). We started sales tracking the winners online as soon as they were announced last night. (Amazon is the first column; BN.com the second): MathiessenStart: 1,321 1,416Now: 265 92 Gordon-ReedStart: 1,100 1,282Now: 317 167 DotyStart: 51,418 38,416Now: 3,391 40,790BlundellStart: 23,200 63,008Now: 3,378 50,756Some quotes from the coverage: Gordon-Reed: “It’s sort of wonderful […]
Ricci Takes GG as Hage Is Shut Out; Costa Gives Barry Second Chance
Nino Ricci won Canada’s Governor General’s award for fiction for his just-published novel ORIGIN OF SPECIES, and journalist Christie Blatchford won the non-fiction award for her book FIFTEEN DAYS: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army. (Both titles were edited by Doubleday Canada Editorial Director Martha Kanya-Forstner.) Rawi Hage’s COCKROACH was the only work of fiction nominated for all three of Canada’s top fiction prizes, but failed to win any of the top honors. Click below for all 14 Governor General winners (with prizes for writing in both English and French).CBC In the UK, […]