On Saturday, the National Book Critics Circle announced its nominees; winners will be announced in March. You know all too well how I feel about the novels by Franzen and Egan, but let me just say: I tried to read Skippy Dies and couldn't get past the first few chapters.
Fiction:
A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (Knopf)
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (FSG)
To the End of the Land by David Grossman (Knopf)
Comedy in a Minor Key by Hans Keilson (FSG)
Skippy Dies by Paul Murray (Faber Faber)
Nonfiction:
Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick (Random House)
Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne (Simon Schuster)
Apollo’s Angels by Jennifer Homans (Random House)
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukharjee (Simon Schuster)
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (Random House)
Autobiography:
Half A Life by Darin Strauss (McSweeneys)
Just Kids by Patti Smith (Ecco)
Crossing Mandelbaum Gate by Kai Bird (Simon Schuster)
Autobiography of An Execution by David Dow (Hachette)
Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens (Twelve)
Hiroshima in the Morning by Rahna Reiko Rizzuto (Feminist Press)
Biography:
How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Questions and Twenty Attempts at An Answer by Sarah Bakewell (Other Press)
The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham: A Biography by Selina Hastings
Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History by Yuente Huang
The Killing of Crazy Horse by Thomas Powers
Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends by Tom Segev
Criticism:
The Posessed by Elif Batuman (FSG)
The Professor and Other Writings by Terry Castle (HarperCollins)
Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West by Clare Cavanagh (Yale)
The Cruel Radience by Susan Linfield (Univ. of Chicago)
Vanishing Point by Ander Monson (Graywolf)
Poetry:
One With Others by C.D. Wright (Copper Canyon)
Nox by Anne Carson (New Directions)
The Eternal City by Kathleen Graber (Princeton)
Lighthead by Terrance Hayes (Penguin)
The Best of It by Kay Ryan (Grove)
Congratulations to the winner!
Posted by: Counter Height Dining Table | January 30, 2011 at 10:13 AM