The Nebula Award winners were announced this weekend. The winner for best novel was The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon which coincidentally releases in paperback (HarperCollins, $15.95) today.
Check availability of Michael Chabon books at Fiction Addiction.
The 2008 Locus Award Finalists have been announced. The Locus science fiction and fantasy awards are presented to winners of Locus Magazine’s annual readers’ poll, which was established in the early ’70s specifically to provide recommendations and suggestions to Hugo Awards voters. Over the decades the Locus Awards have often drawn more voters than the Hugos and Nebulas combined.
I’m a little behind in my SF reading and so I’m afraid many of the finalists are unfamiliar to me, but the one I have read and greatly enjoyed was The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, a finalist for Best First Novel.
The finalists for the 2008 Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) Book Award have been announced and one of the cookbook finalists is Greenville’s own Soby’s New South Cuisine.
The finalists include the best Southern books of 2007 in the following categories: Children’s, Fiction, Cooking, Nonfiction, and Poetry.
We challenge you to read all the finalists and pick your favorites. If you guess the correct award winner in each of the five categories, you’ll be entered to win a prize.
Fiction Addiction’s business book club met tonight to discuss Big Green Purse: Use Your Spending Power to Create a Cleaner, Greener World by Diane MacEachern (Avery, paperback, $17.95).
We unanimously agreed that it is a wonderful resource for anyone — whether an individual or a small business — trying to become more environmentally friendly.
For those such as myself who are just starting out, this hefty (432 pages) tome can seem a little intimidating. But the author takes a very realistic approach — suggesting that you adopt just one or two practices at a time until your budget and habits adapt. She gives personal examples of the choices she and her family have made. For example, in the realm of personal care and beauty she decided that her first organic purchases would be for products that stayed on her body the longest, such as makeup and deodorant.
The more eco-advanced members of the book group were already following many of Diane’s suggestions, but the book contained enough new ideas and suggestions that everyone felt it a worthy purchase.
For May, the club will be reading The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell.
Fiction Addiction’s business book club is open to the public and meets on the 4th Thursday of each month at 6:30 pm at Thai Top Restaurant in our shopping center. Those who purchase the club pick from us during the month we are reading it will receive a 15% discount off the list price.
Mudbound by Hillary Jordan (Algonquin, hardcover, $22.95), the winner of the Bellwether Prize for Fiction, is a very readable first novel set in the Mississippi Delta at the end of World War II. We first follow city-born Laura McAllan as she struggles to deal with the trials of keeping house and raising children on her husband’s newly purchased farm. Then two war heroes return to work the land – her white brother-in-law, Jamie, and Ronsel, the eldest son of her husband’s black tenant farmers — but are given very different homecomings. Each chapter is told from a different character’s point of view, but their stories tie together seamlessly, giving a comprehensive view of racial tensions in the Jim Crow South. I recommend Mudbound for fans of Barbara Kingsolver and William Faulkner.
The Romanov Bride by Robert Alexander (Penguin, hardcover, $24.95), the 3rd book in his series about the Romanovs, releases on April 17th. Alexander’s novels are popular bookclub selections and The Kitchen Boy, the first book of the series, was assigned for extra credit by several Upstate teachers this year.
For more information on The Romanov Bride or if you’d like to ask Robert Alexander questions about his earlier books, consider joining one of the author’s forthcoming Live Book Club sessions.
The Pulitzer Prize winners for the best in journalism and literature for 2007 have just been announced. The fiction winner was The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.
My favorite recent children’s book, Wild Girls by Pat Murphy (Viking Press, hardcover, $16.99), has just won a Christopher Award. For those not familiar with the award:
First presented in 1949, the Christopher Awards were established by Christopher founder Father James Keller to salute media that “affirm the highest values of the human spirit.” Their goal is to encourage men, women and children to pursue excellence in creative arenas that have the potential to influence a mass audience positively. Award winners encourage audiences to see the better side of human nature and motivate artists and the general public to use their best instincts on behalf of others.
If you have not already read this wonderful book, please purchase a copy today!
Those looking for a new epic fantasy series can rejoice at the publication of The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (DAW, paperback, $7.99), the first book in a trilogy. Told in the first person, we learn of the early life of legendary Kvothe — orphan, genius, magician, bard, and kingkiller.
This assured, compelling first novel should be well-received by fans of Robert Jordan, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Guy Gavriel Kay. The second novel in the trilogy will be releasing next year in hardcover.
Check availability of Patrick Rothfuss books at Fiction Addiction.
