And the 2009 National Book Award Nominees Are …

Literary award announcements have been nonstop the last couple of weeks, and now there’s another: The 2009 National Book Award nominees have been announced:

FICTION
Bonnie Jo Campbell, American Salvage (Wayne State University Press)
Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin (Random House)
Daniyal Mueenuddin, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (W. W. Norton &
Co.)
Jayne Anne Phillips, Lark and Termite (Alfred A. Knopf)
Marcel Theroux, Far North (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

NONFICTION
David M. Carroll, Following the Water: A Hydromancer’s Notebook (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Sean B. Carroll, Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search
for the Origins of Species (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt)
Adrienne Mayor, The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy (Princeton University Press)
T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (Alfred A. Knopf)

YOUNG PEOPLE’S LITERATURE
Deborah Heiligman, Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith (Henry Holt)
Phillip Hoose, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
David Small, Stitches (W. W. Norton & Co.)
Laini Taylor, Lips Touch: Three Times (Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic)
Rita Williams-Garcia, Jumped (HarperTeen/HarperCollins)

POETRY
Rae Armantrout, Versed (Wesleyan University Press)
Ann Lauterbach, Or to Begin Again (Viking Penguin)
Carl Phillips, Speak Low (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Open Interval (University of Pittsburgh Press)
Keith Waldrop, Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy (University of California Press)

In looking at this list, I notice four things:

—A work of fiction published by a university press has made the list.

—Charles Darwin gets a shout-out in both the nonfiction and young people’s literature categories.

—I recognize the names of far more National Book Award judges than I do book titles and authors, so it’s a good thing I don’t try to read all of the nominees before book awards are announced the way I try to see all of the Academy Awards nominees. Otherwise, I’d need to borrow some reading tips from Nina Sankovitch.

—With satirist Andy Borowitz emceeing, the awards presentation will be funny. Probably a lot funnier than most of the books that were nominated.