2012 Tournament of Books

March Madness is coming!!  The Tournament of Books announced its competitors for the 2012 Tournament of Books.  For those who don't recall, the Tournament (in its eighth year) is the book lover's answer to the NCAA tournament.  In March, the contenders below will be bracketed and compete for the Rooster Award.  Exciting stuff!!

Of this year's contenders, I've read six of the books and know a fair amount about five others.  Plenty to read in the coming weeks.

The selection committee announced that this year they wanted more diversity.  They've accomplished that.  There are some serious 2011 heavyweights in the group below.  The Man Booker prize winning Julian Barnes is included.  Two other Man Booker contenders, deWitt and Hollinghurst, are also included.  The Orange Prize winning newbie Obreht (and one of the favorites of the year) is in the crowd.  The National Book Prize, Ward, winner is listed.  Two of the writers were The New Yorker's 20 Under 40 (Obreht and Russell).  Harbach's entry was one of the most anticipated (and expensive) of the year.  And, of course, there are some literary big hitters, Ondaatje (English Patient), Murakami (beloved by many) and Eugenides (Virgin Suicides).

The Sweet Sixteen are:

• Nathacha Appanah, The Last Brother
• Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
• Teju Cole, Open City
• Helen DeWitt, Lightning Rods
• Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers
• Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot
• Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding
• Alan Hollinghurst, Stranger’s Child
• Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones
• Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
• Téa Obreht, The Tiger’s Wife
• Michael Ondaatje, The Cat’s Table
• Ann Patchett, State of Wonder
• Donald Ray Pollock, Devil All the Time
• Karen Russell, Swamplandia
• Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

Over the few weeks, there's a lot of good stuff to read.  Of course, I'll keep you posted with color commentary.

On a personal note, today marks the beginning of year two of this blog.  Writing this blog and interacting with fellow readers over this last year has been fun and gratifying for me.  The growth of this blog has astounded me.  The number of hits has grown exponentially from a couple of hundred in a month to thousands!  I'm humbled by the depth of the readership and the interest in what I have to say about books.  As always, I appreciate any feedback and look forward to sharing year two with you.  Happy reading!

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka is one of the finalists for the 2011 National Book Award for Fiction.  It is a compact, powerful novel that I would have missed but for its nomination.  It is excellent and worthy of recognition.

The novel is the tale of Japanese mail-order brides and their experience coming to and in California from the 1920s through WWII.  The obscure nature of the story alone would have made this novel worth reading.  However, Otsuka uses the first person plural to narrate the story of dozens of women into an immense tapestry.  While the chorus sings the story, individuals step forward for a clause, sentence or even  paragraph solo and then seamlessly fade back into the chorus.  The talent it takes to create such a convincing product cannot be underestimated.

This is a story that you will read in just a few hours but one that will stick with you because of its content and form.  It is well worth reading.

National Book Awards 2011 Announced

Earlier this week, the finalists for all categories were announced.

Andrew Krivak, The Sojourn
Téa Obreht, The Tiger's Wife (my review here)
Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic
Edith Pearlman, Binocular Vision
Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones

I've previously reviewed The Tiger's Wife and also have read two and a half of the other finalists (The Sojourn, The Buddha in the Attic and Binocular Vision).  I'll post reviews of the others later.  Of the four books I have read, you cannot go wrong with any of them. I suspect that this is a showdown between the newcomer, Téa Obreht, and an under-appreciated old-timer, Edith Pearlman.

What is interesting about the list is that although all of the books are great, other than The Tiger's Wife none of them have been part of the mainstream literary conversation.  In addition, many critically and popularly acclaimed  books did not make the list; for example, The Art of Fielding, The Marriage Plot, State of Wonder.  The blogosphere is lit up with the question: should literary prizes consider a books success in the media and with readers in making their selection or should it be an "ivory tower" selection (NPR's view here and Laura Miller of Salon here) .  Two years ago one of my favorites, Let the Great World Spin won the prize and had already achieved critical and popular success.  Last year, a dark horse, Lord of Misrule won and then disappeared while Franzen's Freedom didn't even make the list.

Even if a book is the equivalent of literary broccoli, literary prizes can unearth under-marketed and undiscovered talent.  Edith Pearlman is a perfect example.  If you read the introduction to the collection, written by Ann Patchett, she marvels that Pearlman has not be received by a wider audience.  A win with a prize like the National Book Award exposes her to an audience that might not have seen her.  If ultimately she does not have broad appeal, the book will fade into the backlists (e.g., Lord of Misrule).  Commercial success should be considered but should not drive these lists.

For the nonfiction readers, the finalists are:

Deborah Baker, The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism
Mary Gabriel, Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution 

Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern 

Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention

Lauren Redniss, Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout

Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony at Ciprani Wall Street on November 16.  John Lithgow is hosting.

National Book Award 5 Under 35 Honorees

Today, the National Book Foundation announced the 5 Under 35 Honorees for 2011

• Shani Boianjiu, The People of Forever Are Not Afraid (Hogarth, an imprint of Crown Publishers, forthcoming in 2013)
• Danielle Evans, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self  (Riverhead Books, 2010)
• Mary Beth Keane, The Walking People (Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009)
• Melinda Moustakis, Bear Down, Bear North: Alaska Stories (The University of Georgia Press, 2011)
• John Corey Whaley, Where Things Come Back (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2011)

5 Under 35 Honorees

Shani Boianjiu was born in Jerusalem in 1987, from an Iraqi and Romanian background.  She was raised in a small town on the Lebanese border.  At the age of 18, she entered the Israeli Defense Forces and served for two years.  She is at work on her first novel, The People of Forever Are Not Afraid.

Danielle Evans is the winner of the 2011 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. A graduate of Columbia University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, her stories have appeared in The Paris Review, A Public Space, The Best American Short Stories 2008, and The Best American Short Stories 2010. Her collection of stories, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, is her first book. She lives in Washington, D.C.
daniellevaloreevans.com


Mary Beth Keane graduated from Barnard College in 1999, and received an MFA from the University of Virginia in 2005.  She was a winner of the Chicago Tribune's Nelson Algren Prize, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. One of her stories was selected as a PEN/O. Henry Recommended Story for 2009, and her first novel, The Walking People, received Honorable Mention at the 2010 PEN/Hemingway Awards. She is currently working on her second novel, and lives in Pearl River, New York with her husband and two sons. marybethkeane.com


Melinda Moustakis was born in Fairbanks, Alaska and raised in Bakersfield, California. She received her MA from UC Davis and her PhD in English and Creative Writing from Western Michigan University.Bear Down, Bear North: Alaska Stories, her first book, won the 2010 Flannery O'Connor Award in Short Fiction. Her stories have appeared inAlaska Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review, Conjunctions, and elsewhere. She is currently a visiting professor at Pacific Lutheran University. www.melindamoustakis.com




John Corey Whaley is a former teacher from Springhill, Louisiana. Where Things Come Back is his first novel. He was named a Spring 2011 Flying Start Author by Publishers Weekly.  His novel was a Spring 2011 Okra Pick by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance and is currently a nominee for the American Library Association's Best Fiction for Young Adults 2012.  The ABC Children's Group also included Whaley on their New Voices for Teens Top Ten List this year.  He found an agent for Where Things Come Back through www.webook.com, being the first author to do so using this medium, and you can watch him on YouTube as WeBook’s #1 AgentInbox Success Story. For more information, visit his website,www.johncoreywhaley.com, or follow him @corey_whaley.