Shortlist 2010
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Shortlist 2010 |
| The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association (PNBA) is a non-profit association of (primarily) independent bookstores in five Northwest states, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Alaska. The Association produces educational and promotional events and materials for its members and offers literacy, free speech and author promotional vehicles through its member stores. Since 1965, our annual Book Awards, have recognized such luminary figures in Northwest literature as Ivan Doig, Ursula LeGuin, David James Duncan, David Guterson, Jon Krakauer, Chuck Palahniuk, and Sherman Alexie, often awarded formal recognition in the Northwest before gaining national attention. A history of past winners of the Pacific Northwest Book Award can be viewed at PNBA.org.
PNBA's Award Committee is comprised of nine volunteer booksellers from our member stores, throughout the region. Committee members considered more than 200 nominated titles published during 2009 for a 2010 Book Award. In early November the Committee chose these eleven titles for their "Shortlist," from which the final winners will be selected. The winners, which by rule can include no more than six books, will be determined by the Awards Committee in late December. They will then be announced in January 2010, and promoted by our member stores during the winter and spring of 2010. We offer our sincere congratulations to the authors of these Shortlist books, and encourage our member stores to give these books the extra attention they so well deserve. We also encourage owners and employees of our member stores to send your comments about your own personal favorites among this Shortlist to thom@pnba.org by Monday, November 30. Those comments will be forwarded to the Committee for consideration. |
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All In A Day This lovely book illuminates all the possibilities a day offers--the opportunities and chances that won't ever come again--and also delivers a gentle message of good stewardship of our planet. Newbery Medal winner Cynthia Rylant's poetic text, alongside Nikki McClure's stunning, meticulously crafted cut-paper art, makes this picture book not only timeless but appealing to all ages, from one to one hundred. CYNTHIA RYLANT is the author of more than a hundred books for children. She won the Newbery Medal for Missing May and the Newbery Honor for A Fine White Dust. She lives in Oregon. NIKKI McCLURE is a self-taught artist who has been making paper-cuts since 1996. She is the author and illustrator of Abrams' Collect Raindrops. All in a Day is her first Abrams' children's book. She lives with her family in Olympia, Washington. There is a nice video of her talking about the book HERE. Abrams Books for Young Readers, 9780810983212, $17.95 |
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The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt & the Fire that Saved America "I'm not a big history buff, but Tim Egan has a way of pulling readers into the drama and politics and big screen action of whatever story he's telling. In The Big Burn, prepare to be swept up in the account of the largest fire in US history. The Great Fire of 1910 ate up three million acres in two days, but the backstory is just as interesting and Egan's final thesis is one that will be discussed in history circles for years to come." --Awards Committee comment TIMOTHY EGAN is a national enterprise reporter for the New York Times (follow his commentary on the Opinionator blog). He is the author of five books and the recipient of several awards, including the Pulitzer Prize. He won a PNBA Award in 1991 for The Good Rain. He lives in Seattle. Mr. Egan does not have his own web site, but readers can listen to an interview with him about The Big Burn conducted by NPR's Terri Gross, here. Here is an informal video of Tim reading from The Big Burn, but his best video, produced in conjunction with Borders, and can be found here. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 9780618968411, $27.00 |
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Boneshaker "It's not everyday that a story is told by a middle-aged, single mother and her teenaged son. In Cherie Priest's alternative history, a deadly gas is released from the ground in downtown Seattle. Briar and Zeke take turns telling the story of their journey through the fog. It's got zombies, underground communities, drugs, destructive machinery, diabolical plans, teenaged parental issues and Pike's Place. What's not to like?" --Awards Committee comment CHERIE PRIEST cut her literary teeth on mysteries, she states on her site. "I've read every Sherlock Holmes story Doyle ever wrote (including the sort-of sucky ones with Holmes-as-narrator), I've consumed enough Agatha Christie to choke a horse, and Dash Hammett's Continental Op is one of my heroes." She lives in Seattle, Washington, and keeps a popular blog at cmpriest.livejournal.com. Ms. Priest also appeared on a panel at DragonCon in September 2009 with five other authors, discussing the relative merits of Zombies vs. Vampires. Tor Books, 9780765318411, $15.99 |
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The Crying Tree "If someone recommended a family/courtroom drama, I would probably politely decline, but once I picked this up, I was hooked. Maybe it's the format of 'Musical Perspectives' that kept me going or maybe my desire to hear from Daniel himself made the pages fly by. Naseem Rakha deftly and gracefully introduces the people who are affected by capitol punishment. From the prisoner, to the family of the victim to the prison warden, each has a clear voice in a troubling time. Great pace, great book group read, great pick." --Awards Committee comment NASEEM RAKHA is an award-winning broadcast journalist whose stories have been heard on NPR. She lives in Oregon's Willamette Valley. PNBA bookseller, April, at Grass Roots Books in Corvallis, OR, reviews The Crying Tree here. There is also an excellent two-part video interview with Naseem about how and why she wrote the book: Pt. 1, Pt. 2. Broadway Books, 9780767931403, $22.95 |
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Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness There are more crows now than ever. Their abundance is both an indicator of ecological imbalance and a generous opportunity to connect with the animal world. Crow Planet reminds us that we do not need to head to faraway places to encounter "nature." Rather, even in the suburbs and cities where we live we are surrounded by wild life such as crows, and through observing them we can enhance our appreciation of the world's natural order. Crow Planet richly weaves Haupt's own "crow stories" as well as scientific and scholarly research and the history and mythology of crows, culminating in a book that is sure to make readers see the world around them in a very different way. LYANDA LYNN HAUPT is the author of Rare Encounters with Ordinary Birds. Her articles and reviews have appeared in Open Spaces, Wild Earth Journal, Birdwatcher's Digest, and The Prairie Naturalist. She lives in Seattle. Ms. Haupt has a very good, ten-minute film of her talk at REI in Seattle, in which she explains how she came to write about crows. The artist who produced the illustrations for the book, Daniel Cautrell has made some interesting videos, showing how he makes his prints, including this one, which shows him actually printing an image and holding it up to the camera, with its political message. Hachette Book Group, 9780316019101, $23.99 |
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The Collector: David Douglas and the Natural History of the Northwest Jack Nisbet first told the story of British explorer David Thompson, who mapped the Columbia River, in his acclaimed book Sources of the River, which set the standard for research and narrative biography for the region. Now Nisbet turns his attention to David Douglas, the premier botanical explorer in the Pacific Northwest and throughout other areas of western North America. Douglas's discoveries include hundreds of western plants--most notably the Douglas Fir. JACK NISBET is a teacher, naturalist, and writer who lives in Spokane, Washington. Listen to a radio interview with Jack Nisbet on KUOW here, by clicking on the appropriate "Listen to Weekday" link. Sasquatch Books, 9781570616136, $23.95 |
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Double Take: A Memoir Kevin Michael Connolly is a twenty-three-year-old who has seen the world in a way most of us never will. Whether swarmed by Japanese tourists at Epcot Center as a child or holding court at the X Games on his mono-ski as a teenager, Kevin has been an object of curiosity since the day he was born without legs. Growing up in rural Montana, he was raised like any other kid (except, that is, for his father's MacGyver-like contraptions such as the "butt boot"). As a college student, Kevin traveled to seventeen countries on his skateboard and, in an attempt to capture the stares of others, he took more than 30,000 photographs of people staring at him. In this dazzling memoir, Connolly casts the lens inward to explore how we view ourselves and what it is to truly see another person. KEVIN MICHAEL CONNOLLY was born and raised in Montana. This trailer for Double Take is pretty funny, and provides a great intro to and about the author, while he gets in a few digs about Ebooks (it is also the front page of his web site). ABC TV did a 20/20 feel-good segment about him, and a local television interview can be found here. HarperStudio, 9780061791536, $19.99 |
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The End of the West Michael Dickman's breathtaking debut melds the mysterious with the everyday, documenting the bright desires and all-to-common sufferings of modern times: spiritual longing, the improbable expectations fathers have for their sons, drug abuse, gritty neighborhoods, and unfailingly complicated human relationships ("Ian broke his mother's nose because she burned the pancakes"). Distinctive in their direct, unflinching view, Michael Dickman's poems can proclaim, despite a catalogue of loss and disappointment: "Still, there is a lot to pray to, on earth." MICHAEL DICKMAN was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Field, Tin House, and Narrative Magazine. Michael is currently a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University. Listen to Michael Dickman reading one of his poems at Tin House's 10th anniversary party on July 16, 2009. His poem "We Did Not Make Ourselves" was published in The New Yorker in September 2008. Copper Canyon Press, 9781556592898, $15.00 |
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Hotel on the Corner of Bitter & Sweet: A Novel "A tender and satisfying novel set in a time and a place lost forever, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet gives us a glimpse of the damage that is caused by war--not the sweeping damage of the battlefield, but the cold, cruel damage to the hearts and humanity of individual people. Especially relevant in today's world, this is a beautifully written book that will make you think. And, more importantly, it will make you feel." JAMIE FORD is the great-grandson of Nevada mining pioneer Min Chung, who emigrated from Kaiping, China, to San Francisco in 1865, where he adopted the Western name "Ford," thus confusing countless generations. Ford is an award-winning short-story writer, an alumnus of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and a survivor of Orson Scott Card's Literary Boot Camp. Having grown up near Seattle's Chinatown, he now lives in Montana with his wife and children. Watch as he guides you through Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet here. Ballantine Books, 9780345505330, $24.00 |
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Live Through This: A Mother's Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love "Debra Gwartney's Live Through This is an extraordinary, heart-driven account of daughters lost and found, of other daughters kept close along the way, and of an underworld that's with us everywhere, but which so few of us see." --Rick Simonson, Elliott Bay Book Company DEBRA GWARTNEY is a former Oregonian newspaper reporter and worked as a correspondent for Newsweek magazine for ten years. She teaches writing at Portland State University and lives in Finn Rock, Oregon. Gwartney is the mother of four daughters. Ms. Gwartney provides a great Bookstream interview about Live Through This here. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 9780547054476, $24.95 |
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The Man From Kinvara: Selected Stories Tess Gallagher's vivid and rewarding short stories bear witness to the intimate details and subtle revelations of daily life. Set mostly in Gallagher's native Pacific Northwest and drawn from her two widely acclaimed collections, The Lover of Horses and At the Owl Woman Saloon, these stories contain the lives of loggers, bartenders, bear wrestlers, gamblers, Avon ladies, horse whisperers, and hairdressers--all encountered with generosity and heart. TESS GALLAGHER is the author of eight volumes of poetry, including Dear Ghosts, Moon Crossing Bridge, and My Black Horse. She is presently working on her New and Selected Poems. She spends time in a cottage on Lough Arrow in Co. Sligo in the West of Ireland and also lives and writes in her hometown of Port Angeles, Washington. Here is a recent article about Ms. Gallagher, which ran in her local paper, the Peninsula Daily News. Graywolf Press, 9781555975371, $15.00 |
