The finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Awards have officially been announced.  I find myself discussing award winners often through this blog, largely because I find them to be the most trustworthy recommendations around.  Of course, the bestseller lists are a great way to find fun new reads, but the fact that George Bush’s Decision Points has been on the bestseller list for the past 10 weeks proves to me that my own tastes might differ from America at large. But finalists are decided and awards bestowed after an entire panel of educated and talented individuals have waded through the sea of intriguing books on the shelves. It’s like a screening process helping me decided which books to invest in.  Genius!

But enough of my rambling and back to the award at hand. National Book Critics Circle is a non-profit organization founded in 1975 to honor outstanding writing and foster a national conversation about reading, criticism and literature. The only awards to be chosen by critics themselves honor the best literature  in six categories—autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction and poetry. This year’s finalists include a wide range of authors. Two fiction finalists are actually in translation: Israeli David Grossman’s To the End of the Land and Hans Keilson’s Comedy in a Minor Key, which address a similar strength in the face of oppression despite the years separating the plots.  Franzen’s familiar title Freedom made the list, as well at Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad. The fiction list is rounded out by the Irish author Paul Murray’s Skippy Dies, which is perhaps one I will be adding to my “To-Read” list. Set in an all-boys Catholic prep school in Dublin, the novel unfolds the events leading up to Daniel “Skippy” Juster’s untimely death. Said to be “tragicomic,” the book is endorsed as making the reader want to laugh and weep all at once.

Here is the complete list of all the categories.  Good luck to all the finalists.  It’s time to get reading!

Fiction

Jennifer Egan, A Visit From The Goon Squad, Knopf

Jonathan Franzen. Freedom. Farrar, Straus And Giroux.

David Grossman, To The End Of The Land. Knopf.

Hans Keilson.Comedy In A Minor Key. Farrar, Straus And Giroux

Paul Murray. Skippy Dies. Faber & Faber.

Biography

Sarah Bakewell. How To Live, Or A Life Of Montaigne. Other Press

Selina Hastings. The Secret Lives Of Somerset Maugham: A Biography. Random House.

Yunte Huang. Charlie Chan: The Untold Story Of The Honorable Detective And His Rendezvous With American History. Norton.

Thomas Powers. The Killing Of Crazy Horse. Knopf.

Tom Segev. Simon Wiesenthal: The Lives And Legends. Doubleday

Autobiography

Kai Bird, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978, Scribner

David Dow, The Autobiography of an Execution, Twelve

Christopher Hitchens Hitch-22: A Memoir, Twelve

Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, Hiroshima in the Morning, Feminst Press

Patti Smith, Just Kids, Ecco

Darin Strauss, Half a Life, McSweeney’s

Criticism

Elif Batuman. The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them. Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Terry Castle, The Professor and Other Writings. Harper

Clare Cavanagh. Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West. Yale University Press.

Susie Linfield. The Cruel Radiance. University of Chicago Press.

Ander Monson. Vanishing Point: Not a Memoir. Graywolf

Nonfiction

Barbara Demick. Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea. Spiegel & Grau

S.C. Gwynne. Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American, Scribner

Jennifer Homans. Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet. Random

Siddhartha Mukherjee. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. Scribner

Isabel Wilkerson. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. Random

Poetry

Anne Carson. Nox. New Directions

Kathleen Graber. The Eternal City. Princeton University Press

Terrance Hayes. Lighthead. Penguin Poets

Kay Ryan. The Best of It. Grove

C.D. Wright. One with Others: [a little book of her days]. Copper Canyon