The Booker Prize Shortlist

Every year the Booker Prize is awarded to the best novel best novel of the year written by a citizen of the British Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. Previous winners of this prize include Yann Martel's The Life of Pi and A.S. Byatt's Possession.

The announcement of the prize's longlist and shortlist always makes for interesting speculation in the literary press.

The books on this year's shortlist are

Kiran Desai - The Inheritance of Loss
Kate Grenville- The Secret River
M.J. Hyland - Carry Me Down
Hisham Matar - In the Country of Men
Edward St. Aubyn - Mother’s Milk
Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

The winner will be announced October 10th in London.

All Aunt Hagar's Children

Pulitzer Prize winning author Edward Jones (The Known World) has a new collection of short stories out, All Aunt Hagar's Children.

The Miami Herald says "Powerfully, unsentimentally, he (Jones)writes of families falling apart and coming together, of ordinary and extraordinary people, of bad neighbors, worse luck and miracles. Throughout flows the inevitable pain of reconciling a rural past with an urban future and the lingering weight of shackles with the heady freedom of making choices that suddenly may turn sour."

"Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11"

Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11 is a wonderful new book about the story of the photographers who were first on the scene at the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks.

Garrison Keillor has a wonderful essay about the book in last Sunday's New York Times Book Review.

Hugo Awards

Every year, the Hugo Awards recognizes the best science fiction and fantasy writing. The 2006 Awards were announced last month.

The winner of the 2006 Hugo Award for Best Novel is......

Spin by Robert Charles Wilson!

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan has a new album, Modern Times, out this week. The library has a copy on order and owns several of his other albums.

As part of it's online archive the New Yorker has posted a 1964 profile of Dylan on its website.