The OF Blog: 2012 LA Times Book Prize finalists released

Thursday, February 23, 2012

2012 LA Times Book Prize finalists released

Just saw the shortlist and it's an intriguing one.  I'll note in bold the ones I have read and will link to the ones I have reviewed before.  Uncertain if I'll have time to read/review any (I'm behind as it is for National Book Critics Circle Awards finalists) before the April 20 awards banquet, but I may at least try to review some of the winners later:


Biography

    Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned, John A. Farrell (Doubleday)
    Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, Manning Marable (Viking)
    Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman, Robert K. Massie (Random House)
    Reading My Father: A Memoir, Alexandra Styron (Scribner)
    My Long Trip Home, Mark Whitaker (Simon & Schuster)

Current Interest

    Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything, David Bellos (Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
    El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency, Ioan Grillo (Bloomsbury Press)
    Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
    Pakistan: A Hard Country, Anatol Lieven (PublicAffairs)
    The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science and Fear, Seth Mnookin (Simon & Schuster)

Fiction

    Ghost Light, Joseph O’Connor (A Frances Coady Book/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
    The Cat’s Table, Michael Ondaatje (Knopf)
    The Buddha in the Attic, Julie Otsuka (Knopf)
    Binocular Vision: New & Selected Stories, Edith Pearlman (Lookout Books/University of North Carolina Wilmington)
    Luminarium, Alex Shakar (SoHo Press)

Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction

    The Art of Fielding, Chad Harbach (Little, Brown & Company)
    Ten Thousand Saints, Eleanor Henderson (Ecco/HarperCollins)
    Leaving the Atocha Station, Ben Lerner (Coffee House Press)
    Shards, Ismet Prcic (Black Cat/Grove/Atlantic)
    The Arriviste, James Wallenstein (Milkweed Editions)


Graphic Novel

    I Will Bite You! And Other Stories, Joseph Lambert (Secret Acres)
    Celluloid, Dave McKean (Fantagraphics)
    Finder: Voice, Carla Speed McNeil (Dark Horse)
    Congress of the Animals, Jim Woodring (Fantagraphics)
    Garden, Yuichi Yokoyama (PictureBox)

History

    The Anatomy of a Moment: Thirty-Five Minutes in History and Imagination, Javier Cercas (Bloomsbury USA)
    1861: The Civil War Awakening, Adam Goodheart (Knopf)
    To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918, Adam Hochschild (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
    Molotov’s Magic Lantern: A Journey in Russian History, Rachel Polonsky (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
    Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America, Richard White (W.W. Norton & Company)


Mystery / Thriller

    Started Early, Took My Dog, Kate Atkinson (Reagan Arthur Books/Hachette Book Group)
    Plugged, Eoin Colfer (The Overlook Press)
    11/22/1963, Stephen King (Scribner)
    Snowdrops: A Novel, A.D. Miller (Doubleday)
    The End of Wasp Season, Denise Mina (Reagan Arthur Books/Hachette Book Group)

Poetry

    Songs of Unreason, Jim Harrison (Copper Canyon Press)
    Discipline, Dawn Lundy Martin (Nightboat Books)
    The Public Gardens, Linda Norton (Pressed Wafer)
    DoubleShadow: Poems, Carl Phillips (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
    Devotions, Bruce Smith (University of Chicago Press)

Science & Technology

    A Hole at the Bottom of the Sea: The Race to Kill the BP Oil Gusher, Joel Achenbach (Simon & Schuster)
    The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood, James Gleick (Pantheon)
    Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, Mara Hvistendahl (PublicAffairs)
    Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius, Sylvia Nasar (Simon & Schuster)
    Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution, Holly Tucker (W.W. Norton & Company)

Young Adult Literature

    Beauty Queens, Libba Bray (Scholastic Press)
    The Big Crunch, Pete Hautman (Scholastic Press)
    A Monster Calls: Inspired by an idea from Siobhan Dowd, Patrick Ness (Candlewick Press)
    Life: An Exploded Diagram, Mal Peet (Candlewick Press)
    The Scorpio Races, Maggie Stiefvater (Scholastic Press)

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