These awards, the Nibbies are more, I think, populist and popular. Books that real people buy and read.
JK Rowling won the Outstanding Achievement award, for Harry Potter, her fifth Nibbie. Gordon Brown (is he a reading Prime Minister?), who presented the award, said: 'She has joined a distinguished line of British authors whose work has got the whole country reading, and whose books will be read for many years to come by successive generations.'
Ian McEwan won the Author of the Year award for On Chesil Beach, which was also named the Book of the Year. Not sure I'm too keen on this. It's a bit like a commiseration because he didn't win any of the biggies. I didn't enjoy the extract in the Guardian so I didn't get the book.
Russell Brand won the biography category with My Booky Wook. This has been recommended to me.
Khaled Hosseini was voted the 'Richard & Judy' Best Read by the general public for A Thousand Splendid Suns. this is usually a reliable recommendation and I have this under my bed pending reading.
Patricia Cornwell won the crime thriller award for her novel Book of the Dead.
Costa-winner Catherine O'Flynn took home the Waterstone's Newcomer of the Year accolade for her novel What Was Lost. Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman secured the popular non-fiction prize for Long Way Down. (Loved the TV programme; they're so blokie and don't always get on)
The popular fiction award went to Kim Edwards for The Memory Keeper's Daughter.
Geri Halliwell presented children's author Francesca Simon with the Children's Book of the Year for Horrid Henry and the Abominable Snowman.
4 comments:
I thought that "On Chesil Beach" was one of the finest novels I have ever read. Maybe it is a matter of taste (when isn't it?) but rarely have I been so impressed by both the style and content of a novel.
I have "A Thousand Splendid Suns" waiting on my shelf too, I keep putting it off for some reason.
Right now I am reading "Half of a Yellow Sun" and I sure recommend it based on the first one hundred pages I have managed.
I'm so glad about My Booky Wook. I cannot praise it enough!
Hi Aidan, I'll have a dip into Chesil Beach now. I'm listening to a Thousand splendid suns in the car. It's a fictionalised misery memoir written for the US market and not for me at all. I didn't much like the Kite Runner either.
Lily - what did you like particular about My Booky Wook?
EW
I was very disappointed in 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' which is not particularly well-written or well plotted. Over-hyped. I agree that Chesil Beach is brilliantly written and worth a read.
Jo
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