Contact: Email me at mookseandgripes [at] gmail [dot] com
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For a detailed explanation of my review policy, click here. The New Yorker Fiction Forum
Click here to see what's happening in the fiction of each issue of The New Yorker.
Last Five Issues:
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Book Award Forums
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2013 Book Awards - National Book Critics Circle Award
- Winner: Ben Fountain's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
- The Story Prize
- Winner: Claire Vaye Watkins' Battleborn
- PEN/Faulkner Award
- Winner: Benjamin Alire Sáenz's Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club
- Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award
- Winner: Kevin Powers' The Yellow Birds
- Best Translated Book Award
- International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
- Nobel Prize in Literature
- Giller Prize
- Shadow Winner: November
- Winner: November
____________________________ 2012 Book Awards - National Book Critics Circle Award
- Winner: Edith Pearlman's Binocular Vision
- PEN/Faulkner Award
- Winner: Julie Otsuka's The Buddha in the Attic
- Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award
- Winner: Teju Cole: Open City
- Best Translated Book Award
- Orange Prize
- Winner: Madeline Miller: The Song of Achilles
- International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
- Winner: Jon McGregor: Even the Dogs
- Man Booker Prize
- Winner: Hilary Mantel: Bring Up the Bodies
- Nobel Prize in Literature
____________________________ 2011 Book Awards - National Book Critics Circle Award
- The Story Prize
- Winner: Anthony Doerr's Memory Wall
- PEN/Faulkner Award
- Winner: Deborah Eisenberg's The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg
- Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award
- Winner: Brando Skyhorse: The Madonnas of Echo Park
- Best Translated Book Award
- International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
- Winner: Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin
- Nobel Prize in Literature
- Winner: Tomas Tranströmer
- National Book Award
- Winner: Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones
____________________________ 2010 Book Awards - National Book Critics Circle Award
- Winner: Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall
- The Story Prize
- Winner: Daniyal Mueenuddin's In Other Rooms, Other Wonders
- PEN/Faulkner Award
- Winner: Sherman Alexie's War Dances
- Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award
- Winner: Brigid Pasulka's A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True
- Best Translated Book Award
- PEN/Malamud Award
- Winner: Nam Le & Edward P. Jones
- Orange Prize
- Winner: Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna
- International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
- Nobel Prize in Literature
- Winner: Mario Vargas Llosa
____________________________ 2009 Book Awards - National Book Critics Circle Award
- Winner: Roberto Bolano's 2666
- Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award
- Winner: Michael Dahlie's A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living
- Best Translated Book Award
- Winner: Attila Bartis: Tranquility
- Orange Prize
- Winner: Marilynne Robinson's Home
- International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
- Winner: Michael Thomas's Man Gone Down
- Man Booker Prize
- Winner: Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall
- Nobel Prize in Literature
- National Book Award
- Winner: Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin
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May 20th, 2013 | Posted in Uncategorized |
|  The winner of this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize was just announced.
- The Detour, by Gerbrand Bakker; tr from the Dutch by David Colmer (in the U.S. this book was published as Ten White Geese)
Exciting news! I haven’t read The Detour (or Ten White Geese) yet, but Bakker’s The Twin is one of those great books that I think about often (my review here). I look forward to reading this winner.
Also, Andrés Neuman received a special citation for Traveler of the Century (my review here).
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May 3rd, 2013 | Posted in Uncategorized |
| The Best Translated Book Award has announced its winner:
- Satantango, by László Krasznahorkai, tr. from the Hungarian by George Szirtes
This was my choice this year (and Stone Upon Stone was my choice last year — seriously, this is an award worth watching!). Here are my thoughts, and congrats to all.
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April 16th, 2013 | Posted in Uncategorized |
| Today, they announced the shortlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. The winner will be announced on June 5.
- Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson
- May We Be Forgiven, by A.M. Homes
- Flight Behavior, by Barbara Kingsolver
- Bring Up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel
- Where’d You Go, Bernadette, by Maria Semple
- NW, by Zadie Smith
Incidentally, I think this should be fun to follow: Simon Savidge is doing a series for We Love This Book: “The Women’s Prize: A Man’s Perspective” (find the initial post here). He’ll be reading through the shortlist and posting from his male perspective.
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April 15th, 2013 | Posted in Uncategorized |
| The winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is
- The Orphan Master’s Son, by Adam Johnson
The two finalists are:
- What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, by Nathan Englander
- The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey
I’ve heard great things about The Orphan Master’s Son, but it hadn’t really tempted me. I know a lot of people are going to be thrilled it has won. As for the finalists, I’m not a fan of Englander’s book, but The Snow Child sounds very interesting. I’ve been thinking about reading it for a while now.
What do you think?
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April 15th, 2013 | Posted in Uncategorized |
| As you probably know, once a decade Granta unveils a selection of what they consider to be the 20 best British novelists under the age of forty. Today the new list came out, and the next issue will contain a selection from each of the following authors.
- Naomi Alderman
- Tahmima Anam
- Ned Beauman
- Jenni Fagan
- Adam Foulds
- Xiaolu Guo
- Sarah Hall
- Steven Hall
- Joanna Kavenna
- Benjamin Markovits
- Nadifa Mohamed
- Helen Oyeyemi
- Ross Raisin
- Sunjeev Sahota
- Taiye Selasi
- Kamila Shamsie
- Zadie Smith
- David Szalay
- Adam Thirlwell
- Evie Wyld
The only novel I’ve reviewed from any of the above authors is Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows (review here). It will be interesting to track these careers to see which of these young authors meet these high expectations.
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April 11th, 2013 | Posted in Uncategorized |
| Here are the six books to make the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize shortlist:
- The Detour, by Gerbrand Bakker; tr from the Dutch by David Colmer (in the U.S. this book was published as Ten White Geese)
- Bundu, by Chris Barnard; tr. from the Afrikaans by Michiel Heyns (this will be available in the U.S. on May 1, 2013)
- Trieste, by Dasa Drndic; tr. from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursac
- The Fall of the Stone City, by Ismail Kadare; tr. from the Albanian by John Hodgson
- Traveler of the Century, by Andrés Neuman; tr. from the Spanish by Nick Caistor & Lorenza Garcia
- Dublinesque, by Enrique Vila-Matas; tr. from the Spanish by Rosalind Harvey & Anne McLean
This is the second shortlist for translated fiction in two days, and the second to leave off one of my favorites: Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle: Book One (or, A Death in the Family). At least this one has one of my favorites, Enrique Vila-Matas’s Dublinesque, and also picks up Traveler of the Century, both of which were left off the Best Translated Book Award shortlist. But now, here’s where I’m shocked: this list left off Krasznahorkai’s Satantango! As you can see, the Knausgaard, Vila-Matas, and Krasznahorkai would be on any shortlist I made.
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April 10th, 2013 | Posted in Uncategorized |
| I’m shocked! This is quite a leap from the list I expected! The winner will be selected from this list on May 3.
- The Planets, by Sergio Chejfec; Argentina; tr. from the Spanish by Heather Cleary (Open Letter Books)
- Prehistoric Times, by Eric Chevillard; France; tr. from the French by Alyson Waters (Archipelago Books)
- The Colonel, by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi; Iran; tr. from the Persian by Tom Patterdale (Melville House)
- Satantango, by László Krasznahorkai; Hungary; tr. from the Hugarian by George Szirtes (New Directions)
- Autoportrait, by Edouard Levé; France; tr. from the French by Lorin Stein (Dalkey Archive Press)
- A Breath of Life, by Clarice Lispector; Brazil; tr. from the Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz (New Directions)
- The Hunger Angel, by Herta Müller; Romania; tr. from the German by Philip Boehm (Metropolitan Books)
- Maidenhair, by Mikhail Shishkin; Russia; tr. from the Russian by Marian Schwartz (Open Letter Books)
- Transit, by Abdourahman A. Waberi; Djibouti; tr. from the French by David Ball and Nicole Ball (Indiana University Press)
- My Father’s Book, by Urs Widmer; Switzerland; tr. from the German by Donal McLaughlin (Seagull Books)
No Dublinesque? No My Struggle? No Traveler of the Century? No Map and the Territory? Those were, I thought, certainties. But maybe that’s why they’re not there. They’re the books we’ve seen promoted all over the place. Still, I consider Dublinesque and My Struggle to be two of the most unique, strongest pieces of literature in some time. Not to cast a shadow on the finalists, several of which I have not read.
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April 9th, 2013 | Posted in Uncategorized |
| You’ll notice that my page is different. That was not entirely intentional. Let me explain, and once things are up and running I’m going to delete this post.
I have decided, after quite a long period of struggling with the idea, to place some ads on this site. I am using a service called LitBreakers (you’ve probably seen them on other book sites), so each ad is relevant to book-reading folks and hopefully will not be for Viagra or the like (if they are, we’ll scrap this).
While I don’t mind seeing ads on others’ sites, I have never really wanted to do it here. This project is for love and not for money (not that I expect this to bring any wealth). However, it has become important for me to try to find a way for this blog to pay at least a portion of its own costs, and I hope that placing a few book ads here will go a little ways to do that. In no way do I intend this to change the content of this site in some effort to increase hits or whatever.
While I was trying to set it all up, I ran into some problems with my theme, which I hadn’t updated since installing it in early 2009, knowing that it might reset some of my settings. But upgrading the theme also became necessary and I’ve been putting it off far too long anyway. Now I just need to go through and make the settings the way I want them again, which could take a bit of time, but the content is still here.
Please be patient with me, and if you have any thoughts or feedback on the ad situation, please let me know here or via email or Twitter.
Thanks.
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April 9th, 2013 | Posted in Uncategorized |
| I’ve decided to copy a feature found on Reading Matters and Savidge Reads, a kind of hall of fame/favorite authors list. I am calling mine The Mookse and the Gripes Pantheon, and you can see the complete list here. There will also be a permanent link in the upper left-hand corner of the blog.
There are 21 authors on the list, and, while I don’t want to expand it indefinitely, I plan to update it occasionally when I realize I just need to include someone else.
It’s a personal list and I had one main criterion: after reading one of the books by the author, I had the strong desire to read everything that author had ever written. To that end, I’ve listed their books and included links to the ones I’ve reviewed. The aspiration is to, some day in the distant future, have links to each book on the list. That may not happen, but working towards that goal is actually the main goal.
Either here or on that page, please let me know what authors you’d include in your personal pantheon.
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April 8th, 2013 | Posted in Uncategorized |
| The ten finalists for the 2013 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award have been announced.
- City of Bohane, by Kevin Barry
- The Map and the Territory, by Michel Houllebecq
- Pure, by Andrew Miller
- 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami
- The Buddha in the Attic, by Julie Otsuka
- The Tragedy of Arthur, by Arthur Phillips
- Swamplandia!, by Karen Russell
- From the Mouth of the Whale, by Sjón
- The Faster I Walk, the Smaller I Am, by Kjersti A. Skomsvold
- Caesarion, by Tommy Wieringa
The only one I’ve read is Swamplandia! (my review here), but I have The Map and the Territory on hand due to the BTBA. I’ve also been meaning to read The Buddha in the Attic.
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