2011 National Book Award finalists announced during radio broadcast

The finalists for the 2011 National Book Awards were announced Wednesday in Portland, Oregon.

This year’s announcement was a little unusual. The finalists were announced by past National Book Award winners, past finalists and judges in front of a live audience during the Oregon Public Broadcasting morning radio show, Think Out Loud, which is broadcast from the new Literary Arts Center in Portland.

Five finalists were announced in the fiction category. They were:

- “The Sojourn” by Andrew Krivak
- “The Tiger’s Wife” by Téa Obreht
- “The Buddha in the Attic” by Julie Otsuka
- “Binocular Vision” by Edith Pearlman
- “Salvage the Bones” by Jesmyn Ward

Five finalists were also named in the nonfiction category. They included:

- “The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism” by Deborah Baker
- “Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution” by Mary Gabriel
- “The Swerve: How the World Became Modern” by Stephen Greenblatt
- “Malcolm X: A Live of Reinvention” by Manning Marable
- “Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout” by Lauren Redniss

Finalists in the poetry category were:

- “Head Off & Split” by Nikky Finney
- “The Chameleon Couch” by Yusef Komunyakaa
- “Double Shadow” by Carl Phillips
- “Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Poems 2007-2010” by Adrienne Rich
- “Devotions” by Bruce Smith

Six finalists were named in the young people’s literature category. They were:

- “Chime” by Franny Billingsley
- “My Name Is Not Easy” by Debby Dahl Edwardson
- “Inside Out and Back Again” by Thanhha Lai
- “Flesh and Blood So Cheap: The Triangle Fire and Its Legacy” by Albert Marrin
- “Shine” by Lauren Myracle
- “Okay for Now” by Gary D. Schmidt

This year’s slate of winners will be announced on Nov. 16 at the 62nd National Book Awards Benefit Dinner and Ceremony in New York City, and actor John Lithgow is set to host the event. Winners receive $10,000 and a bronze statue, and finalists receive $1,000 and a bronze medal.

For more information about the finalists mentioned above and past winners and finalists, visit www.nationalbook.org.

Before I close this thing out today, I want to also mention that the good folks at Amazon.com, one of the world’s largest (if not THE largest) online booksellers, released on Thursday its Best Books of October list.

Books that made the list included:

1. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
2. The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
3. The Great Sea by David Abulafia
4. Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks
5. The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman
6. The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje
7. Nightwoods by Charles Frazier
8. Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi
9. Into the Silence by Wade Davis
10. Cain by Jose Saramago

In the end, how many of the books mentioned above have you had the chance to read? Which did you like or dislike? Which would you recommend and why? Which books would you pick to win this year’s round of National Book Awards? Let us know in the comments section below.