2015 National Book Awards Finalists

It has been a busy month in the literary world. Last week they announced of the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (we are featuring her tomorrow). Yesterday the winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize was announced. Then this morning the finalists for the National Book Awards were announced. All these announcements and awards have wreaked havoc on our blog schedule as BW and I have struggled to read the variety of books and we have moved from 3 times a week to almost daily posting. We will go back to our regular post schedule (3-4 times a week) in the next couple of weeks.

The National Book Awards feature 4 primary categories including fiction, non-fiction, poetry and young people’s literature. Keep reading to see if your favorite books made it onto the list of finalists.

Fiction Finalists:

• Karen E. Bender, Refund: Stories (Counterpoint Press).
• Angela Flournoy, The Turner House (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).
• Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies (Riverhead Books/Penguin Random House).
• Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles (Random House).
• Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life (Doubleday/Penguin Random House).

Non-Fiction Finalists:

• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. (Spiegel & Grau/Penguin Random House).
• Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs by Sally Mann (Little, Brown/Hachette Book Group).
• Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery (Atria/Simon & Schuster).
• If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran by Carla Power (Henry Holt and Company).
• Ordinary Light: A memoir by Tracy Smith (Alfred A. Knopf).

Poetry Finalists: 

• Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay(University of Pittsburgh Press).
• How to Be Drawn by Terrance Hayes (Penguin/Penguin Random House).
• Voyage of the Sable Venus: and Other Poems by Robin Coste Lewis (Alfred A. Knopf).
• Bright Dead Things: Poems by Ada Limón (Milkweed Editions).
• Elegy for a Broken Machine by Patrick Phillips (Alfred A. Knopf).

Young People’s Literature Finalists:

• The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers).
• Bone Gap by Laura Ruby (Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins Children’s Books).
• Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War by Steve Sheinkin (Roaring Brook Press/Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group).
• Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman (HarperCollins Children’s Books).
• Nimona by Noelle Stevenson (HarperTeen/HarperCollins Children’s Books).

I have only read one: A Little Life. I actually own the Lauren Groff book, Turner House, and Between the World and Me but I have yet to read any of them.

Have you read any of these books? Which ones would you recommend. Which books should win?