Lydia Davis Awarded the Man Booker International Prize!

Lydia Davis Awarded the Man Booker International Prize!

Master short story craftswoman Lydia Davis was recently awarded the 2013 Man Booker International Prize

Davis is best known for her rich and precise stories, sometimes told in as few as two sentences. As Dave Eggers said, Davis "blows the roof off of so many of our assumptions about what constitutes short fiction." We're honored to have this literary expert on our list.

lydia davis

Read more about the judges' decision on TheManBookerPrize.com.

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Mantel Wins the Man Booker Prize… Again!

Mantel Wins the Man Booker Prize… Again!

Major congratulations to Hilary Mantel who is one of only three Man Booker Prize-winning authors ever to have won the prize more than once! She also the first author ever to win with a sequel.

Yesterday she was awarded the prize for BRING UP THE BODIES, her second novel exploring Tudor history through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell.

The Man Booker Prize website said,

"Her resuscitation of Thomas Crowell–and with him the historical novel–is one of the great achievements of modern literature."

Hear, hear!

Your patrons (and yourselves, for that matter!) no longer have any excuse not to start in on this rich historical series. As the Man Booker Prize website said,

"Perhaps the real object of envy is not the winner–she thoroughly deserves her triumph–but the readers who have yet to open BRING UP THE BODIES. They have just won a prize too."

Read the full article on TheManBookerPrize.com.

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Monday Fun Day! (9/17/2012 Edition)

Monday Fun Day! (9/17/2012 Edition)

Happy Monday, librarian buddies!

opens in a new windowChihulyI'm back from my mini-vacation to the West Coast (photo on the right from Seattle's Chihuly museum) and I'm so ready to talk about Fall titles.

- You're invited to the AAP's annual Librarians' Sneak Peek Book Preview on Wednesday, October 10th, 2012 at Random House in NYC! See the official invitation for more details and a reservation link (RSVP by October 5th). 

- Two very different novels of ours made Kirkus Reviews' list of 10 Must-Read September Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books:

JANE: THE WOMAN WHO LOVED TARZAN by Robin Maxwell

"In this centennial celebration of Edgar Rice Burroughs' original TARZAN story, Maxwell retells the classic from the perspective of Jane Porter. [...] JANE is the first version of the Tarzan story written by a woman and authorized by the Burroughs estate."

THE RAPTURE OF THE NERDS by Cory Doctorow & Charles Stross

"What do you get when you cross the tech-savvy minds of Doctorow and Stross? You get the mind-warping, near-future THE RAPTURE OF THE NERDS, where a group of humans known as the Tech Jury Service are tasked with assessing whether new, possibly disruptive inventions should be released to the general public."

See their full SF/F recommendation list here. Also, there's a #TorChat on Twitter this Wednesday at 4pm Eastern. Moderator @pnh will be chatting with Cory @doctorow and Charlie Stross @cstross! Details here.

- We updated our Man Booker Prize shortlist post to include SWIMMING HOME by Deborah Levy which will be published in the U.S. by Bloomsbury USA in October! We also added links to MediaBistro's Man Booker Prize longlist excerpt "playlist" and downloadable posters for libraries.

- And finally: ARCTIC FOX PUP!

opens in a new windowarctic cutie

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Man Booker Shortlist Includes Bring Up the Bodies!

Man Booker Shortlist Includes Bring Up the Bodies!

BRING UP THE BODIES, Hilary Mantel's rich historical follow up to her previous Man Booker Prize-winning novel, WOLF HALL, has landed her on the shortlist once again!

Though he battled for seven years to marry her, Henry is disenchanted with Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son and her sharp intelligence and audacious will alienate his old friends and the noble families of England. When the discarded Katherine dies in exile from the court, Anne stands starkly exposed, the focus of gossip and malice.

At a word from Henry, Thomas Cromwell is ready to bring her down. Over three terrifying weeks, Anne is ensnared in a web of conspiracy, while the demure Jane Seymour stands waiting her turn for the poisoned wedding ring.

UPDATE: 

We actually have two titles on the shortlist; Bloomsbury USA will be publishing SWIMMING HOME by Deborah Levy in the U.S. in October! 

As he arrives with his family at the villa in the hills above Nice, Joe sees a body in the swimming pool. But the girl is very much alive. She is Kitty Finch: a self-proclaimed botanist with green-painted fingernails, walking naked out of the water and into the heart of their holiday. Why is she there? What does she want from them all? And why does Joe's enigmatic wife allow her to remain?

See the full 2012 Man Booker Prize shortlist here! 

MediaBistro put together a "playlist" of excerpts from the longlist here and you can download library posters of the UK versions of the books here!

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The 2012 Man Booker Prize Longlist!

The 2012 Man Booker Prize Longlist!

Congratulations to all of the fantastic books on the 2012 Man Booker Prize longlist!

There are two books we're especially giddy to see on the list: 

BRING UP THE BODIES  
by Hilary Mantel

The sequel to Hilary Mantel's 2009 Man Booker Prize winner and New York Times bestseller, WOLF HALL delves into the heart of Tudor history with the downfall of Anne Boleyn.

SKIOS
by Michael Frayn

A master of farce turns to an exclusive island retreat for a comedy of mislaid identities, unruly passions, and demented, delicious disorder.

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Two Stars for Half-Blood Blues!

Two Stars for Half-Blood Blues!

 

Esi Edugyan's HALF-BLOOD BLUES won the 2011 Giller Prize and was shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction and the 2011 Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, so we're not too surprised to see the starred reviews come rolling in. 

"While the rarely explored subject adds to the book’s allure, what stands out most is its cadenced narration and slangy dialogue, as conversations, both spoken and unspoken, snap, sizzle, and slide off the page." -Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"That narrow moment in time when the freewheeling decadence of Weimar Germany gave way to jackbooted tyranny has been the subject of much fine fiction, but Edugyan is the first to overlay it with jazz history. It makes a sublime marriage." -Booklist (starred review)

Her debut novel, THE SECOND LIFE OF SAMUEL TYNE, was selected by the New York Public Library as one of the "25 Books to Remember from 2004."

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