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Best Books of 2010
This year we took our annual slugfest to the pub underneath our new office and came up with a list of the year's top 100 books that could be our best ever. It wasn't any easier with a drink in hand to pick what we had to agree on were the best books of 2010, but once again, we've got a list we love.
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Growing Up Small Press
Bruce McPherson and Allan Kornblum go way back. Both were early pioneers in the small press movement of the 1970s, McPherson coming of age in the heady literary scene surrounding Brown University and Kornblum taking the path of the artisan—studying with the letterpress legend Harry Duncan in Iowa City and beginning as more of a printer than a publisher.
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Amazon Underwrites Best Translated Book Award With Cash Prize
After years of running the Best Translated Book Awards without any cash prizes, the University of Rochester has received $25,000 for this year's winners from Amazon. The awards, launched by Three Percent--a Web site dedicated to raising the awareness of literature-in-translation launched by Open Letter Books (the non-profit press funded by the University)--celebrate original works of international fiction and poetry that have been published in the States in the prior year.
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AAP's Young to Publishing Group Hosts NBA Party
The Association of American Publishers' Young to Publishing Group will host its inaugural House Party: A Celebration of the National Book Awards on November 17, as the award ceremony is taking place. AAP has partnered with the National Book Foundation to broadcast an exclusive, live feed of the awards ceremony at the party, which will run from 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM.
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The NBA Aftermath
The announcement last week of the National Book Award finalists brought a variety of responses. Many cheered that four of the five fiction nominees are women. Others cheered that Jonathan Franzen wasn't one of those fiction nominees. Some puzzled over nominated titles that are not so well known, while still others cheered that they weren't so well known.
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'PW' Reviews 'Cultures of War' and 'Lord of Misrule'
Here are new PW reviews of two of yesterday's National Book Award finalists, whose books are just out or due out soon.
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Patti Smith, Peter Carey Among National Book Award Finalists
Today, writer Pat Conroy announced the Finalists for the 2010 National Book Award from the Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home in Savannah, Georgia. The finalists include rock legend and poet Patti Smith, whose memoir Just Kids (Ecco) is a nonfiction finalist, and Man Booker finalist Peter Carey, for his novel Parrot and Olivier in America (Knopf).
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Jacobson Wins Booker
Howard Jacobson won the Man Booker Prize with The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury) and joked that he was "speechless - so I'll give the speech I prepared in 1983," the year of his debut with Coming from Behind. Jacobson was long-listed for the prize in 2002 and 2006 but has never previously been shortlisted. Bloomsbury US has just released the title.
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Vargas Llosa Wins Nobel; Picador Reprints 10 Paperbacks
Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature today. Vargas Llosa is known for his political works that focus largely on Latin American power and corruption. Macmillan division Picador publishes most of Vargas Llosa's books in the U.S. and is reprinting 10 of his paperbacks in light of the win.
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Scotiabank Giller Prize Shortlist Announced
The shortlist for Canada's most prestigious fiction prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, was announced yesterday in Toronto. This year's list stood out from past years' due to a predominance of books from small to medium-sized publishers.
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2010 Rona Jaffe Foundation Award Winners Announced
A woman raised on a yacht in the South Pacific, a teacher of "narrative medicine," a poet inspired by ancient nautical technologies, a former defender of murderers, a resident of a Georgia small town that was once home to the largest asylum in the world, and a Virgin Islands native are all recipients of the Rona Jaffe Foundation's 2010 Writers Awards. The writers will each receive $25,000 and be honored at a ceremony on September 23 in New York City.
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Galaxy Press Presents 26th Annual Writers & Illustrators of the Future Awards
The 26th annual L. Ron Hubbard achievement awards for the winners of the Writers and Illustrators of the Future contest were presented on Saturday, August 28, in Los Angeles in a gala celebration at the historic Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Twelve winners were selected in the writing and illustrating categories as judged by such science fiction luminaries as Larry Niven, Kevin J. Anderson, K.D.Wentworth, Jerry Pournelle, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and Dave Wolverton.
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Blankfein Recuses Himself as Judge of Biz Book of the Year
What do you do when you're the subject of books you're judging for literary merit? That's the unusual spot Goldman Sachs find itself in this year with the Business Book of the Year honor, an annual award that it gives out with the Financial Times. The long list of nominees, just announced, features a number of titles about the recent financial crisis, which Goldman was deeply embroiled in. Consequently Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman, is recusing himself as a judge.
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Pyr Announces Essay Contest Winners
Prometheus Books' science fiction and fantasy imprint, Pyr, has announced the winners of its Pyr and Dragons Adventure essay contest. Lisa Iriarte, a seventh-grade teacher from Celebration, Fla., won the grand prize for her essay on why sci-fi and fantasy are important to her.
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International Thriller Writers Announces Award Winners
The International Thriller Writers presented its fifth annual Thriller Awards at Manhattan's Grand Hyatt Hotel the evening of July 10. Twist Phelan won the Best Short Story category with "A Stab in the Heart" (Ellery Queen Magazine).
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Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Winners Announced
Amazon and Penguin announced the winners of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award at a ceremony in Seattle Monday morning. This year, for the first time, two grand prizes were awarded: one for general fiction and one for best young adult novel, with each winner receiving a $15,000 publishing contract from Penguin.
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Paris Literary Icon Launches Prize and Magazine
Shakespeare & Company Bookshop, the Paris literary icon originally founded by Sylvia Beach in 1919, and opened by George Whitman in 1951, is launching a literary magazine and literary prize. Both ventures will be officially announced at the famed Left Bank bookstore's fourth biannual literary festival held the weekend of June 18-20.
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PEN and ESPN Partner on Sports Writing Award
PEN American Center has created a new award, the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing, which will honor nonfiction books about sports. The award is the first partnership between PEN and ESPN.
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Colman Andrews Wins Big at James Beard Awards
The James Beard Foundation held its annual awards ceremony last week, and in the cookbooks category, Colman Andrews's gorgeous tome on Ireland's rustic cuisine, The Country Cooking of Ireland, took home the cookbook of the year and international cookbook awards, while Claudia Roden's Book of Middle Eastern Food, which Vintage published in paperback in 1974, was inducted into the Cookbook Hall of Fame. Ad Hoc at Home landed one prize, for general cooking; and another Artisan title, Seven Fires, won for best photography.
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