Book Awards

Poetry in America

RosemaryLeave a comment

On the evening of Wednesday, November 16th, the National Book Award winners will be announced at the NBA Benefit Dinner in NYC. The awards are given by the book publishing industry and honor the very best of American literature. Each selected author receives a prize of $10,000.
Since poetry is a special love of mine, I am particularly interested in the Poetry Award. These authors are the finalists for this year’s award: Nikky Finney, Yusef Komunyakaa, Carl Phillips, Adrienne Rich, and Bruce Smith. I wonder which poet will carry home the beautiful crystal sculpture and prize?
If you can’t choose a favorite from among this esteemed group, why not try one of our poetry anthologies? Two of my favorites are edited by none other than Garrison Keillor: Good Poems for Hard Times and Good Poems American Places. He has selected poems heard on The Writer’s Almanac on public radio. These anthologies contain so many beautiful, thought-provoking poems. No matter your taste in poetry, I think you will find a few gems in these books.

~Rosemary

2011 Thriller Awards

EvelynLeave a comment

Last Saturday the International Thriller Writers announced their 2011 awards at their annual ThrillerFest in New York City.

The best hardcover novel award went to John Sandford for Bad Blood.

 J.T. Ellison took home the award for best original paperback with The Cold Room. And Still Missing by Chevy Stevens won the best first novel category.

If you like thrillers as much as I do, try searching for them in our Reading Room. I think that you’ll find some great reads!

~Evelyn

Latest Additions

staceyLeave a comment

Weee! It’s up! It’s down! This weather is like a crazy roller-coaster ride! We’re having the craziest weather ever! I’m glad to see some leaves turn colors, perhaps promising some true fall weather, but the weird temperature highs and lows make everything feel unpredicable and confusing… yeesh! Okay. All right. Now I feel better. Thanks for letting me get that pesky weather rant out of my system and I can move on to sharing some books! Today I’ve got two completely different lists of titles I’d like to provide! The first list will be the newest books added to The Reading Room, and it’s a lovely collection of fiction books for all ages! The second list comes courtsey of VOYA, a professional journal dedicated to all things teen, and it celebrates the best young adult nonfiction published in 2009. I was lucky enough to be in charge of organizing this particular list for the past two years and, sadly for me, this means my turn is over. It was challenging, it was fun, and it was a great experience, plus it meant a lot of free books for our library! That’s a whole bunch of win/win/wins, right? Right! But first things first, let’s start with… The Reading Room!

The Condition by Jennifer Haigh
Private Life by Jane Smiley
The Cardturner by Louis Sachar
Intelligence by Susan Hasler
One Day by David Nicholls

And list number two is the VOYA 2009 Nonfiction Honor List! The committee really tried to make sure that the list reflected titles that would be of interest to a wide variety of teens, teachers, and -gasp- even regular, old adults! Honestly! If you don’t believe me, just ask my co-workers! They were kind enough to provide me with their opinions on select titles, and I think they might be willing to share those opinions with you too! (If you ask nicely -like I did!)

Now it’s up to you… Which book will you read next? And with so many options, how will you ever choose? Enjoy!

—Stacey

Freedom to Read: 50th Anniversary of To Kill a Mockingbird

DonnaLeave a comment

Please take a moment and  look at this video from the CBS Sunday Morning News from July 2010:

 To Kill a Mockingbird Turns 50

 
“The trouble with censorship is that once it starts it is hard to stop. Just about every book contains something that someone objects to.”
~Studs Terkel~

The classic, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee has sold over 30 million copies worldwide since its publication in 1960 and has been translated into more than 40 languages. Yet, according to the American Library Association, it still remains one of the top books challenged each year because of its racial theme and offensive language. Isn’t that interesting? Yet, all around the country,  we still are celebrating its 50th anniversary.


To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is one of my all-time favorite books and I have read it several times. Its powerful message of racial injustice has stayed with me from the very first time that I read this book in high school. Yes, there are things in the book that I did not like and it upset me. Would I ever consider banning it? No!

  I’m grateful to have that freedom to read!

Happy Reading!

Donna

 

Diagram Prize

DonnaLeave a comment

Six finalists have been announced by The Bookseller for the Diagram Prize, the literary award given annually to the book with the oddest title. This year’s eccentricities are:
Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter by David Crompton
Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich by James A. Yannes
Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes by Daina Taimina
Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots by Ronald C. Arkin
The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease by Ellen Scherl and Maria Dubinsky
What Kind of Bean is This Chihuahua? By Tara Jensen-Meyer

 
You can vote for your favorite title on The Bookseller‘s website. The winner will be announced on March 26.

Happy Reading!  ~Donna

(keep thinking warm thoughts…Spring will eventually get here!)

 

More and More Book Awards!

staceyLeave a comment

More books were recognized for their ability to stand out from the crowd at ALA’s Midwinter Conference; isn’t that nice? So shall we take a moment to take a look at a few more lists? The Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) passed out a whole big bunch of awards! They selected 25 fiction, non-fiction, and poetry books for their 2010 Notable Books list. They selected books for The Reading List which is made up of eight genres. And some reference book awards and individual awards that might be of interest if you are die-hard fan of any and all kinds of awards!

But perhaps you’d like to be a leader instead of a follower? Perhaps you’d like to start a list of your own Notable Books so you can be ready to see how they stack up against the official 2011 Notable Books list? You might want to start checking out what the independent bookstores are predicting will be the next hot title. The IndieBound list is always full of interesting suggestions!

Oh, the choices! Maybe you’ll want to switch back and forth between the all the lists? And still leave room for what’s coming in The Latest Additions? That sounds like a great plan!

—Stacey

Latest Additions

staceyLeave a comment

Well. You know. You know how technology can be, right? Sometimes it’s your best friend and sometimes it just likes to mess with your head a little bit? I think The Reading Room is our best friend 99% of the time, so I’m sure we can forgive this strange 1% when it’s messing with us a little.

And really, it’s okay because now we can ponder the awards given out this morning at the American Library Association’s Midwinter Conference! It’s a big day in the book world. I think it’s a bit like the Oscars, when you have a couple big awards that everyone tunes in for and then there are the many more, lesser known awards that are still prestigious to win but mostly unfamiliar to the general public. Does that make sense? In either case, I do believe it would truly be an honor just to be nominated! But in our book obsessed minds, today’s big awards are The John Newbery Medal and the Randolph Caldecott Medal! ALA put out a press release saying When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead won the Newbery and The Lion and The Mouse written and illustrated by Jerry Pinkney won the Caldecott. Exciting, no? Or you can watch a video of the Youth Media Awards being announced this morning. So when you think about it, that’s a lot of pre-approved, actual winners to choose from! And I’m hoping it should be enough to keep you busy while the final adjustments are made to The Reading Room?

Enjoy!

—Stacey

What If There Were an American Author Idol?

Evelyn1 Comment

Would we judge authors on their looks? their prose? or maybe even the jacket covers of their books? Hmmm…..What a dilemma! I was wondering about this last night since it was pretty quiet on the reference desk and someone suggested that everyone was home watching American Idol. They told me there was even a Facebook page asking President Obama not to schedule his State of the Union speech to conflict with the program.

If I apply American Idol judging to pick the book I read next, which do you think would win?

The Bone Chamber by Robin Burcell

 

The First Rule by Robert Crais

 

Or, Impact by Douglas Preston

I like them all, so I’ll just flip a coin to choose. Maybe I’m just a little Paula  Abdul-ish at heart.

~Evelyn

ALA Youth Awards

MeganLeave a comment

Every January at their Midwinter Conference the American Library Association announces the winners of their youth media awards. In addition to the well-know Caldecott and Newbery Awards, there will be a new awards given this year. 2010 will mark the first year of the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults. The five finalists for this new award were announced this week. So, without further ado, I present to you the shortlist.

Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream by Tanya Lee Stone

In the 1960’s NASA doctors decided to find out if women were capable of passing the grueling tests required to become an astronaut. Their work on the Mercury 13 project paved the way for female pilots and space commanders. You can find this book in the Children’s nonfiction collection.

Charles and Emma: the Darwin’s Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman

Using a very scientific approach, Charles Darwin weighs the pros and cons of marriage to his strictly religious cousin. This biography examines how Darwin’s personal life affected his scientific work and how his scientific beliefs affected his marriage. This book can be found in Teen Biography.

Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice by Phillip Hoose

Claudette Colvin was arrested and jailed at the age of 15 for refusing to giver her seat on the bus to a white woman. Colvin was a little-known player in the Montgomery Bus Boycott and a plaintiff in the landmark civil rights case against the bus company, Browder v. Gayle. You can find this book in Children’s Biography.

The Great and Only Barnum: The Tremendous and Stupendous Life of Showman P. T. Barnum by Candace Fleming

The title says it all! This is illustrated biography gives readers and inside look at the exciting life of P.T Baranum, who joined the circus at the age of 60! This book will be coming soon to the Teen collection. You can place a hold on it now though.

And finally…

Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland by Sally M. Walker

Forensic archeologists excavate human remains from colonial sites and use their findings to learn more about life in colonial time. This book is available in Children’s Nonfiction.

The winner will be announce next month. Check out these fantastic nonfiction books soon and decide for yourself which deserves to win. I will let you know in January if you picked a winner.

˜Megan

And the winner is…

DoriLeave a comment

I don’t know if you follow the Man Booker prize, which is a prize given to the best book of the year by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland,  but the announcement of the winner is tonight. They first choose a ‘longlist’ of titles and then winnow it down to a ‘shortlist’ of six titles. This year they include: The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters; The Glass Room by Simon Mawer; Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel; The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds; Summertime by JM Coetzee; and The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt.  In Britain, the bookies have the odds on Wolf Hall. Imagine betting on a book prize.

I usually try to check out all the nominated books, including those from the ‘longlist’, but this year not all have been published in the United States yet and well, the best laid plans and all that. I only got around to reading Brooklyn by Colm Toibin and I’m about halfway through listening to The Little Stranger. Brooklyn was a beautifully written book about an immigrant’s experience, but The Little Stranger has been slow moving. Part story of the vanishing upper class and part ghost story, I’ve heard a lot about the tumbling down Hundreds Hall, but I have yet to encounter a ghost. I want the ghost!

For a cheeky British digest of the nominated titles and to see the current odds, check out the Guardian book blog.

~ Dori