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The announcements of award-winning fiction arrive with great fanfare annually – the National Book Awards, the Pulitizer Prizes, Man Booker Prizes, to name a few. Of course, Mechanics’ Library is proud to put these books on our shelves! But, did you know that local awards celebrate the achievements of California authors every year?
Our neighbors, the Commonwealth Club, have honored “the exceptional literary merit” of California with The California Book Awards since 1931.
Booksellers know good books, too. The NCIBA (Northern California Independent Booksellers Association) selects “best” books by authors living in our region. Here some award winners from both of these organizations.
2011 California Book Award - Fiction: I Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita. The International Hotel, or I Hotel, was an actual San Francisco landmark, the base for a wild array of pan-Asian artistic, political, and community endeavors. And now this “fortress” and “beacon” provides the impetus and structure for Yamashita's exuberant, irreverent, passionately researched, and many-voiced novel about the Yellow Power movement. (Publisher’s Weekly)
2011 California Book Award - First Fiction: The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason. A computer scientist rewrites the familiar and forces the reader to look at themythic characters in modern light. Both funny and psychologically piercing, this is good entertainment for those readers who are fully versed in the original, and those who are not
2008 California Book Award - Fiction: The End of the Jews by Adam MansbachThemes ofintegration and race weave through this multi-generational novel that introduces some unforgettable characters. While the Jewish story line predominates, several reviewers insisted the reader does not have to be Jewish to understand the story.
2011 NCIBA Best Book - Fiction: Gold Boy, Emerald Girl by Yiyun Li. Themes of tradition, modernity, transitions of culture, and a keen grasp of characters of various ages fill this collection: 9 stories of Chinese and American life. The prose lingers in your thoughts long after each story is complete.
2010 NCIBA Best Book - Fiction: Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. From India to Egypt to New York City, this novel of twin brothers is both tragic and enlightening in its themes of brokenness and healing, cruelty and wonder. Full of exceptional characterization in an unusual context, this book will not let you down.
