National Book Award 2010

[Stiffelio]

Welcome to the National Book Foundation, Presenter of the National Book Awards, Homepage

....and where's the much praised Freedom?

[Mirabell]

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.

[Daniel del Real]

And what about the fiction list?
Besides Carey I don't know any of the other authors. Any good?

[miobrien]

And what about the fiction list?
Besides Carey I don't know any of the other authors. Any good?

I'm intrigued by Krauss' Great House.

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.

I love C. D. Wright. Looking forward to this new book.

[Stiffelio]

The winners have been announced today:

http://www.nationalbook.org/


The 2010 National Book Award Winners

Young People's Literature

Kathryn Erskine
Mockingbird
Philomel Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group


Poetry

Terrance Hayes
Lighthead
Penguin Books



Nonfiction
Patti Smith
Just Kids Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers



Fiction

Jaimy Gordon
Lord of Misrule
McPherson & Co.

For more information, visit the Foundation's website at www.nationalbook.org.

[waalkwriter]

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.

[Eric]

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.