Nominees have been named for this year’s Left Coast Crime convention awards!

The Lefty has been awarded for the best humorous mystery novel since
1996. This year’s nominees are:

Donna Andrews, The Real Macaw (Minotaur)
Rita Lakin, Getting Old Can Kill You (Dell)
Jess Lourey, October Fest (Midnight Ink)
Kris Neri, Magical Alienation (Red Coyote Press)
Cindy Sample, Dying for a Dance (L & L Dreamspell)
John Vorhaus, The Albuquerque Turkey (Crown)

The Bruce Alexander Memorial Historical Mystery Award, first awarded in 2004, is given to mystery novels covering events before 1960. This year’s nominees are:

Rhys Bowen, Naughty in Nice (Berkley Prime Crime)
Rebecca Cantrell, A Game of Lies (Forge)
Ann Parker, Mercury’s Rise (Poisoned Pen Press)
Priscilla Royal, A Killing Season (Poisoned Pen Press)
Jeri Westerson, Troubled Bones (Minotaur)
Jacqueline Winspear, A Lesson in Secrets (Harper)

The Golden Nugget is a special award given to the best mystery set in California, in recognition of the location of this year’s convention. The nominees are:

Jan Burke, Disturbance (Simon & Schuster)
Michael Connelly, The Drop (Little, Brown)
Janet Dawson, Bit Player (Perseverance Press)
Sue Grafton, V is for Vengeance (Putnam)
Kelli Stanley, City of Secrets (Minotaur)

Eureka! is a special award this year for the best first mystery novel. The nominees are:

Sally Carpenter, The Baffled Beatlemaniac Caper (Oak Tree Press)
Darrell James, Nazareth Child (Midnight Ink)
Tammy Kaehler, Dead Man’s Switch (Poisoned Pen Press)

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Bestselling author and all-around rabble-rouser Christopher Hitchens, 62, has died.

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RUSA is still seeking nominations for the Margaret E. Monroe adult services award!

The nomination form is at http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/rusa/awards/monroe/index.cfm. Below is a description of the award, from the RUSA website.

“Established in 1985, the Margaret E. Monroe Award is a citation presented to a librarian who has made significant contributions to library adult services. The individual may be practicing librarian, a library and information science researcher or educator, or a retired librarian who has brought distinction to the profession’s understanding and practice or services for adults.

The criteria for ’significant contributions’ will be judged by such factors as publications, leadership, measurable effectiveness of programs, influence on others, and creative and innovative concepts.”

The deadline for nominations is December 15, 2011.

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by Sarah Statz Cords

Or was it two? Or four?

One of the biggest book stories of the week has been the allegation, first made by CBS’s 60 Minutes news program, that large chunks of Greg Mortenson’s bestselling 2006 memoir, Three Cups of Tea, have either been exaggerated or completely made up.

I have been following the story with interest, as I personally disliked the book (I’ll admit I didn’t read the whole thing; I got bored, and I didn’t care for Mortenson’s “voice”). I’m not usually happy when memoirs are debunked, as I feel such incidences are damaging to the credibility of all memoirs, but I didn’t feel overly surprised or disillusioned to hear that parts of Three Cups of Tea might have been exaggerated, or to learn of charges that Mortenson’s personal finances and speaking tours/book promotions are a little too closely entwined with the finances of the charity he established, the Central Asia Institute (CAI).

Does that sound convoluted? I’m trying to step very, very carefully here. I’m willing to believe most of the 60 Minutes report (and Jon Krakauer’s allegations), but I seem to be in the minority: I read several pages of the comments at the CBS site, and most readers were unhappy with the reporting of this story, charging CBS with irresponsible journalism and for making sure that “no good deed goes unpunished.”

What about you? Convinced that Mortenson is telling the truth, or Krakauer is, or that they’re both playing fast and loose with some facts? Will this be the memoir meltdown that finally derails the memoir popularity train?

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People saw it coming, but hoped it wouldn’t happen. Borders has filed for bankruptcy, and will close about 30% of its stores across the country. If you know anyone with a Borders gift card, you might warn them to use it as soon as possible.

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by Sarah Statz Cords

You know you’re a total nonfiction geek when multiple people send you links to stories ABOUT nonfiction. (By the way, thanks—you know who you are!) The latest link I received several emails about was the piece in the New York Times Book Review (Neil Genzlinger’s “The Problem With Memoirs”) about the questionable quality of many published memoirs.

Have you read it?

If you haven’t, or you don’t plan on doing so, let me nutshell it for you: Under the guise of reviewing four recent memoirs (only one of which he liked), Genzlinger posited that memoirs are an “absurdly bloated genre” and suggested to authors that “If you didn’t feel you were discovering something as you wrote your memoir, don’t publish it.”

One of the authors Genzlinger skewered, Sean Manning, has now posted a reply to the article at The Daily Beast, saying, basically, that Genzlinger’s a big meanie (I’m paraphrasing, of course) and that his article was nothing more than “retreaded snark.”

I know how I feel about this debate, but what I’d like to know is how YOU feel about it. Are there too many memoirs? Are most of them of questionable quality? Does it even matter if they are? Or are memoirs just an easy subject for literary critics looking to get their snark on? Let us know in the comments!

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Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa has won the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature. Oddsmakers were betting on Cormac McCarthy this week, and the odds were with Tomas Transtromer last week. But since the Academy does not release any information on their selections, it’s always hard to predict the winner.

Mario Vargas Llosa is 74 years old and still actively writing after nearly 50 years. He has had a huge influence on Latin American literature. He has been active politically, and ran for the presidency of his country in 1990. Titles in print include The Feast of the Goat: A Novel (a political thriller), The Time of the Hero (about his experiences at a military school), and The Bad Girl: A Novel (a rewrite of Madame Bovary). His The War of the End of the World is considered by Harold Bloom to be one of the essential works of the Western Canon.

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by Sarah Statz Cords

By now I’m guessing you’ve heard a little bit about the hullabaloo kicked up by Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult about Jonathan Franzen–and male authors in general–having an easier time of getting reviewed in publications like The New York Times Book Review.

But have you seen this article by Laura Fraser at The Daily Beast, about the labeling of “chick lit,” and her suggestions for a new category known as “dude lit”?

Now, fights like this and their attending media posts-and-replies tend to leave me bored silly.* But this one I find kind of interesting. Partly this has to do with my attitude toward genrefication–I am quite fond of genres, and genre labels, as they are one of the easiest ways possible to discern readers’ tastes and help them find other authors and titles they might enjoy. I have also never had any patience with people who are “embarrassed” to be seen reading their favorite genre titles–whether they be romances with bare man-chests abounding on the covers, or lurid true crime covers–hold those books high and proud, I say. Actually, that might be one of the nicest features of e-books; perhaps people will finally feel free to read what they want to read on subways, without worrying about what other people think.

But I digress: what do YOU think the real issue here is? Do you think it’s unfair to label certain titles “chick lit” without labeling their opposites “dude lit”? What authors and titles would you suggest as part of a new “Dude Lit” (“Lad Lit” was bandied about a few years ago, but seems not to have caught on) genre?

*It may be wrong of me, but I’m especially unsympathetic when the authors doing the hullabalooing, like Weiner and Picoult, don’t really need the reviews, as their books are reliable bestsellers and genre headings such as “women’s fiction” are clearly not hurting–and may even be helping–them.

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by Sarah Statz Cords

Lately a small literary feud has been brewing over the question of whether or not books by women authors receive the attention and critical reviews that books by male authors do. Did you miss all the hoopla about Jonathan Franzen, his Time magazine cover, and what books do and don’t get critical attention? Some are beginning to ask “if there is an unseen gender bias in book reviewing.‘” But one good thing is happening: review sources have begun to inventory and analyze their past reviews, which is a good thing.

We’d like to offer a list of five women literary authors who, in this reviewer’s opinion, don’t get nearly enough attention. But is it because they’re women or because there’s only so much room to go around in major book review publications these days? You make the call.

Ann Hood, The Red Thread
Maya Lange discovers the wide range of emotions on all sides of adoptions when she opens an agency to help place Chinese baby girls with American adoptive families, and is forced to deal with the memories and unresolved issues she feels about the tragic death of her own daughter.

Joanna Kavenna, The Birth of Love
Kavenna tells four interrelated stories (across three different time periods) of childbirth, medicine, and personal choices in this structurally challenging but still very compelling novel.

Maggie O’Farrell, The Hand That First Held Mine
O’Farrell’s historical novel tells two stories; one set in post-World War II London and following the exploits of a young and very independent Lexie Sinclair, and the other a modern-day tale of a modern woman and artist, Elina, struggling after a difficult first pregnancy and through the first weeks and months of motherhood.

Suzanne Rivecca, Death Is Not an Option: Stories
Rivecca’s debut collection of short stories features a variety of women characters, dealing with varying issues of victimhood and life challenges in their own ways.

Kate Walbert, A Short History of Women
The stories of several generations of strong-willed women are told in Walbert’s character-driven historical fiction: that of British suffragette Dorothy Townsend; her daughter Evelyn, who travels to America to further her professional career; and her niece (also named Dorothy), imprisoned in 2003 for taking photographs of a top-secret military installation.

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It seems that some anonymous booksellers peeked in the boxes and have let it be known that Oprah has indeed picked Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom as her final bookclub pick.

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