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Here is news of recent book awards that I have been gathering up over the last few days. Awards encourage excellence in all kinds of writing. Award books are often good choices for book discussion groups. These four awards cover a wide range of publishing, and should give you lots of reading suggestions to work on: Strand Magazine Critics Award (for mysteries and short stories); Best of the Booker (for literary fiction); Dylan Thomas Literary Prize (English language literature from around the world); Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction.

Strand Magazine awards - Winners of 2007 Strand Magazine Critics Award are Laura Lippman for best novel (What the Dead Know) and Marcus Sakey for best first mystery novel (The Blade Itself). The winners were announced at an invitation only cocktail party in Manhattan. Click here for the article in Strand Magazine. Strand is a magazine for mystery and short story lovers.

Best of the Bookers - Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children won the Best of the Booker award after being judged--through an online public vote that drew more than7,800 responses--to be the greatest book ever to win the Booker Prize. Click here for the Guardian newspaper article announcing the award. Best of Booker is a new award celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Bookers.

According to the BBC : "A long-list of 14 books being considered for the Dylan Thomas literary prize has been announced. The award is given to English language writers under 30, drawn from around the world.
The biennial £60,000 prize has become one of the largest literary awards, with the winner announced in November. The list includes authors from Dylan's native south Wales, and the rest of UK, South Africa, Kenya, the US and Iran.

Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction - Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, "a detailed account of the famous murder, in 1860, of a three-year-old child of a respectable middle-class family," won of the US$60,064 Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction, according to the Guardian. Judges said: "this is one of those great non-fiction books that uses the techniques of fiction to magnificent effect... On first reading, it is an absolute page-turner. Then, when you reread it, you realise how many levels it has, how much it tells you." (see my earlier posting about this book). Click here for more info about the prize.

Labels: Best of the Booker, Dylan Thomas Literary Prize, Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction, Strand Magazine Critics Award