Summer Reading 2012: New Books

The news website PolicyMic has a great post by Sarah Swong, a freshman at Yale University, about new must-read books this summer. Her selections are an interesting combination of fiction and non-fiction books, and her descriptions compelling and concise. Most of the books are available now although a few are soon to be published. A list of her selections is below along with links to their records in the Minuteman Catalog. You can read the full post on PolicyMic, an interesting social networking online news platform with articles by a wide variety of authors.

Home by Toni Morrison

Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey

Dream of the Celt by Mario Vargas Llosa – released on June 5

The Red House by Mark Haddon – released on June 12

Between the Lines by Jodi Picoult & daughter Samantha van Leer – released on June 26

NW by Zadie Smith – released on September 4

Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power by Steve Coll

A Wedding in Haiti by Julia Alvarez

A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful by Gideon Lewis-Kraus

Books for Young Adults

Every year the American Library Association names the Alex Awards, the 10 best books published in the previous year written for adults with a special appeal to readers ages 12-18.

“The 2012 Alex Awards will take readers from rural New Hampshire to the robot apocalypse to Katrina-ravaged Mississippi to a magical circus. The Alex Award winners are as diverse and eclectic as the teens who will read them,” said Karen Keys, chair of the 2012 Alex Awards Committee.”

2012 Winners:

Big Girl Small, by Rachel DeWoskin, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

In Zanesville, by Jo Ann Beard, published by Little, Brown & Company

 The Lover’s Dictionary, by David Levithan, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (ISBN: 9780374193683)

The New Kids: Big Dreams and Brave Journeys at a High School for Immigrant Teens, by Brooke Hauser, published by Free Press

The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern, published by Doubleday

Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline, published by Crown Publishers

Robopocalypse: A Novel, by Daniel H. Wilson, published by Doubleday

Salvage the Bones, by Jesmyn Ward, published by Bloomsbury USA

The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt: A Novel in Pictures, by Caroline Preston, published by Ecco

The Talk-Funny Girl, by Roland Merullo, published by Crown Publishers

2012 Notable Children’s Books

The Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), announced its 2012 list of Notable Children’s Books in March. The list is divided into four categories: younger readers, middle readers, older readers, and all ages. The books are judged to be of “special interest, quality, creativity and value to children 14 years of age and younger.” A selection of the titles are listed below along with links to the Minuteman Library Network with a full annotated list of the selected books is located on ALA’s website.

Younger

All the Water in the World. By George Ella Lyon, Illus. by Katherine Tillotson, Atheneum Books for Young Readers.

A Ball for Daisy. By Chris Raschka, Illus. by the author, Schwartz & Wade Books.

See Me Run. By Paul Meisel, Illus. by the author. Holiday House.

Tales for Very Picky Eaters. By Josh Schneider, Illus. by the author, Clarion Books.

Me…Jane. By Patrick McDonnell, Illus. by the author. Little, Brown.

Middle

Balloons over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade. By Melissa Sweet, Illus. by the author. Houghton Mifflin Books for Children.

Breaking Stalin’s Nose. By Eugene Yelchin, Illus. by the author, Henry Holt.

The Great Migration: Journey to the North. By Eloise Greenfield, Illus. by Jan Spivey Gilchrist. HarperCollins Children’s Books/Amistad.

Inside Out and Back Again. By Thanhha Lai. HarperCollins.

The Lily Pond. By Annika Thor. Trans. by Linda Schenck. Delacorte Press.

Soldier Bear. By Bibi Dumon Tak, Illus. by Philip Hopman. Trans. by Laura Watkinson. Eerdmans Books for Young Readers.

Underground. By Shane Evans, Illus. by Shane Evans. Roaring Brook Press.

Older

Between Shades of Gray. By Ruta Sepetys. Philomel Books.

Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition. By Karen Blumenthal. Roaring Brook Press.

Hurricane Dancers: The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck. By Margarita Engle. Henry Holt.

Music Was It: Young Leonard Bernstein. By Susan Goldman Rubin. Charlesbridge.

The Scorpio Races. By Maggie Stiefvater. Scholastic Press.

Witches! The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem. By Rosalyn Schanzer, Illus. by the author. National Geographic Society.

All Ages

Can We Save the Tiger?, By Martin Jenkins, Illus. by Vicky White. Candlewick Press.

Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans. By Kadir Nelson, Illus. by the author. Balzer + Bray.

Never Forgotten. By Patricia McKissack, Illus. by Leo and Diane Dillon. Schwartz & Wade Books.

Swirl by Swirl: Spirals in Nature. By Joyce Sidman, Illus. by Beth Krommes. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

National Book Critic Circle Award Winners Announced

The winners of the National Book Critic Circle (NBCC) Awards for the 2011 publishing year were announced on Thursday March 8th, 2011. Descriptions of the winners by the NBCC are below along with links to their records in the Minuteman Catalog.

Fiction

Edith Pearlman – “Binocular Vision: New & Selected Stories (Lookout Books), a collection of 34 Chekhov-like short stories that was also nominated for the National Book Award. The publication is the first from Lookout Books and a triumph for Pearlman’s distinctive storytelling, bringing it to a larger audience.”

Nonfiction

Maya Jasanoff – “Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (Knopf), a book of fresh, original, and sprightly scholarship, by Harvard professor of British history Jasanoff, acknowledging colonists’ response to Loyalists during the Revolutionary War and the consequences for Britain’s entire empire thereafter.”

Biography

John Lewis Gaddis – “George F. Kennan: An American Life (Penguin Press), a book that brings alive the remarkable American statesman while also delivering a profound understanding of U.S. foreign policy in the 20th-century.”

 

Poetry

Laura Kasischke – “Space, in Chains (Copper Canyon Press), a formally inventive work that speaks to the horrors and delights of ordinary life in an utterly original way.”

 

 

Autobiography

Mira Bartók – “The Memory Palace: A Memoir (Free Press), a book that rose to the formal challenge of blending her mother’s journals, reflections on her mother’s mental illness and subsequent homelessness, and thoughts on her own recovery from a head injury to create a heartfelt yet respectful work of art.”

Criticism

“Geoff Dyer – Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and Reviews (Graywolf Press), celebrating critic par excellence who showed his love of his various subject in tour-de-force language.”

 

Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing – Kathryn Schulz

Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award – Roberts B. Silvers of the New York Review of Books

The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC), a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization, honors outstanding writing and fosters a national conversation about reading, criticism, and literature. It was founded in 1974 to encourage and raise the quality of book criticism in all media and to create a way for critics to communicate with one another about their professional concerns. It consists of about 600 active book reviewers.

National Book Critics Circle 2011 Awards: A complete list of the finalists

The National Book Critics Circle announced the finalists for its 2011 book awards. The titles are listed below along with links to their records in the Minuteman catalog.

Each day leading up to the March 8 announcement of the 2011 NBCC award winners, the NBBC blog, Critical Mass, highlights one of the thirty finalists. The in-depth descriptions of the books are definitely worth reading!

Fiction

Teju Cole, Open City (Random House)

Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Alan Hollinghurst, The Stranger’s Child (Knopf)

Edith Pearlman, Binocular Vision (Lookout Books)

Dana Spiotta, Stone Arabia (Scribner)

Nonfiction

Amanda Foreman, A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War (Random)

James Gleick, The Information (Pantheon)

Adam Hochschild, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Maya Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary War (Knopf)

John Jeremiah Sullivan, Pulphead: Essays (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux)

Autobiography

Diane Ackerman, One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, A Marriage, and the Language of Healing (W.W. Norton)

Mira Bartók, The Memory Palace (Free Press)

Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Harlem Is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America (Little, Brown)

Luis J. Rodríguez, It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing (Touchstone)

Deb Olin Unferth, Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War (Henry Holt)

Biography

Mary Gabriel, Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of the Revolution (Little, Brown)

John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life (Penguin Press)

Paul Hendrickson, Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961 (Knopf)

Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (Viking)

Ezra F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Belknap Press: Harvard University Press)

Criticism

David Bellos, Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything (Faber & Faber)

Geoff Dyer, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and Reviews (Graywolf)

Jonathan Lethem, The Ecstasy of Influence (Doubleday)

Dubravka Ugresic, Karaoke Culture (Open Letter)

Ellen Willis, Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music (University of Minnesota Press)

Poetry

Forrest Gander, Core Samples from the World (New Directions)

Aracelis Girmay, Kingdom Animalia (BOA Editions)

Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains (Copper Canyon Press)

Yusef Komunyakaa, The Chameleon Couch (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)

Bruce Smith, Devotions (University of Chicago Press)

NPR’s The Best Books Of 2011

NPR has posted on their website, npr.org, a complete listing of their critics’ choices for the best books of 2011. The lists are separated into a diverse range of categories and include short descriptions of each title. The cookbooks listed below are from “2011′s Best Cookbooks: Revenge Of The Kitchen Nerds” by T. Susan Chang. All the lists can be located at npr.org.

120 Easy and Delectable Dishes You Can’t Wait to Make by Melissa Clark

The Food of Spain by Claudia Roden

All About Roasting: A New Approach to a Classic Art by Molly Stevens

The Food52 Cookbook: 140 Winning Recipes from Exceptional Home Cooks by Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs

The Country Cooking of Italy by Colman Andrews

Lidia’s Italy in America by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and Tanya Bastianich Manuali

The Food of Morocco by Paula Wolfert

Ruhlman’s Twenty The Ideas and Techniques That Will Make You a Better Cook by Michael Ruhlman

American Flavor by Andrew Carmellini

The Rosie’s Bakery No Apologies Butter, Cream & Sugar Baking Book  by Judy Rosenberg

The Economist’s 2011 Books of the Year

The Economist published their 2011 Books of the Year list in the December 10th print edition. The extensive list includes books in several different categories: politics and current affairs, biography and memoir, economics and business, history, science and technology, culture, society and travel, fiction, and poetry. A selection of the titles are listed below, the complete list can be found at Economist.com.

Politics and Current Affairs

Tide Players : The Movers and Shakers of a Rising China by Jianying Zha

Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa by Jason K. Stearns

Pakistan : A Hard Country by Anatol Lieven

Biography and Memoir

Blue Nights by Joan Didion

Van Gogh: The Life by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith

Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin

The Paper Garden: An Artist Begins her Life’s Work at 72 by Molly Peacock

Economics and Business

Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo

The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better by Tyler Cowen

Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner

Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World by William Cohan

History

Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore

The Anatomy of a Moment: Thirty-five Minutes in History and Imagination by Javier Cercas

The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, its Regions and their Peoples by David Gilmour

The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire, and War in the West Indies by Matthew Parker

Science and Technology

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans by Mark Lynas

The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World by David Deutsch

Culture, Society and Travel

The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker

Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier and Happier by Edward Glaeser

The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman

Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything by David Bellos

Fiction

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami.

Other People’s Money by Justin Cartwright

The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht

The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje

YALSA’s 2011 Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults

The Young Adult Library Services for Young Adults has created a top 10 list of Fiction published in 2011 from their full list of the Best Fiction for Young Adults list.

Bacigalupi, Paolo. Ship Breaker

Donnelly, Jennifer. Revolution

Marchetta, Melina. Finnikin of the Rock

Matson, Morgan. Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour

McBride, Lish. Hold Me Closer, Necromancer

Mulligan, Andy. Trash

Perkins, Mitali.  Bamboo People

Reinhardt, Dana. The Things a Brother Knows

Saenz, Benjamin. Last Night I Sang to the Monster

Sedgwick, Marcus.  Revolver

Publishers Weekly Best of 2011 lists

Publishers Weekly produces several BEST OF 2011 book lists in several different categories:  Top 10, Fiction, Mystery/ Thriller, Poetry, Romance, SF/ Fantasy/ Horror, Comics, Nonfiction, Children’s Picture Book, Children’s Fiction, Children’s Nonfiction, Religion and Lifestyle.

The list below is their “10 Best Books of 2011″.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

After the Apocalypse by Maureen McHugh

Bossypants by Tina Fey

Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie

There but for the by Ali Smith

Hemingway’s Boat by Paul Hendrickson

One Day I Will Write About This Place by Binyavanga Wainaina

Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens

New York Times: The 10 Best Books of 2011

The New York Times published its list of the 10 Best Books of 2011. Its also has a list of 100 Notable Books of 2011.

NYT’s 10 Best Books of 2011:

FICTION

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

11/22/63 by Stephen King

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson

The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht

NONFICTION

Arguably : Essays by Christopher Hitchens

The Boy in the Moon : A Father’s Journey to Understand His Extraordinary Son by Ian Brown

Malcolm X : A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

A World on Fire : Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War by Amanda Foreman