National Book Award

Mirabell

Mirabell

Former Member
re: National Book Award 2010

The poetry shortlist is much, much better than last year's ignominous pile of shit. There are duds there too but lots of decent stuff. CD Wright, Monica Youn and sometimes (!) even Terrance Hayes write decent to good poetry. Thank God.

On the nonfiction list the Demick looks like a winner, yes? It's easily one of last year's most highly praised nonfiction books.
 
miobrien

miobrien

Reader
Re: National Book Award 2010

Daniel del Real said:
And what about the fiction list?
Besides Carey I don't know any of the other authors. Any good?
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I'm intrigued by Krauss' Great House.


Mirabell said:
The poetry shortlist is much, much better than last year's ignominous pile of shit. There are duds there too but lots of decent stuff. CD Wright, Monica Youn and sometimes (!) even Terrance Hayes write decent to good poetry. Thank God.

On the nonfiction list the Demick looks like a winner, yes? It's easily one of last year's most highly praised nonfiction books.
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I love C. D. Wright. Looking forward to this new book.
 
S

Stiffelio

Reader
Re: National Book Award 2010

The winners have been announced today:

http://www.nationalbook.org/


[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]The 2010 National Book Award Winners[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif] Young People's Literature

[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Kathryn Erskine[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Mockingbird [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Philomel Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group[/FONT]


[/FONT][FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif] Poetry

[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Terrance Hayes[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Lighthead [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Penguin Books[/FONT]



[/FONT][FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif] Nonfiction
Patti Smith
Just Kids Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers



[/FONT][FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif] Fiction

Jaimy Gordon
Lord of Misrule
McPherson & Co.

[/FONT][FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]For more information, visit the Foundation's website at www.nationalbook.org.
[/FONT]
 
waalkwriter

waalkwriter

Reader
Re: National Book Award 2010

To be brutally honest, I've had trouble in recent years distinguishing which award was worse; the Pulitzer or the National Book Award. It is a tough decision, because on one hand the Pulitzer is fond of the dull Americana lit I've run out of patience for, but the National Book Award gives it to authors like Richard Powers and his book The Echo-Maker, (I might have something there mixed up, I've tried very hard to forget that terrible book). Though their lifetime achievement awards tend to be good choices. Anyway, I've been rather disinterested by most of the Pulitzer/Booker/National Book Award winners of the last 5-10 years, though in general I've tended to like less modern literature more than whatever the current fads are, particularly with various stylistic cliques of postmodernism being in vogue still and other forms of stylism for its own sake.
 
E

Eric

Former Member
Re: National Book Award 2010

There is a certain hubris involved in calling something the "National Book Award" without bothering to say which nation it is. There are several English-speaking nations, but these people assume that we automatically assume that the nation involved here is the one that is most powerful in the world. We Brits used to play that trick years ago when, for instance, the name of the country was never written on postage stamps, as we Brits invented them and assumed that people would know that the unnamed country was, of course, the hub of the British Empire.

Except for the much-hyped Patti Smith, I've never heard of the winners of this award.
 
S

Stiffelio

Reader
2011 National Book Awards

The finalists for the 2011 National Book Awards have been announced.

http://www.nationalbook.org/

The winners will be announced on November 16th. Poet John Ashbery will be awarded a National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
 
Daniel del Real

Daniel del Real

Moderator
redhead

redhead

Blahblahblah
National Book Award 2015

http://www.bustle.com/articles/1248...unced-and-its-a-huge-night-for-diverse-voices

I had actually ordered Adam Johnson's before the award, I loved The Orphan Master's Son so I thought why not. The Coates is definitely political, but also looks the most interesting of the nonfiction shortlist.

I'm happy the judges did not bow down and choose a book based on how big a seller it is (this article is the worst: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/18/national-book-awards-how-obscure-can-the-judges-go ). The NBA is probably my favorite American book award. It's a bit crazy; half the time the winner will be an absolute dud while the other half the winner will be some amazing book that will get ignored everywhere else (not the best batting average, but I'd rather it than the almost consistent mediocre Pulitzer track record). Recently, though, they've been trying to be more mainstream, with mixed results imo. Glad they didn't just give it to the favorite: while I haven't read A Little Life yet, it's reception has me a bit put off. It seems like this year's Goldfinch, the bestseller that really isn't as great or literary as everyone says and is filled with huge flaws. Sounds like the perfect pick for the Pulitzer, though :rolleyes:
 
H

hoodoo

Reader
Re: National Book Award 2015

This years longlist has been revealed : https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-national-book-awards-longlist-fiction-2017

I'm sure that a number of these books are great, but are they really the best. The New Yorker even seems to admit that there is an "agenda".


[FONT=&quot]“Sing, Unburied, Sing” is one of several books on this year’s longlist to address timely material. “Dark at the Crossing,” by Elliot Ackerman, is a love story set on the Syrian border; “Miss Burma,” by Charmaine Craig, is a family history of a persecuted minority in colonial Myanmar, the Karen; and “The Leavers,” by Lisa Ko, depicts the life of an undocumented Chinese immigrant in the United States.[/FONT]
 
OverTheMountains

OverTheMountains

Reader
Re: National Book Award 2015

I'm not big into reading American fiction these days, but Jesmyn Ward is a name that really intrigues me. This book looks fantastic. I hope to pick it up soon and give her work a go. Anybody else see something on this list that looks like the kind of thing they would want to try out?
 
H

hoodoo

Reader
Re: National Book Award 2015

OverTheMountains said:
I'm not big into reading American fiction these days, but Jesmyn Ward is a name that really intrigues me. This book looks fantastic. I hope to pick it up soon and give her work a go. Anybody else see something on this list that looks like the kind of thing they would want to try out?
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I try and keep up with American fiction (although my knowledge is quite limited), but I haven't heard of many of these authors, so I'm curious to find out more about them. I know that Jesmyn Ward won the prize a few years ago, but I haven't read Salvage the Bones. I read the synopsis for her new book and it does seem intriguing. I'm kind of glad that not many of these books interest me. It will give me time to catch up on other books that I haven't yet read.

It kind of bothers me though, that a number of these books seem tailored for a mainstream NPR-y crowd, which I'm probably seen as being a part of, and book clubs. I feel as though nobody will be talking about them in a couple of years.
 
redhead

redhead

Blahblahblah
Re: National Book Award 2015

I read Salvage the Bones back when it first came out. Wasn't overly impressed with it, and thought it matched hoodoo's description of an NPR-y book. Maybe if her new book wins I'll check it out.

I've been disappointed with the NBA lately. It used to be a great, surprisingly mainstream prize for more obscure, difficult authors (can't imagine Vollmann ever picking up a Pulitzer).
 
H

hoodoo

Reader
Re: National Book Award 2015

To be fair, I haven't read any of these books. I may eventually get to reading them and find them to be fantastic novels, but I can't help but think that they are aiming to reward a particular type of book, that appeals to a very specific type of audience - aka, liberal minded, democratic voting, postsecondary educated millenials, who champion diversity. To be clear, I'm very much in favor of diversity, but I can't help but think this isn't at all a list of the best books to have been published last year.
 
DouglasM

DouglasM

Reader
Re: National Book Award 2015

I'm interested in Jesmyn Ward, but her books are yet to be translated. Got Salvage the Bones for Kindle the other day, as I don't intend to wait until she's available in Brazil.

I don't know much about the previous years, as the National Book Award is given little to no attention here, but the male-female ratio of this year's longlist is worth a second look: out of the 10 authors, the vast majority are women. There's only 2 men. Clearly, in comparison to other literary prizes this award assembles a bigger number of younger authors, but still, I don't remember seeing a similar case before. I think it's a welcome twist.
 
Liam

Liam

Administrator
Re: National Book Award 2015

DouglasM said:
I think it's a welcome twist.
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And I think good literature ought to surpass considerations of gender, race, sexuality and class--and awards should be given for good writing, not good politics. I agree with hoodoo's point above--this list probably does not represent the "best of the best" published in the U.S. last year. But such are the times we live in. Or perhaps it was ever so.

Prizes and awards usually reflect the fashion, including political fads, of their time; I mean, just look at the Nobel Prize! Would an author like Elfriede Jelinek win circa 1925? Would Sigrid Undset win circa 2015? I don't think so. The former would probably have been deemed vulgar and immoral and the latter would (with good reason) be judged as boring because she's not political enough. And yet they both won the Nobel Prize. Why?
 
redhead

redhead

Blahblahblah
Re: National Book Award 2015

Liam said:
...this list probably does not represent the "best of the best" published in the U.S. last year.
Click to expand...

If you come to US book awards looking for the "best of the best" of the past year, you're looking looking in the wrong place
 
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