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.” […]
Awards
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 […]
Borders Original Voices Nominees
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
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.