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
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
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.