*Section only at ABC The Hague – there’s twice-weekly internal shipping though, if you want to collect something in Amsterdam! Please note that a red abridged sign will be visible on any editions that are. And finally, I would have included Steve Jobs, except it never even made it from the box to the shelf before it was sold!
Borders files for bankruptcy, both in the US and in Australia. Which reminds me – if you can, help the bookshop around ABC Amsterdam’s corner!
Awards! There are Grammys for audio books (as in “Spoken Word” albums), and this year they went to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents Earth, read by, among others, Jon Stewart, and Julie Andrews’ Collection of Poems, Songs and Lullabies read by Julie Andrews and Emma Walton Hamilton (both books/albums on order!). The Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize went to Artichoke Hearts by Sita Brahmachari. Thank you marketing departent for the link. The William E. Colby Award (for military fiction or non-fiction) was given to Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes. The Man Booker Foundation is honoring the late Beryl Bainbridge with a posthumous Booker prize. You can vote for your favorite shortlisted Bainbridge book here. And Powell’s Books customer favorite awards, the Puddly Awards, were handed out to The Help by Katherine Stockett (Fiction) and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (Nonfiction).
“I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled ’science fiction’ ever since, and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.” Fifteen things Kurt Vonnegut said better than anyone else, according to avclub.com.
R. I. P. Children’s book writer Brian Jacques died on February 5th, aged 71. You can read obituaries here and here. The Rogue Crew, the 23rd installment of his popular Redwall series, will be published in May.
*I can only speak for ABC Den Haag here; I don’t believe ABC Amsterdam has a separate audiobooks section. We’ll gladly send an audiobook Amsterdam’s way, though, if that’s the ABC you live closest to!
Whew! There were so many events to post about that I haven’t had time to make time for the Bookbits lately. And of course the literary world is inconsiderate as ever, carrying on making news regardless of my temporal distress. So I figured I’d catch up with all the awards from the past – eek! – month and a half.
The Orange Prize for Fiction was handed out to Barbara Kingsolver yesterday, for The Lacuna. Irene Sabatini won their New Writers award for The Boy Next Door. Anne Michaels won the Orange Prize Youth Panel Award (voted for by, you guessed it, teenagers) for her book Fugitive Pieces (the 1997 winner of the “main” award)(see the shortlist of all the previous winners that were nominated here).
The Nebulas (science fiction) have been handed out, too, mid-May. Best Novel went to The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. See the complete list of winners here.
The Children’s Book Council handed out their third annual Children’s Book Choice Awards. James Patterson won Author of the Year for Max, and Peter Brown was crowned Illustrator of the Year for The Curious Garden. See the other winners here. ).And some more hopelessly outdated Bookbits! But I’m slowly catching up, truly. I’m almost in the right month now:
Awards! An award I never mentioned anywhere are the Audies, for best audio books (Neil Gaiman won once more with his The Graveyard Book, good on him!). The lovely thing about that site is the reviews of each nominated audio book (who reads what well and why). Edward Hogan won the Desmond Elliott Prize for best (UK) debut, for Blackmoor. And after posthumously winning the Bisto Children’s Book of the Year for Bog Child, Siobhan Dowd now also wins the prestigious Carnegie Medal. The Greenaway Medal for illustration was awarded to Catherine Rayner for Harris Finds His Feet.
Four books by Martin Luther King, Jr., are to be republished in January.Powered by WordPress