National Book Award Winners Announced

The winners of the 2012 National Book Awards were announced earlier this week.  The National Book Foundation has presented these awards for over fifty years and they are quickly gaining ground as one of the premiere awards, especially since there was no Pulitzer Prize for Fiction this year.  As you know from previous posts, I always pay attention to these awards and make it a point to read the nominees at some point.  Without further ado, here are the winners:

Fiction
The Round House by Louise Erdrich

Nonfiction
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo

Young People's Literature
Goblin Secrets by William Alexander

Visit this site for more information on the National Book Foundation and the National Book Awards.

What books are you thankful for?

Is it almost Thanksgiving already?  It's amazing how the time flies.  But this gives me the opportunity to share with you the 2012 books I am thankful for.  Corny?  Yes.  Absolutely.  But it will be fun.  I promise!

The first 2012 titles I'm thankful for is The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Steadman.  It's also the most heartbreaking title I've read this year.  Lighthouse keeper Tom Sherbourne lives with his wife, Isabel, on a remote island off the coast of Australia.  One day a boat washes up on shore containing a dead man and a child.  The Sherbourne's find themselves with a decision to make, one that they later find has a major impact on others.

On the lighter side, I really enjoyed political satire Taft 2012.  This comical title imagines William Howard Taft disappearing into thin air on the last day of his presidency, only to reappear on the White House lawn in 2011.  Taft finds himself not only trying to learn what life is like in our time, but also being more popular than he was during his time.  This leads to an improbable presidential election with Taft up for the presidency for the first time in 100 years.

The Night Circus has to be on the list of books I am thankful for.  This story centers around a bizarre competiting between Celia and Marco, who have been trained by dueling magicians.  It's not heavy on action, but the writing is truly beautiful.

Here are a few more 2012 books I am thankful for:

Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander

The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson

The Vanishing Act by Mette Jakobsen

Home by Toni Morrison

A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash

Share Your Love of Reading on April 23!

April 23 is an important day for readers.  It marks the day of William Shakespeare's birth and death as well as the death of Miguel de Cervantes.  April 23 is also recognized as the International Day of the Book by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization).  

In the spirit of April 23, World Book Night was organized as a way for readers to share their love of reading with others.  Book givers volunteer to give away 20 copies of a title of their choosing to random strangers.  The Tiffin-Seneca Public Library has been confirmed as a distribution point for World Book Night 2013!  

How do you become a book giver?  You can sign up to be a book giver on April 23 from the World Book Night website.  Choose one of the twenty offered titles (the title list can be accessed here) to hand out to random strangers.  You can choose from classics like Fahrenheit 451 and My Antonia to contemporary works like The Language of Flowers and Salvage the Bones.  The library will receive the boxes of books during the week of April 15 and hold a book givers open house where you can pick up your books.  That's it!  You then have the pleasure of sharing the title you choose with twenty random people.  

Sign up today and mark the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library as your distribution point.  We look forward to helping you spread your love of reading!

Bram Stoker

Some of you may have noticed the Bram Stoker-inspired cartoon on the Google search page yesterday.  This was done in celebration of Stoker's 165th birthday.  I thought it might be fun to take a look at Stoker's life and works.

Forbes did a terrific article entitled "5 Fun Facts About Bram Stoker on His 165th Birthday".  The two that stood out in my mind are the short feud with Oscar Wilde (who would have thought?) and that Stoker wrote romance novels.  I guess you just never know about these classic literary figures!  The Huffington Post even did a cool Vampires in Art slideshow in celebration of Stoker's birthday.

If this has piqued your interest in Stoker, try his classic work, Dracula, as a book, audiobook, or DVD.

Get Lost in a Good Series

I just finished reading Jasper Fforde's The Woman Who Died a Lot.  This is the seventh book in the witty Thursday Next series.  If you haven't heard of this series, do yourself a favor and check it out.

The series is based in an alternate version of Great Britain and follows the adventures of Thursday Next, a Special Operative Literary Detective, who's mission is to protect the world's prized literature.  But this isn't your normal detective series, not by a long shot!  The series begins with The Eyre Affair, in which Archeron Hades, the third most wanted man in the world, wants to kidnap the character Jane Eyre and eliminate her from literary history!  It's up to Thursday to try to actually enter the novel and save Jane from this fate. 

Each book is full of many comical moments and clever turns of phrase.  Thursday owns a pet cloned dodo which is all the rage in this alternate reality.  She battles vampires, minotaurs, and even creatures from the books she enters.  Thursday also does battle with the evil Goliath Corporation, which is bent on creating a global monopoly of everything imaginable.  She even becomes part of Jurisfiction, the policing agency within the BookWorld.

It is very unique in how the line between the real world and literature blurs as the series continues.  The fact that literature is valued so highly in this alternate universe is refreshing, too.  Check out The Eyre Affair and I'm sure you'll want to continue through the series!

The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets

If you've been checking out the Reader's Corner, you've probably noticed that I have a fixation with debut novels.  I am simply amazed by the number of well-written debut novels that come out every month.  It's time once again for a brief review of one such novel.  This time it's The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets by Kathleen Alcott.

We meet Ida and her two best friends, brothers Jackson and James, who meet in early childhood and remain close (at times) into adulthood.  They are brought together through loss as Ida has lost her mother and the brothers have lost their father.  As quickly as they meet, they become inseperable.  In one beautifully written chapter, Ida describes to the reader everything she knows about James.  This is no easy feat for any writer, let alone a first-time novelist. 

Things become more complicated as the threesome grows up.  Jackson is tormented by vivid dreams and sleepwalking episodes.  Sometimes they even become violent.  Ida, who strikes up a romantic relationship with Jackson, and James often feel the brunt of Jackson's episodes, whether directly or indirectly.  Two of them lose touch for years, one decides to have nothing to do with the other, and all three must play mediator at one time or another. 

This powerful debut shows both the strength and fragility of friendship and is a very emotional read.