A Momentary Taste of Being

Pulitzer Winners announced. The good news:  Kay Ryan for her collected poems. The pitiful news: Jennifer Egan for A Visit from the Goon Squad.

Booker International Prize Judge shares the burden of Judging. The Booker International Prize honors a body of work rather than a single work.  Past recipients include Alice Munro, Chinua Achebe, and Ismail Kadaré.  Candidates for this year's award include a very mixed bag: David Malouf, Anne Tyler, John Le Carr&eacute:, Phillip Pullman (really, you couldn't manage better than that?), and Philip Roth.

Bi Feiyu, author of the luminous The Moon Opera, has won for Three Sisters. This book should be coming to me soon.  I can't wait to read it.

The Orange Longlist: What do you make of it? Room, Goon Squad, Great House, The Invisible Bridge The usual suspects.  I do not understand the adulation that borders on frothing over A Visit from the Good Squad .  The Invisible Bridge was, perhaps, four times longer than it needed to be and, as one of my friends pointed out, a case-study of boregeous writing. Swamplandia , on the other hand, is one that I've seen about and which intrigues me.

Doerr takes the Story Prize for Memory Wall I really must try to get through that book. With Yiyun Li and Susan Rivecca as runner's up. That last one really makes me wonder about the validity of the award.  Or perhaps it should make me go back and see what it was I missed this first time around.

Feiyu and Oe among those on the Man Booker Asian Prize List.

Books notable for their fine translations- -it doesn't say anything about the quality of the book itself, but the list may provide some very interesting reading for those looking for work originally published in languages other than English.

A poet wins the Costa award for Of Mutability

Hare with the Amber Eyes as frontrunner for the Costa

The announcement of the NBCC nominees for best books of the year is certainly discouraging headed up as it is with Egan's nearly unreadable mess of a novel A Visit from the Goon Squad . And followed by Franzen's equally questionable Freedom .  Where are the great and lasting voices?  Where are those who are writing works that will be read five or ten years from now, skip a hundred?

"Gold Boy, Emerald Girl" a finalist in the 2010 Story Prize. And certainly deserving--a magnificent capstone to a superior collection, "Gold Boy, Emerald Girl," captures all of the poignancy and the beautiful humane approach Ms. Li takes in all of her stories.  As much as you'd like to leave one of her stories hating some of the characters, you discover that it is not possible because Ms. Li has shown you, perfectly, how human they are and what their connection with you is.

Not one of my favorite Asimov's, but worth a read, The God's Themselves

"The Laureate's Curse"

Man Asian Prize Longlist I've read at Hotel Iris , but haven't even heard of many of the rest.  Although it is interesting to see that Kenzaburo Oe has a book in the running.

Imre Kertesz's Fateless considered The book is also translated as Fatelessness, and the fact that there have been two translations over a very short time speak, I think, to the merits of this very fine book.  Kertesz won the Nobel Prize a few years back and seems to have sunk largely into that slough of the forgotten--ironic considering that one of his books is about that precisely.  If you get a chance, you should take up Fateless/Fatelessness

"In Praise of Reading and Fiction"

Interesting reading about what makes for (or doesn't make for)  a prize-winning novel.

What is it like to win the coveted bad sex writing award? An excerpt: But let's be frank … this ridiculous award had put my novel in newspapers and websites across the world and although, when the deputy editor of the mag emailed me to ask if I'd enjoyed the party, I replied "as much as a televised visit to a proctologist", I don't think the publicity is going to do me, or the book, any harm either. So although it surprises me to say it, I am very grateful to them. Let's just not. . .  The first entry reinforces my commitment not to pillory the work of those I do not enjoy or admire.  Or at least to try not to.  I think I've noted before that my commitment is to try to bring to your attention books I particular enjoy.  Therefore, I review only those that will have a high rating.  At times I post the titles of others and do not review them.  This is my way of saying that while I read the book, I did not find it something I would recommend.  ...

Drumroll please, Rowan Somerville for The Shape of Her This must have been extraordinary considering how very, very bad Jonathan Franzen can be at his best.  The Corrections had some of the very worst I have ever read, and the brief, but nauseating excerpt I saw quoted as a nomination, Freedom easily topped the worst of The Corrections   and outdid anyone I've ever read with the possible exception of Philip Roth.

This year's winners of the National Book Award. Odd, didn't hear as much rumble about it this year--perhaps I've grown tone deaf.  Haven't heard of the book, but there is an excerpt posted for those interested. Another report  The Short List  (via Books Inq.)