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Bookmarks: National Book Awards

Our neighbours to the south will be handing out The National Book Awards tonight. Before they do, here’s some handy links to get you up to speed on some of the nominees:

• The full list of nominees
• Controversy in the fiction category (The New York Times)
• Texans well-represented (The Dallas Morning News)
• Joan Wickersham on her nominated non-fiction work The Suicide Index (The Boston Globe)
• Teens schmooze with the YA nominees (School Library Journal)
• Reflections from an NBA juror (The Washington Post)
• A brief history of The National Book Awards (Time)

We should take this opportunity to point out that the jury has already perpetrated a grave critical injustice by failing to nominate the second volume in M.T. Anderson’s majestic, two-part The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation, which New York Times reviewer Jerry Griswold recently described thus:

It may be hard to conceive of making the claim about a young adult book, but I believe Octavian Nothing will someday be recognized as a novel of the first rank, the kind of monumental work Italo Calvino called “encyclopedic” in the way it sweeps up history into a comprehensive and deeply textured pattern.

The first volume won the National Book Award two years ago, so maybe the jurors just wanted to share the wealth?

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