I love book awards. I love pomp and circumstance and drama and attention and champagne, all directed at writers and publishers and books.

And this time of year there are awards a-plenty. Today we have for you the finalists in the PEN/Faulker Fiction Awards, and the finalists in the LA. Times Book Awards, which has Minnesota writer Pete Hautman (no stranger to awards) a finalist in the Young Adult category, and Minnesota publisher Coffee House Press (ditto) a finalist in first fiction (Ben Lerner's "Leaving the Atocha Station") going head-to-head with Minnesota publisher Milkweed Editions (ditto) for James Wallenstein's "The Arriviste." One book--"The Buddha in the Attic," by Julie Otsuka--is on both lists.

Here are both lists, one long and one short, whole list, with links to our reviews when we have them (or, in the case of Mara Hvistendahl, our interview with her):

BIOGRAPHY

Clarence Darrow, Attorney for the Damned by John A. Farrell

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, by Manning Marable

Pete Hautman

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman, by Robert K. Massie

Reading my Father: A Memoir, by Alexandra Styron

My Long Trip Home, by Mark Whitaker

CURRENT INTEREST

Is That a Fish in Your Ear? by David Bellow

El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency by Ioan Grillo

Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman

Pakistan: A Hard Country, by Anatol Lieven

The Panic Virus, by Seth Mnookin

FICTION

Ghost Light by Joseph O'Connor

The Cat's Table, by Michael Ondaatje

The Buddha in the Attic, by Julie Otsuka

Binocular Vision, stories by Edith Pearlman

Luminarium, by Alex Shakar

ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION

Mara Hvistendahl.

The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach

Ten Thousand Saints, by Eleanor Henderson

Leaving the Atocha Station, by Ben Lerner

Sahrds, by Ismet Prcic

The Arriviste, by James Wallenstein

GRAPHIC NOVEL

I Will Bite You! by Joseph Lambert

Celluloid by Dave McKean

Finder: Voice, by Carla Speed McNeil

Congress of the Animals by Jim Woodring

Garden by Yuichi Yokoyama

HISTORY

The Anatomy of a Moment by Javier Cercas

1861: The Civil War Awakening by Adam Goodheart

To End All Wars, by Adam Hochschild

Molotov's Magic Lantern by Rachel Polonsky

Railroaded by Richard White

MYSTERY/THRILLER

Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson

Plugged by Eoin Colfer

11/22/1963 by Stephen King

Snowdrops by A.D. Miller

The End of Wasp Season by Denise Mina

POETRY

Songs of Unreason by Jim Harrison

Dsicipline by Dawn Lundy Martin

The Public Gardens by Linda Norton

Double Shadow by Carl Phillips

Devotions by Bruce Smith

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

A Hole at the Bottom of the Sea by Joel Achenbach

The Information by James Gleick

Unnatural Selection by Mara Hvistendahl

Grand Pursuit, by Sylvia Nasar

Blood Work, by Holly Tucker

YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE

Beauty Queens, by Libba Bray

The Big Crunch by Pete Hautman

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

Life: An Exploded Diagram, by Mal Peet

and The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

And now, because this blog post isn't nearly long enough, here are the PEN/Faulkner Award finalists:

The Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks

The Angel Esmeralda by Don DeLillo

The Artist of Disappearance by Anita Desai

We Others: New and Selected Stories by Steven Millhauser

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

The PEN awards will be announced March 26. The L.A. Times Book Prizes will be announced April 20.