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Book Nook provides readers with insights into the world of books. Vick Mickunas takes you into the center of the publishing world with the latest book buzz, book reviews, and exclusive chats with authors..

Vick Mickunas reviews books for the Dayton Daily News.

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Home > Blogs > Book Nook > Archives > 2008 > October > 15 > Entry

2008 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALISTS

By Vick Mickunas | Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 12:27 PM

The finalists for the National Book Award have just been announced. Here’s the list:

Fiction

Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project (Riverhead)

Rachel Kushner, Telex from Cuba (Scribner)

Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country (Modern Library)

Marilynne Robinson, Home (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Salvatore Scibona, The End (Graywolf Press)

Nonfiction

Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War
(Alfred A. Knopf)

Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (W.W. Norton & Company)

Jane Mayer, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a
War on American Ideals (Doubleday)

Jim Sheeler, Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives (Penguin)

Joan Wickersham, The Suicide Index: Putting My Father’s Death in Order (Harcourt)

Poetry

Frank Bidart, Watching the Spring Festival (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Mark Doty, Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems (HarperCollins)

Reginald Gibbons, Creatures of a Day (Louisiana State University Press)

Richard Howard, Without Saying (Turtle Point Press)

Patricia Smith, Blood Dazzler (Coffee House Press)

Young People’s Literature

Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains (Simon & Schuster)

Kathi Appelt, The Underneath (Atheneum)

Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied (Scholastic)

E. Lockhart, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (Hyperion)

Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now (Alfred A. Knopf)

I will make a prediction: Aleksandar Hemon will win in fiction for The Lazarus Project. While I think that Marilynne Robinson could be the favorite for Home, the Hemon book is truly amazing. I interviewed him a few months ago. The man is a force.

But then, so is Robinson. I interviewed her by e-mail recently and she is one of our greatest living writers….

I’ll be curious to see who nabs the award for fiction. In non-fiction I would favor Drew Gilpin Faust for This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War..

Vick Mickunas

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