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National Book Award Finalists Announced

October 21st, 2008 Molly

The 2008 National Book Award finalists were announced last Friday.  Sponsored by The National Book Foundation, the National Book Awards celebrate the best of American literature.  Place holds on copies of the nominated books at the library:

Fiction

• The End by Salvatore Scibona.
• Home by Marilynne Robinson.
• The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon.
• Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen.
• Telex from Cuba by Rachel Kushner.

Nonfiction

• The Dark Side:  The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer.
• Final Salute:  A Story of Unfinished Lives by Jim Sheeler.
• The Hemingses of Monticello:  An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed.
• The Suicide Index:  Putting My Father’s Death in Order by Joan Wickersham.
• This Republic of Suffering:  Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust.

Poetry

• Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith.
• Creatures of a Day by Reginald Gibbons.
• Fire to Fire:  New and Collected Poems by Mark Doty.
• Watching the Spring Festival by Frank Bidart.
• Without Saying by Richard Howard.

Young People’s Literature

• Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson.
• The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks E. Lockhart.
• The Spectacular Now by Tim Tharp.
• The Underneath by Kathi Appelt.
• What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell.

The awards will be announced at the 2008 National Book Awards ceremony on November 19th and on the National Book website that evening.

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