The Oscar nominees have been announced. You can make your picks on ballots from several sources, including the NYT ballot.

Book adaptations made a strong showing in the major categories (we’re including August: Osage County, which is adapted from a play).

Oscar Nominees Based on Books — Major Categories

Best Picture — 5 of 9
Director — 3 of 5
Actor in a Leading Role — 3 of 5
Actress in a Leading Role — 2 of 5
Actor in a Supporting Role — 4 of 5
Actress in a Supporting Role — 3 of 5

Total — 20 of 34

The Leaders

The leading adaptations  are American Hustle (10 nominations, based on The Sting Man), 12 Years a Slave (9), Captain Phillips (6), The Wolf of Wall Street (5) and Philomena (4). For more on the books, see our list of Books to Movies and TV — Released in 2013.

Trailing Behind

Meanwhile, several other adaptations came up short, only getting nominations in the more technical categories, despite early predictions:

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug — Sound Editing, Visual Effects, Sounding Mixing

Lone Survivor —  Sound Editing, Sound Mixing

The Great Gatsby — Production Design, Costume Design

Inside Llewyn Davis — Cinematography, Sound Mixing

The Book Thief — Original Score

Saving Mr. Banks  — Original Score

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom — Original Song

Invisible Woman  — Costume Design

The number one title on the January LibraryReads list of ten library staff favorites for the month, released on Friday, features Alan Bradley’s almost-12-year-old detective, Flavia de Luce in her sixth adventure, The Dead In Their Vaulted Arches, (RH/Delacorte; RH Audio; BOT; Thorndike). Describing it, Nancy Russell of Ohio’s Columbus Metropolitan Library, says, “You’ll enjoy seeing new depths in Flavia – this novel takes the series in an exciting direction.”

Earlier this year, author Bradley talked about how pleased he is that director-producer Sam Mendes bought the film rights to the series for a 10-episode television series. The new title completes the original story arc, but with the TV series a possibility, Bradley is planning at least four more Flavia novels.

Other books on the list bring to light little-known aspects of the two world wars. In The Wind Is Not a River, (Harper/Ecco), author Brian Payton sets his WWII novel against the Japanese invasion of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. A Star for Mrs. Blake is set after WW I, when  Gold Star mothers were offered funds by the U.S. government to visit their sons’ graves in France. The novel imagines the journey of five of them, including one feisty small-town librarian.

The list also includes a novel from indie Brooklyn publisher Melville House (their blog is one of the most entertaining and outspoken in publishing) with an attention-getting title, A Highly Unlikely Scenario, or a Neetsa Pizza Employee’s Guide to Saving the World by Rachel Cantor.

Describing it, Jane Jorgenson, of Wisconsin’s Madison Public Library says, “Leonard works for Neetsa Pizza, a Pythagorean pizza chain, in the near-ish future. His job is to take calls, listen to complaints and help his customers achieve maximum pizza happiness. His employee manual gives him an answer for every scenario–until he gets a call from Marco, who seems to be calling from another time or space. Think of Terry Pratchett crossed with Douglas Adams.”

Many of the ten titles are available as eGalleys, so you can read them now and be ready to recommend them when they are published. Our downloadable spreadsheet, LibraryReads, Jan. includes information on eGalley availability, as well as alternate formats.

Remember to nominate your favorite forthcoming titles for LibraryReads!

To learn more, come to the LibraryReads program at Midwinter:

LibraryReads: Collaborative Discovery for
Librarians & Patrons
Saturday, Jan. 25, 11:30 – 12:30    PCC 114 Lecture Hall [PLEASE NOTE change in time and location]

Find out how to share the books you love with readers across the country and enhance your professional profile by participating in LibraryReads, the monthly, nationwide library staff picks list.

The author of The Good Lord Bird, (Penguin/Riverhead; Dreamscape Audio; Thorndike), James McBride,  winner of the National Book Award in fiction, appeared on PBS News Hour last night. He talks about why he wanted to write a funny book about John Brown, a man who had “no sense of humor at all,” but a man he grew to love.

The interview continues here.

The New York Times declares James McBride the “surprise winner” of the National Book Award in fiction, announced last night. NPR calls him “the clear underdog.”

Both designations reveal more about the competition than they do about McBride, who has already published a major best seller, 1996’s The Color of Water, (which was on the NYT best seller list for over 2 years). His first novel,  Miracle at St. Anna, was made into a movie by Spike Lee and The Good Lord Bird (Penguin/Riverhead; Dreamscape Audio; Thorndike), his third novel and NBA winner, has already appeared on a number of the year’s best books lists.

As the NYT also notes, “While the National Book Awards tend to be criticized for their selections of little-known or obscure books, few were complaining about the finalists this year. Rachel Kushner, Jhumpa Lahiri and George Saunders, nominees in fiction, were critical darlings.”

There was at least one complaint. Eric Obenauf in the Los Angeles Review of Books, expressed disappointment that the fiction long list, introduced this year, didn’t expand opportunities for lesser knowns, but was “dominated by already brand writers.” He calls 2010, the year that true underdogs, Paul Harding’s debut novel Tinkers, (from “teeny ” Bellevue Literary Press) won the Pulitzer Prize and The Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon (from the even smaller McPherson & Company), won the National Book Award for Fiction, “a watershed moment in contemporary publishing.”

If you’re surprised to hear McBride called an “underdog,” remember the term is relative.

DISPLAY NOTE: This is a good time to pull previous winners and put them on display — the National Book Awards site lists past winners, with links to comments that put them into a contemporary context.

The winners are:

Young Peoples Literature

Kadohata, Cynthia, The Thing About Luck, Ages 10 to 14, (Atheneum)

Poetry
Szybist, Mary, Incarnadine, (Graywolf Press)

Nonfiction
Packer, George, The Unwinding, (Macmillan/FSG; Macmillan Audio)

Fiction
McBride, James, The Good Lord Bird, (Penguin/Riverhead; Dreamscape Audio; Thorndike)

Awards ceremony, below.

Live streaming video by Ustream

For several months on GalleyChat, we’ve been hearing about a book with a memorable title, No Good Duke Goes Unpunished by Sarah MacLean (HarperCollins/Avon; Brilliance Audio), so it’s no surprise to learn that it’s the #1 LibraryReads pick for December.

Published as a mass market paperback, this may put to rest one of the old fables about libraries; that they don’t buy paperbacks.

It’s a good week for Maclean; her previous title in the Rule of Scoundrels series, One Good Earl Deserves A Lover, (HarperCollins/Avon) was selected by Kirkus as one of the 100 best fiction titles of the year.

We hope you’re already familiar with LibraryReads, the nationwide “library staff picks” program that identifies ten favorite titles each month.  Here’s how you can be part of it:

1) Nominate your favorite forthcoming books – info. on how, here

2) Promote the LibraryReads picks in your library, through your web site and newsletters by using the downloadable LibraryReads Marketing Materials

3) Read the LibraryReads picks and recommend the ones you like (many of the December titles are still available as e-galleys through Edelweiss and NetGalley)

Click here for our downloadable list of LibraryReads Dec titles, with ordering information and alternate formats. A list of all the titles to date is downloadable here; LibraryReads All Picks To Date.

Thomas Pynchon has given the National Book Awards a gift in the form of a publicity hook. He will not appear at the ceremony tomorrow night, even though his book, Bleeding Edge, (Penguin Press; Penguin Audio) is one of the five finalists, giving both the New York Times and the Washington Post a headline.

Tomorrow night, BookTV.org will stream coverage of “red carpet arrivals and interviews,” live on their Web site at 6 p.m., followed by the awards ceremony, hosted by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, broadcast on C-SPAN2 beginning at 7:40.

For an insider’s look at the crazy process of creating the P&L for one of the fiction finalist’s books, George Saunders who is up for Tenth of December, (Random House; RH Audio; BOT), read Dan Menaker’s “What Does the Book Business Look Like on the Inside?,” New York magazines’s excerpt from his memoir, published today, My Mistake, (HMH). In the Daily Beast, he writes about the most under-appreciated books he’s edited, (not mentioning that the Saunders title received more attention than anticipated, beginning with the NYT Magazine cover story, “George Saunders Has Written The Best Book You’ll Read This Year“).

Washington Post critic Ron Charles, says his money for tomorrow night’s winner, is on Rachel Kushner’s “brilliant” novel,  The Flamethrowers,  (S&S/Scribner; Brilliance Audio).

New Zealand author Eleanor Catton, winner of the 2013 Man Booker Award for The Luminaries, (Hachette/Little, Brown; Brilliance Audio), is currently making appearances in the U.S.

On  PBS NewsHour last night, Jeffrey Brown gave her a chance to explain her novel, which she herself calls a “publisher’s nightmare,” one that, says Brown, “all the reviewers [are] trying to figure out and explain to their readers.”

The book is currently at #19 and rising on Amazon’s sales rankings and, as we noted previously, holds are rising in libraries.

Link here for a  video of the NewsHour interview. Listen to Catton read from the book here.

Once again, the UK’s major book award, the Man Booker, has influenced readers in the U.S. Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries, (Hachette/Little, Brown; Brilliance Audio), which was released here on the day the award was announced, has been on the NYT Fiction Best Seller list for two weeks and is showing heavy holds on modest ordering in most libraries.

Reviews appeared here shortly after the award was announced. All noted the book’s unusual length (834 pages), without calling it  overlong. Said Bill Roorbach (Life Among Giants, Workman/Algonquin, 2012) in the NYT Book Review, “as for the length, surely a book this good could never be too long.”

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, today, David Steinberger, CEO of Perseus Books and Chairman of the National Book Foundation, announced the finalists for the National Book Awards (winners to be announced on Nov. 20; the presentation of the awards will be hosted by the Morning Joe co-hosts, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough).

Download our spreadsheet, with ordering information and alternate formats, here: Nat’l Book Awards Finalists, 2013

Fiction

Kushner, Rachel, The Flamethrowers, (S&S/Scribner)
Lahiri, Jhumpa, The Lowland, (RH/Knopf)
McBride, James, The Good Lord Bird, (Penguin/Riverhead)
Pynchon, Thomas, Bleeding Edge, (Penguin Press)
Saunders, George, Tenth of December, (Random House)

Nonfiction

Lepore, Jill, Book of Ages, (RH/Knopf)
Lower, Wendy, Hitler’s Furies, (HMH)
Packer, George, The Unwinding, (Macmillan/FSG)
Taylor, Alan, The Internal Enemy, (W. W. Norton)
Wright, Lawrence. Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, & the Prison of Belief by (RH/Knopf)

Poetry

Bidart, Frank, Metaphysical Dog, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Brock-Broido, Lucie,  Stay, Illusion, (Knopf)
Matejka, Adrian, The Big Smoke, (Penguin)
Rasmussen, Matt, Black Aperture, (Louisiana State)
Szybist, Mary, Incarnadine, (Graywolf Press)

Young People’s Literature

Appelt, Kathi, The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp, Ages 8 to 12, (Atheneum)
Kadohata, Cynthia, The Thing About Luck, Ages 10 to 14, (Atheneum)
McNeal, Tom, Far Far Away , Ages 12 And Up, (Knopf)
Rosoff, Meg, Picture Me Gone, Ages 12 And Up, (Penguin/ Putnam)
Yang, Gene Luen, Boxers & Saints, Ages 12 to 17, (Macmillan/ First Second)

The first consumer review of the Man Booker Prize winner, The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton, published here yesterday (Hachette/Little, Brown), coincidentally the day the award was announced, is by novelist Chris Bohjalian in The Washington Post. UPDATE: We’re wrong — it’s a close tie for which publication had the first U.S. consumer review. The Barnes and Noble Review released one on Oct. 15. It is also an excellent guide to appreciating the novel.

Not only is Catton the youngest person to ever win the Booker, but at over 800 pages, her book is the longest in the award’s history. Bojalian notes that he had to create his own “Cliff Notes” to keep the characters straight and that the book is “astoundingly complicated and almost defies explanation. Moreover, I can’t recall the last time I read a novel that left me so baffled. In the end, however, I was awed…”

He goes on to offer readers a handle on this Byzantine story about a group of characters in an 1860’s  New Zealand gold-rush town; “the key to following the story is to try to follow the money.”

The book, which had a modest announced first print run of 15,000 copies, jumped to #10 on Amazon sales rankings on the news of the award. If it follows in the footsteps of previous award winners, it will continue on to other best seller lists and enjoy healthy sales here.

Many libraries are showing heavy holds on light ordering. It was only reviewed prepub after the longlist was announced by Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. Both publications starred it. It also appeared in the Millions preview of the  “Most Anticipated” books of the fall.

The author’s debut, The Rehearsal (Hachette/Back Bay) received praise from author Adam Ross (“a wildly brilliant and precocious first novel”) in the NYT Sunday Book Review when it was published in 2010. It is still in print in trade paperback.

The winner of this year’s Man Booker Award, just announced in London, is the youngest in the history of the award; Eleanor Catton, 28 wins for The Luminaries, (Hachette/Little, Brown). In a great stroke of timing, the book is being released in the U.S. today.

UK reviews – Telegraph; The Observer.

The top 15 titles on Amazon’s Movers and Shakers list, which represents the books that have seen the largest jumps in sales in the last 24 hours are, of course, by the newly-announced Nobel prize winner in literature, Canadian short-story writer, Alice Munro.

Five of her many titles rose into the top 100 (all published by Knopf):

#8 Dear Life (the hardcover rose to #95), her most recent collection

#14 Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage

#18 Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You

#22 Runaway

#31 Selected Stories

This is the first time since Doris Lessing won in 2007 that the prize winner is an author who writes in English. The New York Times reports, “The selection of Ms. Munro was greeted with an outpouring of enthusiasm in the English-speaking world, a temporary relief from recent years when the Swedish Academy chose winners who were obscure, difficult to comprehend or overtly political.”

Winners in the last six years were:

2012 — Mo Yan, China

2011 — Tomas Transtromer, Sweden

2010  — Mario Vargas Llosa, Peru

2009  — Herta Müller Germany (born Rumania)

2008 — Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, Franch

Munro, who is 80, has said that she has retired from writing. Reminded of that in the Nobelprize.org telephone conversation recorded soon after she learned she had won (listen to it here) she opens the door a bit, saying “But this may change my mind.” She also says she hopes this award will bring new recognition to the short story, which is “often brushed off as something people do before they write their first novel.”

Three major literary awards are being announced in the space of less than a week. To help keep track, see our schedule below.

This is  an opportunity to create displays of the contenders.

Thurs., Oct 10 — Nobel Prize in Literature

No shortlist — so contenders are anyone’s guess. The leading favorites in betting at Ladbrokes are:

Haruki Murakami (5/2)

Alice Munro, (4/1)

Joyce Carol Oates (8/1)

Further down the list is Bob Dylan (50/1) — we assume the prize would be for his lyrics. The Chicago Review Press has published  two volumes that examine every song Dylan wrote until 2006; Revolution in the Air: The Songs of Bob Dylan, 1957-1973  and Still on the Road: The Songs of Bob Dylan, 1974-2006, both by Clinton Heylin.

The Guardian’s pick is Javíer Marías (see our earlier story). His odds are only 33/1.

Tues., Oct 15 — Booker Winner 

Shortlist:

We Need New Names, NoViolet Bulawayo, (Hachette/Little, Brown)  – Consumer review links

The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton, (Hachette/Little, Brown) — coming next week — no U.S. consumer reviews yet; UK reviews – Telegraph; The Observer

Harvest, Jim Crace, (RH/Doubleday/Nan A. Talese) — Consumer review links

The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri, (RH/Knopf) – Consumer review links

A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozseki, (Penguin) — Consumer review links

The Testament of Mary, Colm Tóibín, (S&S/Scribner)  – Consumer review links

Wed., Oct. 16 — National Book Awards Shortlists, to be announced on MSNBC’s Morning Joe

Downloadable llonglists:

Natl-Book-Awards-Fiction-Longlist

Nat’l Book Awards – Nonfiction Longlist

Natl Book Awards- Poetry Longlist

Nat’l Book Awards; Young People’s Longlist

Betting is running high on Bob Dylan to win the Nobel prize in Literature, reports the Guardian. Daily announcements of the various prizes begin this week. The winner of the prize for literature will be revealed this Thursday.

Don’t get too excited, however, Dylan has been in the lead before. As the Guardian puts it, “Ladbrokes [the London betting agency] have made a killing on Dylan betting in years past … And they’d be fools not to give punters the option of giving them money in this way.”

Considered a serious contender is Spanish novelist Javíer Marías. His latest title, The Infatuations, (Knopf; Spanish language edition, Los enamoramientos, Vintage Espanol) was published here in August.

The Millions noted earlier this year,

Each of [Marías’s] last few books with New Directions [see listings here], translated by Margaret Jull Costa, set a new high-water mark—most recently, the mammoth trilogy Your Face Tomorrow. Now he’s made the jump to Knopf [downloadable list here; Javier Marias — Knopf titles], which means you’re about to hear a lot about him. And deservedly so, it would seem: The Infatuations has already been called ‘great literature’ in Spain and ‘perhaps his best novel’ in the U.K.

As predicted, he book did receive attention here. It was reviewed in both the NYT Book Review and the Los Angeles Times.

In addition, another Nobel Prize, the Peace Prize, may go to an author. Malala Yousafzai, the now 16-year-old Pakistani girl who was shot by the Taliban last year for her campaign for women’s rights to education, is publishing her memoir this week, I Am Malala (Hachette/Little, Brown; Hachette Audio).

Diane Sawyer landed aninterview with her, which is being featured all week on ABC, beginning with today’s Good Morning America, World News tonight and the full interview on 20/20 on Friday, the day the Peace Prize will be announced.  She also appears on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart tomorrow.