PW Best Books 2011: The Top 10

Yep, it’s that time again already: Time for the “best books of the year” lists. Here’s the first one I’ve seen, Publishers Weekly‘s list of the 10 best books of the year, both fiction and nonfiction considered together. And I’m sure that more lists won’t be far behind.

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It’s National Novel Writing Month

You may have been seeing an unwieldy acronym lately: NaNoWriMo. It stands for National Novel Writing Month, which comes around every November. In USA Today writer Joyce Lamb explains what it is: The NaNo plan is to write 1,667 words a day — or about 12,000 words on the weekends, if you’re as undisciplined as

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Monday Miscellany

Why is dystopia so appealing to young adults? A dystopia is an imaginary world in which people live dehumanized lives of fear and subjugation; it’s the opposite of utopia. In this piece YA writer Moira Young examines why distopian novels such as Suzanne Collins’s recent Hunger Games trilogy are so popular with young people: Books

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Monday Miscellany

Book lovers rake in the reading as publishers release fall titles It’s time to trade in the beach reads for the usually longer and more serious fall reads. The Sacramento Bee‘s Allen Pierleoni lists upcoming new titles, some by big-name authors (think Joan Didion, Lee Child, Stephen King, Alice Hoffman, and Sue Grafton ) in

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Julian Barnes Wins the Man Booker Prize

Julian Barnes Wins the Man Booker Prize – NYTimes.com The novelist Julian Barnes won the Man Booker Prize on Tuesday night for “The Sense of an Ending,” a slim and meditative story of mortality, frustration and regret. “The Sense of an Ending,” published in the United States by Knopf, part of Random House, is Mr.

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Lauren Myracle withdraws from National Book Award finalists – latimes.com

Lauren Myracle withdraws from National Book Award finalists – latimes.com. This story is all over Twitter this morning. Here’s just one newspaper’s account of why this mess occurred. Apparently, the National Book Foundation doesn’t like the subject matter of Lauren Myracle’s novel Shine, which deals with a hate crime. In requesting the withdrawal of the

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Monday Miscellany

Vashon Great Books club one of oldest in U.S. The Seattle Times spotlights 92-year-old Grace Crecelius: For 61 years, Grace Crecelius has cracked the books. Not just any books, mind you, but the works of Plato, Descartes and Kant, Shakespeare, Marx and Freud. At 92, Crecelius is the oldest member of what may be one

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Monday Miscellany

Nine seems to be this week’s lucky number. Nine Pilgrimages For the Lover of Western Literature A pilgrimage is the focal point around which a journey wraps, not the raison d’etre per se (that is the journey itself) but rather the pulley on the far end of the rope that ratchets you out of your

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National Book Foundation Announces This Year’s 5 Under 35 Honorees – GalleyCat

National Book Foundation Announces This Year’s 5 Under 35 Honorees – GalleyCat And the winners are: The People of Forever Are Not Afraid by Shani Boianjiu (selected by Nicole Krauss) Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans (selected by Robert Stone) The Walking People by Mary Beth Keane (selected by Julia Glass)

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Swedish Poet Wins Nobel Prize for Literature – NYTimes.com

Swedish Poet Wins Nobel Prize for Literature – NYTimes.com Tomas Transtromer, the Swedish poet whose sometimes bleak but powerful work explores themes of nature, isolation and identity, won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday.  

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