Man Booker Prize Winner, National Book Award Finalists Announced

I love book award season!

Last week the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Canadian short story writer Alice Munro.

Yesterday the Man Booker Prize was announced. The winner was The Luminaries, the second novel by New Zealand writer Eleanor Catton. Catton, 28,  is the youngest writer ever to win the Man Booker. The Luminaries--which I haven't read yet--is a giant (848 pages) historical mystery, set in the goldfields of 1866 New Zealand. Julie Bosman, writing in The New York Times calls it, "an immersive tale set in 19th-century New Zealand that explores identity, greed and human frailty."

Today the finalists for the National Book Awards were announced.

FICTION

• Bleeding Edge, Thomas Pynchon
• The Good Lord Bird, James McBride
• The Flamethrowers, Rachel Kushner
• Tenth of December, George Saunders
• Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri 

NONFICTION

• Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin, Jill Lepore
• Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields, Wendy Lower
• The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, George Packer
• The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832, Alan Taylor
• Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief, Lawrence Wright

POETRY

• Metaphysical Dog, Frank Bidart
• Stay, Illusion, Lucie Brock-Broido
• The Big Smoke, Adrian Matejka
• Black Aperture, Matt Rasmussen
• Incarnadine: Poems, Mary Szybist

YOUNG PEOPLE'S LITERATURE

• The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp, Kathi Appelt
• The Thing About Luck, Cynthia Kadohata
• Far Far Away, Tom McNeal
• Picture Me Gone Meg Rosoff 
• Boxers & Saints, Gene Luen Yang

The winners will be announced on November 20th. The Book Frog is currently sold out of The Luminaries (we sold out within two hours of the announcement yesterday), and has limited quantities of several of the NBA finalists in stock. All are on order, so check before you come in!