Book Awards

Are you an awards groupie like I am?  My favorite prize is the Man Booker, which I glommed on to after a teenage reading of The Bone People, but I like to check out award-winners in multiple categories. There are several literary awards that have come up on the abcreads radar lately.  How about:

• The Story Prize: The Story Prize is an annual book award for short story collections written in English and published in the U.S. during a calendar year. This year's three finalists are all in the library catalog!  They are The Angel Esmeralda by Don DeLillo, We Others by Steven Millhauser, & Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman.
• The National Jewish Book Awards: There are 18 categories to this prize, but The Jewish Book of the Year is Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore.
• The Man Asian Literary Prize: It is an annual literary award given to the best novel by an Asian writer, either written in English or translated into English, and published in the previous calendar year. This award usually only has 5 finalists, but this year it has 7.  Our library system has most of them!  Check out The Wandering Falcon by Jamil Ahmad (Pakistan); The Sly Company of People Who Care by Rahul Bhattacharya (India); River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh (India); Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin (South Korea); Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke (China); & The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto (Japan).
• The Costa Awards: The Costa Book Awards is one of the UK's most prestigious and popular literary prizes and recognises some of the most enjoyable books of the year by writers based in the UK and Ireland. It’s unique for having five categories: First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children's Book. We have their 2011 winner for Best First Novel, Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away by Christie Watson, & their Children's Book Award winner,  Blood Red Road by Moira Young-which, incidentally, looks like it might be a good readalike for Hunger Games fans.
• The Alex Awards: The Alex Awards are given to ten books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18.  2011 winners include: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender; Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok; The Radleys by Matt Haig; & Room by Emma Donoghue.