NBCC 2012 Awards

Last week the National Book Critics Circle announced the recipients of its 2012 awards. Below you'll find specific links to the book descriptions of the winners in five major categories. You'll also find links to the finalists and winners in each of those categories. Lots of engaging and thought-provoking books on these lists -- check them out to add to your reading list!

 

FICTION

NONFICTION

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

BIOGRAPHY

POETRY

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk: A Novel By Ben Fountain Cover Image
$18.00
ISBN: 9780060885618
Availability: We can usually get this book in 3 to 7 days, except during a pandemic. We are doing our best
Published: Ecco - November 27th, 2012

This novel has rocketed to the top of so many "best of" lists that it's difficult to track them all! The book was a finalist for the National Book Award and was named one of the 100 notables books of 2012 by The New York Times. It's also a finalist for an LA Times Book Prize for the best books of 2012, with the winners to be named April 19th.

The novel, a satire set in at the Dallas Cowboys Thanksgiving Day football game during America's war in Iraq, explores the gaping national disconnect between the war at home and the war abroad. Reviewers have compared it to Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five, calling it "a minutely observed portrait of a society with woefully misplaced priorities," "as close to the Great American Novel as anyone is likely to come these days," and a book with "blistering, beautiful language with razor-sharp insight."


Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity By Andrew Solomon Cover Image
$37.50
ISBN: 9780743236713
Availability: We can usually get this book in 3 to 7 days, except during a pandemic. We are doing our best
Published: Scribner - November 13th, 2012

Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan calls Solomon's ambitious new work a "landmark, revolutionary book" with a "compulsively readable style that makes the book as entertaining as it is illuminating."

This door-stopper of a book (962 pages) explores the challenges, risks, and rewards of raising children with “horizontal
identities,” traits that they don’t share with their parents.

The New York Times named it one of the top five nonfiction books of 2012, and both Time Magazine and The Economics cited it as best books of the year.

Several customers who have read this book have returned to buy copies for their friends. 


The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson By Robert A. Caro Cover Image
$60.00
This book has been declared out of stock indefinitely, so we are unlikely to be able to get it.
ISBN: 9780679405078
Published: Knopf - May 1st, 2012

Who knew there was so much to say about Lyndon Johnson? This fourth volume in Caro's monumental biography of Johnson follows him through his volatile relationship with
John and Robert Kennedy in the fight for the 1960 Democratic nomination
for president and through Johnson's unhappy vice presidency.

Caro's book was also a finalist for the National Book Award and was also named one of the top five nonfiction books of 2012 by The New York Times, as well as being named best book of the year by other publications.

The book has been described as "Brilliant . . .Riveting reading from beginning to end" - all 736 pages! Ask Kate about the series; she's read them all and loves them!


Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys: Poems By D. A. Powell Cover Image
$22.00
This book has been declared out of stock indefinitely, so we are unlikely to be able to get it.
ISBN: 9781555976057
Published: Graywolf Press - February 14th, 2012

In his fifth collection of poetry, Powell presents us with "his typical wry eroticism, an eagle eye for the places where men converge, and a compass that points always to desire..." Another reviewer says that his work "explodes off the page like Molotov cocktails." Publishers Weekly says "Powell has now turned the corner from promising new poet into established power."