Prize watch: Congrats to Salman Rushdie, winner of the 2014 PEN Pinter Prize for outstanding literary achievement. (To go along with the announcement, here’s a nice article from Antonia Fraser, Harold Pinter’s widow, about this honour.)
I must say, I think I like Salman Rushdie’s life story and essays and autobiographical writing more than his novels. I highly recommend his memoir, Joseph Anton. He’s an amazing speaker, so if you ever have the chance to hear him, jump at it!
Prize watch: (Update June 8) Finally… a BAILEYS Prize for Women’s Fiction winner! Congrats to Eimar McBride, author of A Girl is A Half Formed Thing.
(Update April 7) Now it’s time for the BAILEYS Prize shortlist. I still haven’t read as many of these as I would like. Worse, I still haven’t had that beverage!
(March 7) The BAILEYS Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist is out. And so the wish list grows. (Now I am craving books and a delicious Irish whiskey-and-cream beverage!)
Prize watch: Congrats to Karen Joy Fowler, winner of the 2014 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves.
Prize watch: Congrats to Wayne Grady, winner of the 2013 Amazon.ca First Novel Award for Emancipation Day.
Prize watch: Congrats to the just-announced winners (and finalists) of the 2014 Pulitzer Prizes. I really must read The Goldfinch one of these days. (It’s almost becoming an “emergency”!)
Prize watch: The shortlists for the 2014 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction are out. Great stuff here! Americanah strikes again. Rumour has it Americanah and The Goldfinch are going to battle for all the fiction prizes this season.
Prize watch: Congrats to all the winners of the National Book Critics Circle Awards, including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for Americanah and Sheri Fink for Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital. (Both were on my list of top reads for 2013. Finally, for once, the critics and I think alike!)
Prize watch: Congrats to George Saunders, winner of the inaugural Folio Prize for his collection of short stories Tenth of December.
Prize watch: Congrats to Thomas King, winner of the RBC Taylor Prize for his book The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America. I look forward to reading my newly signed copy!
Thoughts on Canada Reads 2014:
