Lucky New Yorkers — Mayor Bloomberg has named next week as National Book Awards Week. Festivities will kick off with a 5 Under 35 celebration on Monday and continue through the 60th National Book Awards on Wednesday. About a month ago I blogged about the National Book Foundation’s 5 under 35 selection (Ceridwen Dovey, C.E. Morgan, Lydia Peelle, Karen Russell and Josh Weil made the cut), and Trisha blogged about the National Book Award finalists here.
Amazon named Colum McCann’s Let the World Spin the best book of 2009—it’s also a finalist for the Fiction award. I’m dying to read the book, which Well Read columnist Robert Weibezahl called
an enveloping new novel. . . [McCann] lends a forgiving tenderness that invigorates the timeless notion that we are not really all the different under the skin, each of us longing for love, for beauty, for those connections that will quell our loneliness.
I have a feeling that McCann’s going to take the Fiction prize, although who knows? Who do you think will win awards in the Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry and Young People’s Literature categories?
The National Book Foundation will also announce the winner of the “Best of the National Book Award Fiction” category – ever. (We blogged about that award, too.) My vote’s for Faulkner.
I just read about this today. I’m happy Bloomberg did this. I haven’t checked out what is going on next week specifically for National Book Awards Week but I’m hoping to find some fun things!
Thank you!