The Costa Book Award Winner Has Been Announced!

Formally known as the Whitbread Prize, the Costa Book Award rewards authors who write something that we readers enjoy reading.  Hmm...well, maybe there's more to the prize than that; you can check out the Costa Prize site here.  There are five winners, each in a different category: First Novel, Novel, Biography, Children's Literature, and Poetry (see the other category winners below).  Then, from those five winners, a super-duper winner is chosen as the Costa Book Award Winner of the Year.

Congratulations to Nathan Filer, who has won the award for his debut novel The Shock of the Fall, a "moving account of schizophrenia and grief." (Click here for more from the Guardian article.)  Filer is a nurse working in the mental health system in the UK, so I am intrigued to read this insider's account, albeit fictional.

I have already requested the book from my local library...stay tuned for more.  Oh, and it beat the other contenders:

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
The Pike by Lucy Hughes-Hallett
Goth Girl and the Ghost of a Mouse by Chris Riddell
Drysalter, a poetry collection by Michael Symmons Roberts

Happy Reading!
 

National Book Critics Circle Award Finalists Announced!

The short list is out for the National Book Critics Circle Award.  Click here to read the entire article in the LA Times.

The fiction finalists are:

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah (Knopf) A LITERARY MASTERS SELECTION: OCTOBER 2013

Alice McDermott, Someone (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Javier Marías, The Infatuations, translated by Margaret Jull Costa (Knopf)

Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being (Viking)

Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch (Little, Brown)

As you know, Americanah was Literary Masters' October book; everyone loved it and we had fantastic discussions.  (For more on Literary Masters, click on link to the right of where you are now reading.)  I am currently reading The Goldfinch--not loving it as much as I thought I would (expectations, expectations) but it's early days yet.  This is one long book.

I want to read the others...

The winner will be announced in March!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Happy 2014 to you all!  Have you made your new year's resolutions?  Have you made your new year's reading resolutions?  Hmm...I'll have to do another post about that one of these days.  Today, though, I want to share a little gem of a book with you:

 I saw this in a book store and immediately bought it to give to my friend, Kim.  She's always drinking out of a mug that say Keep Calm and Carry On; it kind of fits her personality, to be honest.  She has an aristocratic demeanor about her.  I thought I'd give her this book to show her how we non-nobles cope.

When I went to the counter to pay, the clerk asked me if I wanted it wrapped, and I said 'no' so I could enjoy the book first.  (Is that a bad thing?)  Well, days later...hmm...weeks later...I am still enjoying it! 

It's a collection of maxims from various people, one on each page.  Let me share one or two with you:

"The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on.  It is never of any use to oneself."  ~Oscar Wilde

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." 
~Albert Einstein

Or how about this zinger:

"Forget the past--the future will give you plenty to worry about."  ~George Allen, Sr.

Or:

"Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?" ~Edgar Bergen

Or:

"Experience is a comb that life gives you after you lose your hair." ~Judith Stern

If you. like me, find wisdom in pessimism, this book will crack you up.  And if you're an optimist, read it and see how the other half thinks.  As for Kim, I think I'll let her just Keep Calm and Carry On for a bit longer...