The mission of the National Book Foundation and the National Book Awards is to celebrate the best of American literature, to expand its audience, and to enhance the cultural value of good writing in America. The 2013 Finalists are:
The mission of the National Book Foundation and the National Book Awards is to celebrate the best of American literature, to expand its audience, and to enhance the cultural value of good writing in America. The 2013 Finalists are:
The Man Booker Prize aims to promote the finest in fiction by rewarding the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. The winner will be announced on October 15.
PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize: To an author whose debut work — a first novel or collection of short stories published in 2012 — represents distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise. Winner:A Naked Singularity by Sergio De La Pava
PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction: To an author of a distinguished book of general nonfiction possessing notable literary merit and critical perspective and illuminating important contemporary issues which has been published in the United States during 2011 or 2012. Winner:Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo (downloadable audiobook, eBook)
PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay: For a book of essays published in 2012 that exemplifies the dignity and esteem that the essay form imparts to literature. Winner:What Light Can Do by Robert Hass
PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award: For a book of literary nonfiction on the subject of the physical or biological sciences published in 2012. Winner:Subliminal by Leonard Mlodinow
PEN Open Book Award: For an exceptional book-length work of literature by an author of color published in 2012. Winners:Gun Dealers’ Daughter by Gina Apostol & The Grey Album by Kevin Young
PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing: To honor a nonfiction book on the subject of sports published in 2012. Winner:Over Time by Frank Deford
PEN Translation Prize: For a book-length translation of prose into English published in 2012. Winner:The Island of Second Sight by Albert Vigoleis Thelen, translated from the German by Donald O. White
The Man Booker Prize aims to promote the finest in fiction by rewarding the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. The books longlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize are:
The Man Booker Prize aims to promote the finest in fiction by rewarding the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. The books longlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize are:
Don’t let the recommended grades fool you – if you’re interested in a certain topic, you’re bound to love the book.
Anderson, Laurie Halse. Forge. 2010. 7th Grade
Separated from his friend Isabel after their daring escape from slavery, fifteen-year-old Curzon serves as a free man in the Continental Army at Valley Forge until he and Isabel are thrown together again, as slaves once more. Sequel to Chains. Ties in with: 7th Grade Social Studies & English
Bray, Libba. The Diviners. 2012. 11th Grade.
Seventeen-year-old Evie O’Neill is thrilled when she is exiled from small-town Ohio to New York City in 1926, even when a rash of occult-based murders thrusts Evie and her uncle, the curator of The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult, into the thick of the investigation. Ties in with: 11th Grade Social Studies & English Of interest to anyone taking a class about New York City’s history
Chibbaro, Julie. Deadly. 2011. 7th-8th Grade.
Set during the Typhoid Fever epidemic of 1906, Prudence Galewski leaves school to take a job assisting the head epidemiologist at New York City’s Department of Health and Sanitation. During a time when medicine and science was open only to men, she’ll have to prove to herself and the city that she can help solve one of the great medical mysteries of the time. Ties in with: 7th Grade English, Social Studies, and Science
Johnson, Alaya Dawn. Moonshine: a novel. 2010. 11th Grade.
Zephyr Hollis is an underfed, overzealous social activist who teaches night school to the underprivileged of the Lower East Side. Strapped for cash, Zephyr agrees to help a student, the mysterious Amir, who proposes she use her charity work cover to bring down a notorious vampire mob boss. What he doesn’t tell her is why. Soon enough she’s tutoring a child criminal with an angelic voice, dodging vampires high on a new blood-based street drug, and trying to determine the real reason behind Amir’s request. Ties in with: 11th Grade English & Social Studies Of interest to anyone taking a class about New York City’s history
Meloy, Maile. The Apothecary. 2011. 8th Grade.
It’s 1952 and the Scott family has just from L.A. to London. Here, fourteen-year-old Janie meets a mysterious apothecary and his son, Benjamin Burrows – a fascinating boy who’s not afraid to stand up to authority and dreams of becoming a spy. When Benjamin’s father is kidnapped, the two must uncover the secrets of the apothecary’s sacred book, the Pharmacopoeia, in order to find him, all the while keeping it out of the hands of their enemies – Russian spies in possession of nuclear weapons. Discovering and testing potions they never believed could exist, Janie and Benjamin embark on a dangerous race to save the apothecary and prevent impending disaster. Ties in with: 8th Grade English, Social Studies, and Science
Napoli, Donna Jo. The Wager. 2010. 10th Grade.
Having lost everything in a tidal wave in 1169 Sicily, nineteen-year-old Don Giovanni makes a simple-sounding wager with a stranger he recognizes as the devil but, while desperate enough to surrender his pride and good looks for three years, three months, and three days, he is not willing to give up his soul. Ties in with: 10th Grade English and Social Studies, AP European History
Wein, Elizabeth. Code Name Verity. 2012. 10th Grade.
In 1943, a British fighter plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France and the survivor tells a tale of friendship, war, espionage, and great courage as she relates what she must do to survive while keeping secret all that she can. Ties in with: 10th Grade English and Social Studies, AP European History
Experience the Jazz Age with novels and nonfiction exploring the Roaring Twenties and the tragic lives of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.
Experience the Jazz Age with novels and nonfiction exploring the Roaring Twenties and the tragic lives of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.
FICTION
Beautiful Fools: The Last Affair of Zelda & Scott Fitzgerald by R. Clifton Spargo
In 1939 Scott is living in Hollywood, a virulent alcoholic and deeply in debt. He arranges a trip to Cuba in an attempt to save his fractured marriage to Zelda. But even in paradise, Scott and Zelda cannot escape the dangerous intensity of their relationship.
Call Me Zelda by Erika Robuck
Fighting to forge an identity independent of her famous husband as she teeters on the brink of madness, Zelda Fitzgerald is committed to a psychiatric hospital in 1932. She finds a sympathetic friend in nurse Anne Howard, who is held captive by her own tragic past.
Gatsby’s Girl by Caroline Preston
Based on the life of Genevra King, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first love and muse, from their first meeting, through their intense epistolary romance, to her marriage to a dashing young aviator, as she reflects on what her life would have been if she had chosen the writer instead.
The Gin Lovers by Jamie Brenner
Living with her controlling husband in 1920s New York, socialite Charlotte Delacorte’s life changes when her sister-in-law Mae takes up residence with the couple and introduces Charlotte to the flapper revolution.
The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell
A typist for the NYC Police Department in 1923, prim, old-fashioned Rose Baker becomes obsessed with a glamorous newcomer and her world of bobbed hair, smoking, and speakeasies.
A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion by Ron Hansen
A tale based on a true story from 1920s Manhattan follows the affair between voluptuous Ruth Snyder and undergarment salesman Judd Gray, whose plot to kill Ruth’s husband triggers an explosive police investigation.
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler
A tale inspired by the marriage of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald follows their union in defiance of her father’s opposition and her scandalous transformation into a Jazz Age celebrity in the literary party scenes of New York, Paris, and the French Riviera.
NONFICTION
Bobbed Hair & Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties by Marion Meade (CD book)
A portrait of four extraordinary writers–Dorothy Parker, Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Edna Ferber–whose loves, lives, and literary endeavors embodied the spirit of the 1920s.
F. Scott Fitzgerald by Ruth Prigozy
Scott Fitzgerald’s life reads like one of his own stories: a young man of great promise marries into wealth, but beneath the golden surface lie alcoholism, debt, insecurity, and in Fitzgerald’s particular case, the mental instability of his beautiful, unconventional wife, Zelda.
Sometimes Madness Is Wisdom: Zelda & Scott Fitzgerald: A Marriage by Kendall Taylor
A new perspective into the tumultuous marriage of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald details their complex relationship, which eventually resulted in his becoming an incurable alcoholic and her descent into madness.
Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise by Sally Cline
A portrait of the Jazz Age artist and wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald traces their dysfunctional marriage, Zelda’s work as a painter and dancer, and her struggle to define herself despite the glamorous flapper identity placed upon her by her husband.
The American Library Association (ALA) has selected six books as finalists for the 2013 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction, awarded for the previous year’s best fiction and nonfiction books written for adult readers and published in the U.S. The 2013 finalists are:
Canada by Richard Ford (CD book, eBook, MP3 CD)
After his parents are arrested and imprisoned for robbing a bank, 15-year-old Dell Parsons is taken in by Arthur Remlinger who, unbeknownst to Dell, is hiding a dark and violent nature that interferes with Dell’s quest to find grace and peace on the prairie of Saskatchewan.
The Round House by Louise Erdrich (CD book, eBook, large print book)
When his mother, a tribal enrollment specialist living on a reservation in North Dakota, slips into an abyss of depression after being brutally attacked, fourteen-year-old Joe Coutz sets out with his three friends to find the person that destroyed his family.
This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz (CD book)
Presents a collection of stories that explores the heartbreak and radiance of love as it is shaped by passion, betrayal, and the echoes of intimacy.
NONFICTION
The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death by Jill Lepore
A history of American ideas about life and death includes coverage of topics ranging from the 17th-century Englishman who investigated a belief about life starting with eggs and the heated debates over Darwin’s evolutionary findings to the role of the Space Age in changing views on planetary life to the 1970s trends in cryogenics.
Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen
Examines the emergence and causes of new diseases all over the world, describing a process called “spillover” where illness originates in wild animals before being passed to humans and discusses the potential for the next huge pandemic.
The Women’s Prize for Fiction is annually awarded to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English. The titles on the longlist for the 2013 prize, which will be awarded on June 5, are:
The Women’s Prize for Fiction is annually awarded to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English. The titles on the longlist for the 2013 prize, which will be awarded on June 5, are:
Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe has died at the age of 82. His first novel, Things Fall Apart, has sold more than 12 million copies since its publication in 1958. In 2007, Achebe was awarded the Man Booker International Prize for lifetime achievement.
Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe has died at the age of 82. His first novel, Things Fall Apart, has sold more than 12 million copies since its publication in 1958. In 2007, Achebe was awarded the Man Booker International Prize for lifetime achievement.
