Reading Copy

Belgian authors don’t get an awful lot of press on the world stage. Paul Verhaeghen is changing that. A few hours ago, he won The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for his novel Omega Minor. He also translated the book.

The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize celebrates an exceptional work of fiction by a living author which has been translated into English from any other language and published in the UK.

Omega Minor is Verhaeghen’s second novel and his first to be translated from Dutch into English. The author is a cognitive psychologist, and focuses on memory and the basic aspects of ageing.

The purse is £10,000 but the author isn’t taking accepting the cash himself.

Popularity: 7% [?]

The Edgar Awards are givin out by the Mystery Writers of America each year for the best Crime and Mystery works…

BEST NOVEL
Down River by John Hart

BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR
In the Woods by Tana French

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
Queenpin by Megan Abbott

BEST FACT CRIME
Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Vincent Bugliosi

BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL
Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley

BEST JUVENILE
The Night Tourist by Katherine Marsh

BEST YOUNG ADULT
Rat Life by Tedd Arnold

Popularity: 19% [?]

The Winners have been announced for the BC Book Prizes, of which AbeBooks is a sponsor for the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize

Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize
Conceit by Mary Novik

Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize
Everywhere Being is Dancing by Robert Bringhurst

Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize
Forage by Rita Wong

Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize
The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating by J.B. MacKinnon, Alisa Smith

Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize
The Corps of the Bare-Boned Plane by Polly Horvath

Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize
The Corps of the Bare-Boned Plane by Polly Horvath

Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize
A Sea-Wishing Day by Robert Heidbreder

BC Booksellers’ Choice Award in Honour of Bill Duthie
The Last Wild Wolves: Ghosts of the Great Bear Rainforest by Ian McAllister

Popularity: 20% [?]

LA Times Festival of the Book occurred this past weekend in LA. The AbeBooks staffers who were at the fair will probably talk about it in tomorrows blog posts but today, to tide you over, here are the winners of the LA Times Book Awards:

Fiction: Andrew O’Hagan - Be Near Me
Current Interest: Elizabeth D. Samet - Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point
Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction: Dinaw Mengestu - The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
Science & Technology: Douglas Hofstadter - I Am A Strange Loop
Young Adult Fiction: Philip Reeve - A Darkling Plain
Poetry: Stanley Plumly - Old Heart: Poems
Mystery/Thriller: Karin Fossum - The Indian Bride
History: Tim Weiner - Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
Biography: Simon Sebag Montefiore - Young Stalin

Popularity: 14% [?]

This past weekend the presentation of the Nebula Awards took place in Austin Texas. Here’s a list of the major prize winners.

Novel: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union - Chabon, Michael
Novella: Fountain of Age - Kress, Nancy (Asimov’s, Jul07)
Novelette: The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate - Chiang, Ted (F&SF, Sep07)
Short Story: Always - Fowler, Karen Joy (Asimov’s, apr/may07)
Script: Pan’s Labyrinth - del Toro, Guillermo (Time/Warner, Jan07)
Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Rowling, J. K. (Scholastic Press, Jul07)

Damon Knight Grand Master for 2008: Michael Moorcock

There is a bit of a recap on the weekends activities in the blog of the nominees, Sarah Beth Durst

Popularity: 15% [?]

The finalists for the 2008 Locus Awards have been announced. Awards to be given out on the 21st of June

SF NOVEL
The Accidental Time Machine, Joe Haldeman (Ace)
Brasyl, Ian McDonald (Pyr)
Halting State, Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)
Spook Country, William Gibson (Putnam; Viking UK)
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Michael Chabon (HarperCollins)

FANTASY NOVEL
Endless Things, John Crowley (Small Beer Press; Overlook)
Making Money, Terry Pratchett (Doubleday UK; HarperCollins)
Pirate Freedom, Gene Wolfe (Tor)
Territory, Emma Bull (Tor)
Ysabel, Guy Gavriel Kay (Viking Canada; Roc)

Popularity: 17% [?]

With all of the floggings that memoirs and self-published books alike have recevied in recent months (years?) seeing that headline in the Guardian supprised me. However it appears to be true.

Jane Haynes’s Who Is It That Can Tell Me Who I Am? revolves arround a psychotherapist and her patients, thus far the critics have been kind.

The entire shortlist for the prize is as follows:
Ed Husain’s The Islamist
Miranda Seymour’s In My Father’s House
Dannie Abse’s The Presence
John Lanchester’s Family Romance
Jane Haynes’s Who Is It That Can Tell Me Who I Am?

Popularity: 21% [?]

Sadie Jones, who has been shortlisted for the women-only Orange Prize, told The Scotsman that she believes there should also be a book prize for men suggesting that it could help get more boys to read.

“I think there should be a literary prize for men. I have a son, and you hear a lot about boys not reading. Anything that adds interest or glamour for boys can only be good sense.”

Popularity: 19% [?]

The shortlist for the Orange Prize was announced today

Of course some of you remember Sadie from her interview with AbeBooks

Here is the full shortlist:
Nancy Huston for ‘Fault Lines’
Sadie Jones for ‘The Outcast’
Charlotte Mendelson for ‘When We Were Bad’
Heather O’Neill for ‘Lullabies for Little Criminals’
Rose Tremain for ‘The Road Home’
Patricia Wood for ‘Lottery’

Popularity: 23% [?]

For the past five years, AbeBooks.com has been a sponsor of the BC Book Prizes , for the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize which has five nominees this year.

1. The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating
2. Interwoven Wild: An Ecologist Loose in the Garden
3. The Triumph of Citizenship: The Japanese and Chinese in Canada, 1941-67
4. Phantom Limb
5. Everywhere Being is Dancing

You can even enter to win all five titles

Popularity: 24% [?]

Nothing much going on today - JK was pretty in purple last night in London where a bunch of bestselling authors were acclaimed for selling lots of books. There must be something else?

Popularity: 30% [?]

Adam Foulds, a young writer who had been keeping his head above water by driving a fork-lift, has just secured himself the £5,000 prize associated with winning the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year for The Truth About These Strange Times.

If The Times is correct the lad has a good shot at a writing career as he can now be placed with past winners William Dalrymple, Zadie Smith and Simon Armitage.

There’s only one signed copy of Foulds book listed on Abe, not a bad gamble at 30 quid.

Popularity: 22% [?]

Over in the UK, there are several stories this morning….the Orange Prize for Fiction is paying a price for recruiting a flakey celeb as a judge. While at The Bookseller magazine, If You Want Closure in your Relationship, Start with your Legs has won the oddest book title of the year award - I don’t think its an odd title. And in Harrogate in the Republic of Yorkshire, a rare Sherlock Holmes book, A Study in Scarlet, has turned up at a charity shop reports the local paper.

Popularity: 41% [?]

The Orange Prize shortlist has been announced and I’m pleasantly surprised to find myself reading one of the books up for the award - The Outcast by Sadie Jones. I started it last night and I’ll be interviewing her in two weeks.

When I Googled Sadie Jones, I found a porn star that shares the same name. Eventually, I found this review of her book in last Sunday’s Toronto Star.

Popularity: 25% [?]

AbeBooks is a sponsor of the BC Book Prizes. We are sponsoring the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize this year and they have just announced the shortlist.

• The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating by J.B. MacKinnon, Alisa Smith
• Everywhere Being is Dancing by Robert Bringhurst
• Interwoven Wild: An Ecologist Loose in the Garden by Don Gayton
• Phantom Limb by Theresa Kishkan
• The Triumph of Citizenship: The Japanese and Chinese in Canada, 1941-67 by Patricia E. Roy

Other interesting books up for awards are Meg Tilly’s book Porcupine, our very own Richard Davies had a chance to interview Ms. Tilly last year. And A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah which is up for an award despite recent allegations that it is work of fiction.

Personally I am really interested in The 100-Mile Diet and think I might have to read that one. AbeBooks has arranged for a local organic market to set up shop in our building a couple times this year so we could pick up local produce on our lunch break.

Popularity: 42% [?]