What’s New @ AFPLS

The National Book Foundation annually celebrates the best of American Literature by offering the National Book Award in the areas of Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry and Young People’s Literature. This year over 1200 book titles were submitted by publishers for consideration, but the finalists have been narrowed down to just 5 from each category. National Book Award Week will begin on November 17th, with winners announced on November 19th, so there is still time to read a few of the nominated titles and decide who you’d like to see walk away with the prize! To see the full list of nominees from this and previous years, click here. You can even download a PDF of all finalists and winners from 1950 to the present. Then check the library’s catalog here to see which titles are available in our system!

Oprah has choosen her newest book club title and it’s David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. Published this year, Edgar Sawtelle is the story of a mute boy living in Wisconsin who has created his own sign language and who has inherited his family’s skill with dogs. Edgar’s quiet life faces some new challenges the summer of his fourteenth year with the arrival of two strangers, one a rebellious stray dog and the other his equally rebellious uncle.

If you’d like to read a review of Wroblewski’s novel, you can find the New York Times review here. You can also check out the first chapter if you can’t wait to get started.

You can check the AFPLS catalog here to see if any copies are available or to put this book on hold. I can’t wait to read it myself!

The eighth annual National Book Festival will be taking place in Washington, D.C. this weekend, Saturday the 27th on the National Mall. The festival is hosted by First Lady Laura Bush and sponsored by the Library of Congress. This is a huge event for authors, publishers, libraries and readers everywhere, and always draws big names and big crowds. Authors from all genres and age groups will be represented and you can find the complete list here.

The festival homepage also has links to podcasts of interviews with some of the participating authors, including one with Grammy award-winning performer Dionne Warwick who has written a children’s book! So if you aren’t able to actually jet off to D.C. for the weekend, be sure and check back with the site for updates and added material as the festival gets underway.

You can also check out books by some of the authors that will be headed to the festival by checking the library’s catalog here. Here’s a few suggestions for children, teens and adults to get you started:

CHILDRENS

•  Gingerbread friends
      Brett, Jan
• No, David!
      Shannon, David

YOUNG ADULT

• Neverwhere
      Gaiman, Neil
• November blues
      Draper, Sharon M

ADULT FICTION

• People of the book : a novel
      Brooks, Geraldine
• Lush life
      Price, Richard

ADULT NON-FICTION

• Einstein : his life and universe
      Isaacson, Walter
• One minute to midnight : Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the brink of nuclear war
      Dobbs, Michael

POETRY

• Old heart : poems
      Plumly, Stanley
• Flamingo watching : poems
      Ryan, Kay (Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for 2008-2009)

I know many of you have read Douglas Adams’s Hitchhicker’s Guide to the Galaxy-the constant battered state of paperback copies in the library is proof enough! It has just been announced that British author Eion Colfer will pen a new installment to be entitled And Another Thing… Eion Colfer is best known for his best-selling Artemis Fowl series. The book is due oct in October of 2009.

You have time to catch up on the series, which includes:

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Life, the Universe and Everything
So Long, and Thanks for the Fish
Young Zaphoid Plays It Safe
Mostly Harmless
The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

You can check the afpls catalog here to see which titles are available at your local branch.

Thanks to PopCandy for the info!

Prolific English mystery writer Dame Agatha Christie was born in September, 1890.  Her nearly 100 novels and plays have been translated into many languages.  The Global Access Department of the Central Library has translations of Christie’s books in German, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Vietnamese.

German
• Letztes weekend
• Das Schicksal in Person
• Der Todeswirbel

Polish
• Godzina zero
• Uspione morderstwo

Portuguese
• Os relógios : romance de Agatha Christie

Russian (Agatha Christie anthologies)
• Desiat negritiat ; Ubiistvo v Vostochnom ekspresse ; Smert na Nile
• Drama v trekh aktakh ; Piat porosiat ; Odnim paltsem ; Mesto naznacheniia neizvestno

Vietnamese
• Ðiêp vu thành Bát Ða : truyên trinh thám
• Oan khuât
• Tôi ác duoi ánh mat troi

Enjoy reading Christie again (or for the first time) during the month of September. Additional works by Christie in these languages and in English may be found through the library catalog.

The AJC Decatur Book Festival kicks off tomorrow [Fri. 8/29/08] and you definitely don’t want to miss out this year! From tomorrow to Sunday 250 first rate authors will be milling about Decatur for readings, book signings, lectures and more. Check the full author list here for details about favorites like Rick Bragg, Eric Jerome Dickey, Emily Giffin, Haywood Smith and Karen Slaughter, just to name a few! There will also be plenty of entertainment for the kids, live music, poetry slams, food and cooking demonstrations and much more.

Everything you need to know about the festival, from directions and parking to event schedules and author information can be found at their official website here. Enjoy the festivities and have a safe Labor Day weekend!

This Sunday marks the finale of the 2008 Summer Olympics, so I thought it best to fit one more Olympic themed post into the blog! UK newspaper The Guardian has put together a short quiz on Chinese literature in honor of the Beijing games. Test yourself and see if you can beat my paltry score of 4 out of 10. Obviously I have some brushing up to do in this area! Fortunately for people with my lack of Chinese lit knowledge, AFPLS has many works by authors mentioned in the quiz such as Gao Xingjian and Jiang Rong. You can also search the library catalog for information about some of the mystic philosphies and historical figures mentioned, like Taoism or Confucius. Good luck!

Thanks to About Contemporary Literature for the link to the quiz.

Gabriel García Márquez is a Columbian novelist and 1982 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.  García Márquez is famous for the magical realism in his work and his blending of fictional, historical and political themes.  

His autobiography Vivir para contarla (Living to Tell the Tale)  has been translated into Hebrew as Li-heyot kede le-saper.  The novel El amor en los tiempos del cólera (Love in the Time of Cholera) is available in Malayam as Kolarakalatte pranayam.

Some of his works are available in Spanish in the Global Access Department of the Central Library.  Other Spanish titles are available at some branch libraries.  Here are some of them:

• Cien años de soledad
• Diatriba de amor contra un hombre sentado
• Doce cuentos peregrinos
• El amor en los tiempos del cólera
• El olor de la guayaba : conversaciones con Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza
• El otoño del patriarca
• La mala hora

These titles, movies made of some of his books, and his works that have been translated into English can be found through the library catalog.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a Nobel Prize winning Russian author who died on August 3, 2008 at the age of 89.  Among his many works was his first novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which recounted with horrifying simplicity the brutality of life as a prisoner in a Soviet gulag. He wrote that novel while a prisoner in a gulag.  He had to memorize it as he wrote, because he had no way to secure his papers.

Some of Solzenitysn’s works are available in Russian in the Global Access Department of the Central Library.  Check the library catalog for the Russian (and English) titles available.

The Man Booker Prize, sort of the Pulitzer Prize for British fiction, has announced it’s long list of nominees. AFPLS owns about half of the titles on the list, including:

White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

The Lost Dog by Michelle De Kretser

Netherland by Joseph O’Neill

The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie

Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

You can check the AFPLS catalog here to see which titles are available at your local library. This is a great opportunity to read some of the world’s best new fiction!