Category: Literary Awards

Orange Prize Shortlist for 2012 Announced

I’m a bit of a fan of the Orange Prize for Women as I always seem to find something that I love from the shortlist each year – books such as Emma Donoghue’s Room, Attica Locke’s Black Water Rising, Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, Marina Lewycka’s A Short History of Tractors in the Ukraine, and, of course, Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin.  This year’s short list has just been announced, and I realised that other than Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder I didn’t know very much about the others.  I’m going to try Georgina Harding’s Painter of Silence next as it has got some good reviews online like this one from the Guardian Newspaper, but would love to hear reader’s feelings about the others.

Here’s the short list for 2012:

Half Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan
The Forgotten Waltz, Anne Enright
Painter of Silence, Georgina Harding
The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
Foreign Bodies, Cynthia Ozick
State of Wonder, Ann Patchett

Miles Franklin Literary Award Longlist for 2011

Last week the long list for the 2011 Miles Franklin Literary Award was announced and included:

Jon Bauer, Rocks in the Belly
Honey Brown, The Good Daughter
Patrick Holland, The Mary Smokes Boys
Melina Marchetta, The Piper’s Son
Roger McDonald, When Colts Ran
Stephen Orr, Time’s Long Ruin
Kim Scott, That Deadman Dance
Kirsten Tranter, The Legacy
Chris Womersley, Bereft

Bereft is the shop’s April book club title and you can read my review of this and The Piper’s Son at the Bayside Reader blog here and here.  In store, I have Bereft, When Colts Ran, That Deadman Dance, and The Good Daughter at the moment but am happy to order the other titles in for you.