And now we’re back in regular time…
Awards! Rebecca Skloot has won the Wellcome Trust Book Prize (for medicine in literature) for The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which follows the amazing journey the cancer cells of Henrietta Lacks make, and what medical breakthroughs they have been responsible for. Professor Jon Stallworthy has won the biannual Wilfred Owen Poetry Award for his body of work. We can’t get the book (yet), but the fact that The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud won one of Canada’s most prestigious prizes, the Giller Prize, is like a little fairy tale – a print-run of 800, hand-printed! I love it when something like that happens (never mind the jury scandal attached to it). 
The Galaxy National Book Awards were handed out in the UK; lots of categories, click here to see them all. Stephen Fry’s memoir The Fry Chronicles won the Tesco Biography of the Year, to name one. Two Louises won the Roald Dahl Funny Prizes for funny children’s books: Louise Rennison for Withering Tights (7 – 14 category) and Louise Yates for Dog Loves Books (6 and under). The National Book Awards have starred in their own blog post.
Lists! Flavorwire.com showcased 1o Essential Books from the Last 25 Years. Haven’t read them all, but I do believe it’s a great list, and a good answer to that Guardian article the post references at the beginning. They also have 10 Contemporary Books That Challenged White, Male Literary Dominance (go Jennifer Weiner go!). GalleyCat has a list of the 20 authors with the most friends on Facebook, which I had to include simply because it’s so silly. Should the literati be worried that 8 of the authors mentioned are dead? Speaking of which, The Guardian also lists the 10 best angels in literature (although I heartily disagree with Tess of the d’Urbervilles being on that list! Stupid man character… *mumblegrumble*).
- Amazon gets into trouble for selling a paedophile’s guide. While I wish books like that wouldn’t see the light of day, this issue raises some important questions about banning books (or not). How far do you go? Is there a line that can or must be drawn?
Books that go places: well, another form of lists, really. Here are 25 books about New York City, and the Guardian featured 10 books set in Moscow (it features Lukyanenko’s The Night Watch, yay!).
- This article got me interested enough to check out the actual website: Tor.com. A publisher’s website that’s more than just that, featuring short stories, fantasy art, blogs, podcasts and conversations. If you like fantasy and science fiction, go have a look.
- Best of 2010 lists! The Guardian has the 25 best cookbooks of the year.
- How Street of Crocodiles turned into Tree of Codes. The Huffington Post features a slideshow of Jonathan Safran Foer’s latest which is in actual fact another book by writer Bruno Schulz, cut up. Ingenious, it must be said.
