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News Wed Jul 08 2009
National Book Award: 60 Years, 77 Winners
The National Book Foundation is looking back at their past 77 National Book Award winners over the last 60 years and blogging about one book per day. They started yesterday with the 1950 winner, Nelson Algren's The Man with the Golden Arm, and will run through September at which point readers will have the opportunity to select "The Best of the National Book Awards Fiction" and win two tickets to the 2009 National Book Awards. The site points out that this is the first time the Awards will be open to public voting, so that's a nice little twist on the usual process.
Of particular interest to Book Club members will be that first winner, which we read in July of 2006, three titles by Saul Bellow (The Adventures of Augie March, our January 2006 read, Herzog and Mr. Sammler's Planet), a smattering of University of Chicago folk (Ralph Ellison with Invisible Man, Thornton Wilder with The Eighth Day, Philip Roth with Sabbath's Theater and Susan Sontag with In America), and our upcoming September read, The Echo Maker by Richard Powers. Keep checking the site as they add commentary on the winners each day. [via]