NBA News from Last Night (Not That One, The Other One)

Your National Book Award 2011 winners are (drumroll, please):

• Jesmyn Ward, fiction
• Thanhha Lai, young adult literature
• Stephen Greenblatt, nonfiction
• Nikky Finney, poetry

John Lithgow hosted, there were some Occupy Wall Street jokes (fitting, I guess? given that the award were held at a restaurant near Zuccotti Park), and the awards were also webcast for the first time this year. I preferred to watch people watching them on Twitter, but GalleyCat also has a liveblog if you want to feel like you were really there.

Some are calling Ward's award a major upset because it didn't go to Tea Obreht (whose novel THE TIGER'S WIFE I'm fairly sure was the top seller in the bunch), but the predictions I read were fairly split between them.

National Book Award 2011 Nominees

Hey, at least I did better than last year!

You have until November 16 to read the following:

Fiction
Andrew Krivak, THE SOJOURN
Téa Obreht, THE TIGER'S WIFE (read it, liked it)
Julie Otsuka, THE BUDDHA IN THE ATTIC
Edith Pearlman, BINOCULAR VISION (short stories)
Jesmyn Ward, SALVAGE THE BONES (read it, liked it but thought it had protagonist issues)

Nonfiction
Deborah Baker, THE CONVERT: A TALE OF EXILE AND EXTREMISM
Mary Gabriel, LOVE AND CAPITAL: KARL AND JENNY MARX AND THE BIRTH OF A REVOLUTION
Stephen Greenblatt, THE SWERVE: HOW THE WORLD BECAME MODERN
Manning Marable, MALCOLM X: A LIFE OF REINVENTION
Lauren Redniss, RADIOACTIVE: MARIE & PIERRE CURIE, A TALE OF LOVE AND FALLOUT

In this fall: Biographies of couples. Out this fall: Hyped doorstopper books by white dudes? (Fiction by dudes in general, 4/5 nominees agree?)

Now I'm not saying anyone should do such a foolish thing as read all 10 of these (plus 10 poetry and YA books, available here), and definitely not that I am tempted to pull such a stunt. But if you did an e-book reader would be a great way to pick all these up (hardcovers, all) at some savings. You may also save yourself some pain from lugging all of those around. (That's my left shoulder and neck, FYI.)