Newtonville Books Community Blog

The 2009 New England Independent Booksellers Association awards have been announced and the winners are (drum roll please)…

 Geraldine Brooks for fiction, Naturalist Sy Montgomery for Nonfiction and Andrew Clements for children’s literature. In addition, Tilbury House in Maine was awarded “Publisher of the Year.”

The New England Book Awards began in 1990 and are “given annually to recognize authors living in New England for a body of work, as well as a regional New England publisher. Nominations are accepted from the more than 400 bookstores and publishers that are members of NEIBA. The recipients of the 2009 awards will be honored at a ceremony at the NEIBA annual convention and trade show in Hartford, Conn., at the beginning of October.”

For more info and to check out previous winners visit http://www.newenglandbooks.org/Default.aspx?pageId=234046

Farrar Straus and Giroux released the new Denis Johnson book, Nobody Move,  this week.  It is based on a serial he wrote last year for Playboy, and blogged about by yours truly:  http://www.newtonvillebooks.com/blog/?p=242

If Tree of Smoke was too heavy for you, or you just want the down-and-out characters of Jonhson’s past work, this one should hit the spot.

The shortlist for the Orange prize, honoring the best work of fiction by a female writer, was released Tuesday with Samantha Hunt (“The Invention of Everything Else”), Marilynne Robinson (“Home”), and Ellen Feldman (“Scottsboro”) representing the U.S. Surprisingly, Toni Morrison’s “A Mercy,” winner of the 2009 Tournament of Books, did not make the list.Samantha Harvey (“The Wilderness,), Deidre Madden (“Molly Fox’s Birthday”), and Kamila Shamsie (“Burnt Shadows”) round out the contenders for the £30,000 prize. The winner will be announced on June 3rd.

The Washington Post asked five Latin American writers which book they would have prefered Venezuelan President Chavez give to Obama instead of Eduardo Galeano’s The Open Veins of Latin America.

Their recommendations:

* 2666: A Novel by Roberto Bolano–Paula Escobar, magazines editor of the Chilean daily El Mercurio.
* The Latin Americans: Their Love-Hate Relationship with the United States by Carlos Rangel–Moisés Naím, a Venezuelan, is the editor in chief of Foreign Policy and author of “Illicit.”
* The Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry–Ariel Dorfman, Chilean playwright.
* Man of Glory: Simon Bolivar by Thomas Rourke–Marie Arana, Peruvian novelist and former editor of the Washington Post Book World.
* The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz–Bolivian novelist Edmundo Paz Soldán, author of “The Lessons of Desire,” “Turing’s Delirium” and “Palacio Quemado.”

The Pulitzer Prizes were announced this afternoon, and Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, one of my favorite books this year, took home the prize in fiction. Congratulations, Elizabeth!

WINNERS IN LETTERS, DRAMA and MUSIC:

Fiction – Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Random House)

Drama – Ruined by Lynn Nottage

History – The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette
Gordon-Reed (W.W. Norton & Company)

Biography – American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon
Meacham (Random House)

Poetry – The Shadow of Sirius by W.S. Merwin (Copper Canyon Press)

General Nonfiction – Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of
Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A.
Blackmon (Doubleday)

Music – Double Sextet by Steve Reich, premiered March 26, 2008 in
Richmond, VA (Boosey & Hawkes)

At last….Dan Brown’s loooooooong-awaited sequel to The Da Vinci Code will be released from Random House Doubleday this September.

Publishing in general and Random House in particular should receive a much-needed boost this fall when RH’s Doubleday imprint releases The Lost Symbol, the long awaited next novel from Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown. Random is setting a five million-copy first printing for the book, which will be released in the U.S. and Canada September 15.
For complete article, click here.

Morning Edition, April 20, 2009 · A book by an Uruguayan journalist that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gave to President Obama is now the No. 2 seller on Amazon.com. It’s an astounding jump for Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, by Eduardo Galeano. The paperback edition was ranked 54,295 on the online retailer before Chavez gave Obama a Spanish-language edition of the 1971 book on Saturday.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103271997