A Word About Awards

JAMES by Percival Everett   Awards: BookTube Winner 2025, Carnegie Winner 2025, Kirkus Winner 2024, National Book Winner 2024, Pulitzer Winner 2025   Nominations: Aspen Words Finalist 2025, Booker Finalist 2024, Dayton Literary Peace Finalist 2025, Dublin Finalist 2025, Goodreads Finalist 2024, LA Times Finalist 2024, National Book Critics Circle Finalist 2024, NY Times Finalist 2024, PEN/Faulkner Finalist 2025, PEN/Jean Stein Longlist 2025   Date Read: March 19, 2025   From Kirkus Reviews: “ Mark Twain's  Adventures of Huckleberry Finn  as told from the perspective of a more resourceful and contemplative Jim than the one you remember. This isn’t the first novel to reimagine Twain’s 1885 masterpiece, but the audacious and prolific Everett dives into the very heart of Twain’s epochal odyssey, shifting the central viewpoint from that of the unschooled, often credulous, but basically good-hearted Huck to the more enigmatic and heroic Jim, the Black slave with ...

BROTHER by David Chariandy   Nominations: Aspen Words Finalist 2019, Dublin Longlist 2019, PEN/Open Book Longlist 2019   Date Read: April 2, 2024   From Kirkus Reviews: “A novel about the indignities, frustrations, and joy found in a Toronto public housing complex.    The Park is a sprawling complex home to thousands of residents struggling to find work, take care of each other, and get through another day. Like so many of the Park’s residents, Michael and Francis are the children of an immigrant single mother. Ruth came from Trinidad with dreams of becoming a nurse; instead, she’s working multiple jobs, riding buses for hours, and coming home too exhausted to even sleep. Michael and Francis are learning how to survive in the Park as young men. They know how to posture, which guys to avoid, and how to act when the police roll through. Chariandy’s second novel (Soucouyant, 2007) is a slender volume with the heart of a family epic. Alternating between Michael and ...

CHAIN GANG ALL STARS by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah   Award:  Inside Literary Prize Winner 2025   Nominations: Aspen Words Finalist 2024, Carnegie Longlist 2024, Center For Fiction Longlist 2023, Dublin longlist 2024, National Book Finalist 2023, NY Times Finalist 2023   Date Read: October 27, 2023   As much as I don’t like the dystopian future genre, this book might be favorite book of 2023. The dystopian future isn’t that far in the future and it portrays something I could actually believe might happen – turning convicts into gladiators who kill each other. A chain gang is like a team and links in the chain are players.    So richly imagined and full of awful facts about the atrocity that is mass incarceration in America, Adjei-Brenyah has created a work that is so unique, so fresh and so very necessary. We can all agree that murder and rape are atrocious. And of course there are people who need a time out or a permanent time out but does that mean soci...

CALLING FOR A BLANKET DANCE by Oscar Hokeah   Award: PEN/Hemingway Winner 2023 Nominations: Aspen Words Finalist 2023, Carnegie Longlist 2023, LA Times Finalist 2022   Date Read: January 18, 2023   A young Native American man, Ever, struggles to carve the outlines of his life through upheaval both familial and personal. Ever never had it easy. His father was abusive. He was raised in poverty and, like most kids who find themselves in that position, he rebelled by becoming a hellion – angry and violent.   Ever, though, was one of the fortunate ones who was able to put his life back together and join the military. Through that experience, he was able to learn responsibility and accountability, all while his personal life was crumbling back at home. Prior to leaving, Ever married his girlfriend Lonnie, who in his absence, began an affair and became addicted to meth. He had no choice but to leave her, but only after they had three kids together.   Throughout this no...

THE LOST CHILDREN ARCHIVE by Valeria Luiselli   Awards: Carnegie Winner 2020, Dublin Winner 2021, Rathbones Folio Winner 2020   Nominations: Aspen Words Finalist 2020, Booker Longlist 2019, Dayton Literary Peace Finalist 2020, Kirkus Finalist 2019, National Book Critics Circle Finalist 2019, NY Times Finalist 2019, Women's Prize Longlist 2019   Date Read: July 11, 2022   The Lost Children Archive is truly one of the most beautiful books I have read in a while. Luiselli has confronted a tragic and ongoing tragedy with beauty, humanity and awareness, while also liking in the struggles of blended families and the obligations of documentarians to archive current and past experiences and voices. I am truly in awe.   The husband brought to the relationship a son and the mother, a daughter, blending the two households with the best of intentions. Everything does mesh together well until differing career paths and interests bring the couple apart and, consequently, thei...

LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND by Rumaan Alam   Nominations: Aspen Words Finalist 2021, National Book Finalist 2020   Date Read: November 18, 2021   Leave The World Behind is more science fiction than plain fiction. Or is it? While I found some of the plot devices difficult to swallow, by the end I found myself feeling like I need to go to the grocery store and check my emergency supplies.   The premise is relatively simple. A family from New York heads to a AirB&B for a little R&R. Out of the blue, the owners show up because there’s a black-out in New York and they want to hole up in their own vacation house. This is point number one where I scratched my head. The owners wouldn’t go to their place knowing they have a rental agreement already in place. Not knowing there’s anything else amiss in the world aside from the power outage, wouldn’t they head to a hotel? Why did they assume the renters would let them in?   But let them in they, in fact, do. After questi...

SING, UNBURIED, SING by Jesmyn Ward Award: National Book Winner 2017 Nominations: Aspen Words Finalist 2018, Carnegie Finalist 2018, Dayton Literary Peace Finalist 2018, Dublin Longlist 2019, Kirkus Finalist 2017, LA Times Finalist 2017, National Book Critics Circle Finalist 2017, NY Times Finalist 2017, PEN/Faulkner Finalist 2018,  Women's Prize Finalist 2018 Date Read: May 29, 2020 This novel came up in a timely fashion as cities across America rise up in protest against the senseless killing of George Floyd. I am simultaneously in awe of how fragile life is and how disgustingly dispensable black life is. The video of this killing is nothing short of a snuff film by a smug, self-satisfied white man drunk on his own power. Sing, Unburied, Sing follows three main characters - Leonie, Jojo and Richie, each having their own voice throughout. Of course, Jojo captured my attention as a child working his way to becoming a man. Jojo has just turned 13 and is trying to hold hi...