More Award Winning Books: Adaptations, Interesting Narrators and More.
Hello everyone,
Today I wanted to share a few books that have come out in recent years and received awards. I am always surprised by the number of books that I have never heard of when I look at award lists, and while it does get a big overwhelming, it also sometimes pushes books I have wanted to read higher up my TBR.
Below are some of the ones I am interested in – if you want to learn more about the prospective awards, or find some books you might want to read, you can check out my full database of Current Book Award Winners as well.
A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine (Hugo Award) – This is a series that is commonly recommended to readers who love Becky Chambers, a personal favorite. This science fiction series plays with ideas of colonization and the idea of “mental colonization”, how colonized groups often internalize colonization within their cultures. It is based in Aztec culture, from naming conventions to city structure, and so far, I am really enjoying it, although I’m not sure I see the same sweet, human qualities that I love about Becky Chambers .
Parable of the Sower: A Graphic Novel Adaptation by Octavia Butler, adapted by Damian Duffy, illustrated by John Jennings (Hugo Award) and George Orwell’s 1984: The Graphic Novel adapted by Fido Nesti (Eisner Award) – Graphic novel adaptations of classic works are becoming more and more common, and these two both came out in the past couple of years. Both the original works are incredibly rich visually, and are books I still have vivid images of, so I think that lends itself to the graphic novel medium and I’m curious to see how they come across.
The Invisible Siege: The Rise of Coronaviruses and the Search for a Cure by Dan Werb (Hilary Weston Award) – This, along with The Year the World Stood Still by Susan Brescia, which I talked about last week, are some of the first Covid-19 related books to make it through the publishing and award cycles. While I have avoided these books so far (it just feels so close to home), I will say that having won an award is an indicator to me that this might be the book I end up picking up when I am ready to go there.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, narrated by Chiwetel Ejiofor (Audie Award and Women’s Prize for Fiction) – Not only did this book win two different awards, its audiobook version, read by actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, was named one of the best audiobooks of the year. This is a book that has been on my TBR for a while, and I thught it was a more typical literary urban fantasy, but having won a mainstream fiction prize as well as the audio prize makes me think it might have a little more to offer, and I will be listening to this one!
Some Hellish by Nicholas Herring (Atwood Gibson Writers Trust Award) – While I love looking at awards from other countries to find books that don’t necessarily get buzz in the United States, sometime it makes them impossibly hard to find. This is an example. The book won a Canadian award, and I was immediately hooked by the line “What Cormac McCarthy did for cowboys and horses, Nicholas Herring does for fishermen and boats in his novel Some Hellish”. It is available on Amazon, but doesn’t seem to have been officially distributed in bookstores? It may be a while until I can track the book down, but I kind of want to!
Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre by Carole Boston Weatherford, illustrated by Floyd Cooper (Coretta Scott King) – The Coretta Scott King Award in children’s literature usually hands out a prize to two different books, one for the writing and one for illustrations, but last year, they awarded both the writing and illustration prize to Unspeakable, which is quite rare, so this is a book I am curious about picking up for the little ones in my life!
Tastes Like War: A Memoir by Grace M. Cho (Asian/Pacific American Awards) – I am a sucker for a food memoir, and this book, which is about how, through careful listening over shared meals, Grace (the author) discovers not only the things that broke the brilliant, complicated woman who raised her–but also the things that kept her alive. I am sold, and the beautifully evocative cover makes it even better!
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara (Edgar Award) – Another of the sweet spots I love are diverse murder mysteries, so when I saw this book was the winner of the Edgar Award for excellence in mystery writing I was interested. Set in metropolitan India, this seems like a literary take on the amateur detective, and I am going to be checking this out.
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka (Man Booker Prize) – This book both intimidates me and intrigues me. It has been described as a thriller, a satire, historical fiction, magical realism a mystery and a ghost story. The book is set in and around the Sri Lankan civil war, and the main character is a war photographer, and I don’t want to say much more than that because I am not sure what is a spoiler. The descriptions give me “weird surreal plot” vibes, and I do think that sometimes that is the only way to tell a war story!
Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell (Man Booker International and The Warwick Prize For Women in Translation) – I find books in translation can be so hit or miss when it comes to the quality of the translation, so awards are often a good indicator that both the original writing and the translation are worth my time. I’m also intrigued by this because it won two different awards, I have never read a book translated from Hindi, and the idea of a “fun, feminist epic about an octogenarian matriarch” is pretty compelling.
Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl by Jonathan C. Slaght (PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award) – I do love a good natural history book, and the PEN/E.O. Wilson award has led me to great books, like Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, so this prize has some good reliability behind it, and owls are pretty cool.
I’ll be back next week to share some of my favorite January reads, and am working on a fun post looking at some of the upcoming TV and movie adaptations coming your way in 2023!
