Zoo Time By Howard Jacobson Wins British Comic Fiction Prize

“The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize is the UK’s only literary award for comic writing. Celebrating novels in the spirit of P G Wodehouse, the prize prides itself on discovering true comic gems – from Paul Torday’s Salmon Fishing in the Yemen to Marina Lewycka’s A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian and DBC Pierre’s Vernon God Little. Sponsored by Champagne Bollinger, the lucky winner of the prize can expect a jeroboam of Bollinger, as well as a set of the Everyman Wodehouse collection and – in true Wodehousian style – a local pig named after their winning novel.”  Everyman’s Library

The 2013 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize was awarded to Howard Jacobson for Zoo Time. This is Jacobson’s second Wodehouse; he won the Prize in 2000 for The Mighty Walzer. Upon hearing of the recent triumph he said, “This is the only literary prize that actively seeks out and rewards comedy,” Jacobson said. “Other prizes often view it as sort of embarrassing writerly malfunction – which is treacherous, in my view, when you consider the comic origins of the novel and the strong comedic traditions of English writing in particular.”

The other novels shortlisted:

Skios by Michael Frayn
England’s Lane by Joseph Connolly
Heartbreak Hotel by Deborah Moggach
Lightning Rods by Helen DeWitt

Previous winners:

The Mighty Walzer by Howard Jacobson (2000)

The Rotter’s Club by Jonathan Coe (2001)

Spies by Michael Frayn (2002)

Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre (2003)

The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde (2004)

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka (2005)

All Fun and Games until Somebody Loses an Eye by Christopher Brookmyre (2006)

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday (2007)

The Butt by Will Self (2008)

Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer (2009)

Solar by Ian McEwan (2010)

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart (2011)

Snuff by Terry Pratchett (2012)

2013 Edgar Awards Announced

MWA is the premier organization for mystery and crime writers, professionals allied to the crime writing field, aspiring crime writers, and folks who just love to read crime fiction. Each Spring, Mystery Writers of America present the Edgar® Awards, widely acknowledged to be the most prestigious awards in the genre. Click here to see the nominees and winners in every category. Click on the book title to place a hold in the LION catalog.

Best Novel Winner:

Live by Night by Dennis Lehane

Also nominated:

The Lost Ones by Ace Atkins
The Gods of Gotham by Lyndsay Faye
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Potboiler by Jesse Kellerman
Sunset by Al Lamanda
All I Did Was Shoot My Man by Walter Mosley

Best First Novel Winner:

The Expats by Chris Pavone

Also nominated:

The Map of Lost Memories by Kim Fay
Don’t Ever Get Old by Daniel Friedman
Mr. Churchill’s Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal
The 500 by Matthew Quirk
Black Fridays by Michael Sears

Best Fact Crime Winner:

Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China by Paul French

Also nominated:

Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King
More Forensics and Fiction: Crime Writers’ Morbidly Curious Questions Expertly Answered by D.P. Lyle, MD
Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies by Ben Macintyre
The People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo – and the Evil that Swallowed Her Up by Richard Lloyd Parry

RIP: E.L. Konigsburg

E.L. Konigsburg (Elaine Lobl), the children’s book author and illustrator passed away April 19th. She was one of only five authors to win two Newbery Medals. Her books From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth were published in 1967; the first won the Newbery Medal and the second took home a Newbery Honor, making Konigsburg the only author to win both in one year. 29 years later she won her second Newbery Medal with A View From Saturday.

“Many of Konigsburg’s stories feature childhood and adolescent struggles that are easy for school-age readers to understand. Often her characters are striving to find the answers to big questions that will help shape their identities. Many of them are based on her own experiences as a child, the observations she made of children while a teacher, and the experiences or observations of her children.” Eighth Book of Junior Authors and Illustrators

Her books are timeless as the characters and situations resonate with every generation of children. They offer terrific opportunities to read with your child and discuss the happenings of their day.

May Blockbuster Books By Dan Brown & Khaled Hosseini + Great Debuts

Spring is a busy time for publishers…and readers. Not only are these months a prime time for memorable bestselling books to be released, this is also a time when debut authors take their plunge. May will see the sure-to-be-bestseller releases of Dan Brown’s Inferno and Khaled Hosseini’s And The Mountains Echoed as well as 2 highly-anticipated debut novels from award-winning authors.

(Click on the links to place your hold on the book at the Essex Library.)

Inferno by Dan Brown releases on May 14. You’ll likely remember Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code if you were born before 2003. Dr. Langdon returns for more adventure, this time centering on one of history’s most enduring and mysterious literary masterpieces à Dante’s Inferno. Mysteries and riddles abound for the Harvard professor of symbology who battles a chilling adversary as he races to find the answers.

And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini releases May 21. You may remember the author’s previous books: The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. With his new book, Hosseini presents a story inspired by human love, how people take care of one another and how choices resonate through subsequent generations. He explores the many ways in which families nurture, wound, betray, honor, and sacrifice for one another; and how often we are surprised by the actions of those closest to us, at the times that matter most.

In May we’ll also see A Constellation Of Vital Phenomena, the debut novel of Anthony Marra, a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University with an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Marra’s stories have already wowed readers, in the process winning the 2012 Whiting Writers’ Award, a Pushcart Prize, and the Atlantic’s Student Writing Contest. Ann Patchett called his debut novel “simply spectacular”.

Another May debut we’re looking forward to is You Are One Of Them by Elliott Holt. Holt has also won a Pushcart Prize. “Holt’s “prose crackles,” says Michael Cunningham, who runs the fiction section of Brooklyn College’s M.F.A. writing program, which she is graduating from this spring. (2010) “She understands that, in fiction, the sounds of words matter as much as their meanings.”

2013 Pulitzer Prize Winners Announced

Joseph Pulitzer’s 1904 will provided for the establishment of the Pulitzer Prizes to encourage excellence in their fields. Four prizes in letters and drama were established: those were to go to an American novel, an original American play performed in New York, a book on the history of the United States, and an American biography. The first Pulitzers were awarded in 1917. In 1964 a Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction was included.

Last year’s Pulitzer judges failed to award a prize for fiction but yesterday they mended their ways.

Fiction Winner:
The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson
“The Orphan Masters Son” follows a young mans journey through the icy waters, dark tunnels, and eerie spy chambers of the worlds most mysterious dictatorship, North Korea. Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother–a singer “stolen” to Pyongyang–and an influential father who runs Long Tomorrows, a work camp for orphans. There the boy is given his first taste of power, picking which orphans eat first and which will be lent out for manual labor. Recognized for his loyalty and keen instincts, Jun Do comes to the attention of superiors in the state, rises in the ranks, and starts on a road from which there will be no return.

Fiction Finalists:
What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank by Nathan Englander
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

General Non-Fiction Winner:
Devil In The Grove by Gilbert King
Arguably the most important American lawyer of the twentieth century, Thurgood Marshall was on the verge of bringing the landmark suit Brown v. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court when he became embroiled in an explosive and deadly case that threatened to change the course of the civil rights movement and cost him his life.

General Non-Fiction Finalists:
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo
The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature by David George Haskell

History Winner:
Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam by Fredrik Logevall
The struggle for Vietnam occupies a central place in the history of the twentieth century. Fought over a period of three decades, the conflict drew in all the worlds powers and saw two of them–first France, then the United States–attempt to subdue the revolutionary Vietnamese forces. For France, the defeat marked the effective end of her colonial empire, while for America the war left a gaping wound in the body politic that remains open to this day. How did it happen?

History Finalists:
The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675 by Bernard Bailyn
Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History by John Fabian Witt

Biography or Autobiography Winner:
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss
Born to a black slave mother and a fugitive white French nobleman in present-day Haiti, Alex Dumas was briefly sold into bondage but then made his way to Paris where he was schooled as a sword-fighting member of the French aristocracy.

Biography or Autobiography Finalists:
Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece by Michael Gorra
The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy by David Nasaw

2013 Edgar Awards Nominees Announced

Each Spring, Mystery Writers of America present the Edgar Awards, widely acknowledged to be the most prestigious awards in the genre. Below are some of the Nominees for the 2013 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and television, published or produced in 2012. The Edgar Awards will be presented to the winners on May 2, 2013.

(Click on the title to put on hold at the Library.)

Best Novel:

The Lost Ones by Ace Atkins
The Gods of Gotham by Lyndsay Faye
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Potboiler by Jesse Kellerman
Sunset by Al Lamanda
Live by Night by Dennis Lehane
All I Did Was Shoot My Man by Walter Mosley

Best First Novel:

The Map of Lost Memories by Kim Fay
Don’t Ever Get Old by Daniel Friedman
Mr. Churchill’s Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal
The Expats by Chris Pavone
The 500 by Matthew Quirk
Black Fridays by Michael Sears

Best Fact Crime:

Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China by Paul French
Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King
More Forensics and Fiction: Crime Writers’ Morbidly Curious Questions Expertly Answered by D.P. Lyle, MD
Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies by Ben Macintyre
The People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo – and the Evil that Swallowed Her Up by Richard Lloyd Parry

National Book Critics Circle Award Finalists Announced

The National Book Critics Circle Awards are supported, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts. The Awards promote the finest books in 6 categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Memoir/Autobiography, Biography, and Criticism. Books may be by any author from any country; the only requirement is that they be published in the U.S. within the previous calendar year. The Awards will be announced on February 28th in New York.

This year’s finalists for Fiction:

HHhH by Laurent Binet

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain

The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson

Magnificence by Lydia Millet

NW by Zadie Smith

Non-Fiction:

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo

Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power by Steve Coll

Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story by Jim Holt

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen

Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon

Autobiography:

The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande

My Poets by Maureen N. McLane

House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East by Anthony Shadid

Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton

In the House of the Interpreter by Ngugi wa Thiong’o

Biography:

The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro

All We Know: Three Lives by Lisa Cohen

Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece by Michael Gorra

Robert Duncan, The Ambassador from Venus: A Biography by Lisa Jarnot

The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss

Overlooked Titles From 2012

We have posted on the Best Books of 2012; there are many lists that are produced each year by reputable editors and they make for very worthy reading. However, there are generally a few books that slip through the cracks and our conscience is nudging us to present at least a handful of those ‘overlooked’ books. To our astonishment, Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple, What Happened To Sophie Wilder by Christopher Beha and Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead all got overlooked by the Best Of’s list-makers.

The release of Semple’s book in August was a highly anticipated event within the library world and our copy has rarely sat on the shelf for more than a day since its arrival. It deserves a wider readership and perhaps will get one now that the film rights have been bought and the movie will be produced by Nina Jacobson (‘The Hunger Games’) and Megan Ellison (‘Zero Dark Thirty’). Though Beha’s and Shipstead’s books have received less fanfare, they should also merit readers’ attention.

The folks at Flavorwire have put together a list of 25 Notable Books Unfairly Overlooked by ‘The New York Times’ which they describe as “an alternative, or an addendum” to the Times’ list. Take a look and see which others will find their way to your to-be-read pile. Click on the book jacket to place a hold on the book.

Slate’s Overlooked Books Of 2012

The New York Times annual Notable Books list is generally held as the go-to list for folks looking for the best books of the year to read. Slate’s Book Review critics don’t have much quarrel with the Notables selection, except for 20 books that didn’t make the cut. Here’s their list of books you may not have heard about but definitely should have, including their reasons why it’s a good read.

Put holds on books in our catalog here.

Far From The Tree By Andrew Solomon

We’re big fans of Andrew Solomon here at the Library. He has written articulately on disparate subjects for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Artforum and Travel And Leisure. His book, The Noonday Demon, won the 2001 National Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. It has provided solace and wisdom to many suffering from depression. Joyce Carol Oates in her review for The New York Times wrote: ”The Noonday Demon” is a considerable accomplishment. It is likely to provoke discussion and controversy, and its generous assortment of voices, from the pathological to the philosophical, makes for rich, variegated reading.” He is also an impassioned advocate of reading. His opinion in The New York Times, The Closing Of The American Book sets out some pretty good arguments for the benefits of reading for pleasure.

Solomon’s latest book– Far From The Tree, released in November, is an exploration of families with children with “horizontal identities”; a term Solomon uses for children who are very different from their parents. Author Julie Myerson writes in her review of the book in The New York Times Book Review: “It contains a spark of real surprise, and it’s probably testament to the warmth and kindness with which he’s explored the stories of so many others that you find yourself catching your breath, suddenly apprehensive for him, as his life appears poised to come undone. To reveal more would spoil something, but suffice it to say that you end this journey through difference and diversity with an even stronger conviction that life is endlessly, heart-stoppingly, fragile and unknowable.” We believe this latest book will be at least as well-received as The Noonday Demon, if not more so.

Note: The editors of The New York Times Book Review have selected Far From The Tree as one of its 10 Best Books of 2012.