And the winners are...
For Fiction: Richard Powers, The Echo MakerThis is a story of a truck driver who has an accident and goes into a coma. He emerges two weeks later and appears to have a brain injury called Capgras syndrome, which renders him paranoid. The book follows Mark, his sister, who Mark thinks is an imposter, and a neurologist who studies interesting cases of brain disorders. While Mark attempts to piece together what really happened the night of the accident, the truth will change the lives of all three main characters.
For Non-Fiction: Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time : The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl Covers the U.S. history period of the “Dust Bowl” years in the heartland of our country. The author is a Pulitzer Prize winner and he follows several families as they try to hang on during the awful dust storms and watch as their lives and loved ones continue on during the Great Depression.
For Poetry: Splay Anthem, by Nathaniel MackeyIn a stunning collection of poems of transport and transcendence, African-American poet Mackey's "asthmatic song of aspiration" scuttles across cultures and histories—from America to Andalucía, from Ethiopia to Vienna—in a sexy, beautiful adaptive dance.
For Young People's Literature: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Volume One: The Pox Party, by M.T. AndersonThis is an historical novel of prodigious scope, power and insight, set against the backdrop of the Revolutionary War. Octavian, a black youth raised in a Boston household of radical philosophers, is given an excellent classical education. Only as he grows older does he realize that while he is well dressed and well fed, he is indeed a captive being used by his guardians as part of an experiment to determine the intellectual acuity of Africans.
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2 comments:
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing is one of the most amazing books of the year. It can and will be read by both teens and adults. It represents a point-of-view we don't often see: an African slave in pre-Revolutionary War Boston who fights for the new nation's freedom without ever being given freedom himself. Read it... I guarantee you won't soon forget it.
I defiantly agree with what the last ferson said. Alhtough at the beginning it was hard to get used to. It quickly catched your attention and forces you to keep reading. I would reccomend this book to anyone who is willing to think whille they read. (why do you think it got this award? It's got to be good?)
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