Every year, readers, publishers, and those in the book business
wait breathlessly for the major literary awards to be announced.
Here are some recent award winners.
Every year, readers, publishers, and those in the book business wait breathlessly for the major literary awards to be announced. Here are some recent award winners.
The Booker Prize was awarded to the Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Pi Patel, the 16-year-old son of a zookeeper, dabbles in not only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity and Islam. His faith is tested when his family’s cargo ship sinks, and he finds himself stranded on a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and a Bengal tiger.
Finalists for this award included Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry, Unless by Carol Shields, The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor, Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, and Dirt by Tim Winton.
Julia Glass won the National Book Award for Fiction for Three Junes. The relationships between a Scottish patriarch, his wife, sons, and the people and animals that they come to love are explored in this account of three summers.
Big If by Mark Costello, You are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett, Gorgeous Lies by Martha McPhee, and The Heaven of Mercury by Brad Watson were finalists for this award.
Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. In this third installment of what is arguably one the most important biographies of our times, Caro explores Johnson’s years in the senate from 1949 to 1960.
The finalists for this award were When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution by Devra Davis, Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science by Atul Gawande, The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert, and Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past Through Our Genes by Steve Olson.
The National Book Award for Poetry was awarded to In the Next Galaxy by Ruth Stone. In her eighth volume of poetry, Stone explores her Virginia upbringing, her husband’s suicide, aging, slices of Americana, and ecological and political issues.
Sleeping With the Dictionary by Harryette Mullen, The Unswept Room by Sharon Olds, The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body by Alberto Rios and Shadow in Heaven by Ellen Bryant Voigt were finalists.
Imre Kertesz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for novels including Fateless and Kaddish for a Child Not Born. The Academy described the works of this survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald as “writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history.”
Empire Falls by Richard Russo won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Empire Falls is a small Maine logging and textile town in Maine that has fallen on hard times. Miles Roby returned home from college to help his struggling family, and never left. Now he is trying to raise a family of his own amidst the decay.
The Pulitzer Prize for History was awarded to The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America by Louis Menand. Oliver Well Holmes, Jr., William James, and Charles Sanders Peirce (logician, scientist, and the founder of semiotics) were among the members of the Metaphysical Club. Menand argues that this group shaped the future of American thought.
David McCullough won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography for John Adams. This biography revolves around the complex relationship with between Adams and Jefferson, and the inspiring love affair between Adams and his wife, Abigail.
Practical Gods by Carl Dennis won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. The New York Times describes Dennis’ works as “wise, original, and often deeply moving” poems that “ease the reader out of accustomed modes of seeing and perceiving.”
The Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction went to Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution by Diane McWhorter. McWhorter describes the violent reactions to desegregation marches in Birmingham, including the Ku Klux Klan’s bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, which killed four young black girls.
Previous year’s winners are listed on Santa Clara County Library’s website at http://www.santaclaracountylib.org. Just click on Search Our Web Catalog, then Bestsellers and Other Lists. This catalog shows the number of copies available at the Morgan Hill Library and other Santa Clara County Libraries. Library patrons with a Santa Clara County Library card and personal identification (PIN) number, can place holds by clicking Place a Hold. Patrons’ selections will be held at the Morgan Hill Library checkout desk.
Questions and suggested topics for At The Library, which appears in Tuesday editions, should be directed to Community Librarian Sarah Flowers at sf******@**********************ca.us or call 779-3196.
