A bookworm journalist blogs on literature and life
Last week, the winners of this year’s Indie Lit Awards (book awards given out by literary bloggers) were announced, and I posted reviews of all five shortlisted books here on the blog. But in the frenzy of posting all those reviews (and getting to write about a Hunger Games-related book in time for the movie premier), I didn’t get to spend much time reflecting on the awards more generally. Hence, the topic of today’s post.
Now that 2011 is gone and we’re trucking along into 2012, I can finally share with you the nonfiction short list for the Indie Lit Awards. This year, Biography/Memoir got split off from the Nonfiction category, which means our nonfiction list is chock full of intensely long and serious nonfiction reads. Seriously. Every book on this list is more than 400 pages long. So much reading!
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I suppose my post title says just about everything I wanted to mention in this post, but I’m sure you’ll forgive me for adding just a little bit more.
The Indie Lit Awards, which are in their second year, are awards given to books that have been recommended and voted on by independent literary bloggers. Nominations are open to all readers, and are then voted upon by a panel of bloggers who are familiar with the genre they represent.
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Even though I always love being a book blogger, I feel like there are some especially exciting events and projects going on right now in this corner of the blogosphere, and I wanted to take just a minute to share three of them with you: the Indie Lit Awards, Dewey’s Read-a-Thon, BEA and BCC.
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When Isabel Wilkerson, author of the Indie Lit Awards Non-Fiction winning book The Warmth of Other Suns (which is a great book!) agreed to answer some questions, I was thrilled. Isabel graciously sent some amazing answers to my questions from the airport in Celeveland where she was stranded because of a blizzard — we have those often in the Midwest — after being on the road for two weeks talking about the book. I’m really honored she’d take the time to do that, and excited to share her responses with you. Enjoy!
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Last Friday the Indie Lit Award winners for 2010 were announced. I was lucky enough to be the judge for the Non-Fiction panel, so I’m excited about the awards.
Of the five books on the nonfiction shortlist, The Warmth of Other Suns and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks were both well-liked by everyone on our panel. I was most interested in the similarities between the two books. Both are histories, written by authors who spent a considerable amount of time researching their subjects and trying to get the complete story. And each addressed the ways in which the United States and out citizens mistreated African Americans in the past.
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One Sentence Summary: Between 1915 and 1970 almost six million African American migrated from the South to escape Jim Crow laws, which changed the entire face of the United States.
One Sentence Review: Wilkerson’s book manages to be both epic and deeply personal at the same time, and is the kind of nonfiction that changed the way I think about the world.
Why I Read It: This book was shortlisted for the Indie Lit Awards in nonfiction, and I am a judge for that panel. Opinions expressed in this review are my own, and don’t reflect the thoughts of the panel or reflect our ratings of the book.
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