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)

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

This thought-provoking topic will be the subject of a talk for the Essex Library by architect Robert Orr, FAIA, LEED®, a part of the continuing Centerbrook Architects Lecture series. Robert Orr is an award-winning architect and planner present at the first sip of coffee that became the grounds for the New Urbanism in the mid-1970s. His collaboration with Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk at Seaside, Florida in 1982 was honored by Time Magazine as “…the most astonishing design achievement of its era and one might hope the most influential.” Robert furnished more than 6,000 hours of mostly pro-bono services to storm-ravaged Gulf Coast Mississippi and New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. A Founder of the Seaside Institute, a think-tank on community design and development, Robert also serves on Boards of many other vision-based organizations in Florida, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, Rhodes Island, Washington, Vermont, Maine and Connecticut.

“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.

(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.”

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

Friday April 12th at 7 p.m. at the Essex Town Hall

Click here to see the entire Centerbrook Lecture Series schedule for 2012-2013.

April 4th at 7 p.m. at the Essex Town Hall

Is time travel possible? Einstein thought so – and so does Dr. Mallett, University of Connecticut Professor of Physics and researcher into particle and field theory. In fact, his determination to unlock this particular secret is why he became a physicist in the first place. You may have seen him on the Science Channel, or on the BBC’s documentary about time travel researchers: Hear about his current research into this fascinating topic.

Sincere thanks to local business BrandTech Scientific, Inc. for sponsoring the Science For Everyone series.