Book News
National Book Awards.
The 20 finalists for the 2008 National Book Award will be announced on Wednesday. Best-selling author Scott Turow will make the announcement from the stage of the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, and it will be transmitted by video link (the video will be available at at noon on that day).
The award will be presented in four categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry and Young People’s Literature.
The winner in each category will be announced at the National Book Awards ceremony and benefit dinner in New York on Nov. 19.
Also at the awards ceremony, The National Book Foundation will bestow its 2008 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters on Maxine Hong Kingston in recognition of her outstanding achievements as a writer of fiction, memoir and nonfiction.
And publisher Barney Rosset will be given the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community.
Rosset, through his publishing house, Grove Press, and his magazine, The Evergreen Review, introduced American readers to such literary giants as Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Jean Genet and Eugène Ionesco.
The awards, which have been given since 1950, are the country’s foremost symbol of literary excellence, given to writers by writers.
First Lines
The Other Side of Silence by Bill Pronzini, $24
“When Geena finally left him and filed for divorce, Fallon put the Encino house up for sale and took his last two weeks of vacation from Unidyne. Then he loaded the Jeep Liberty and drove straight to Death Valley.
“Will Rodriguez was the only person he told where he was going. There was nobody else to tell, really. He had no close friends except for Will, and theirs was mostly a work-related friendship; and Timmy was three years gone now and his folks both dead, too. Geena could have guessed, of course. She knew him that well, though not nearly well enough to understand his reasons. She’d think the same thing she always did when he went to the desert. And she’d be wrong.
“October was one of the Valley’s best months. All months in the Monument were good, even July and August when the midday temperatures sometimes exceeded 120 degrees and Death Valley justified it Paiute Indian name, Tomesha — ground afire. If a severe desert climate held no terrors for you, if you respected it and accepted it on its terms, the attractions far outweighed the drawbacks.”
Mass marketbest sellers
1. Book of the Dead, by Patricia Cornwell
2. Nights in Rodanthe, by Nicholas Sparks
3. Stone Cold, by David Baldacci
4. 8 Sandpiper Way, by Debbie Macomber
5. Protect and Defend, by Vince Flynn
6. Playing for Pizza, by John Grisham
7. Compulsion, by Jonathan Kellerman
8. Dead Until Dark, by Charlaine Harris
9. Sweet Revenge, by Diane Mott Davidson
10. You’ve Been Warned, by James Patterson and Howard Roughan
Publishers Weekly
