2010 National Book Awards Finalists

National Book Awards Finalists

Author Pat Conroy announced the twenty Finalists for the 2010 National Book Award on Wedneday. The list includes a previous National Book Award Winner, two previous Finalists, thirteen women--the largest number of women Finalists in a single year in the Awards' history--and six books from small, independent presses.

Fiction
Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America
Jaimy Gordon, Lord of Misrule
Nicole Krauss, Great House
Lionel Shriver, So Much for That
Karen Tei Yamashita, I Hotel

Nonfiction
Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
John W. Dower, Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9-11, Iraq
Patti Smith, Just Kids
Justin Spring, Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward
Megan K. Stack, Every Man in This Village Is a Liar: An Education in War

Poetry
Kathleen Graber, The Eternal City Terrance Hayes, Lighthead
James Richardson, By the Numbers
C.D. Wright, One with Others
Monica Youn, Ignatz 

Young People's Literature
Paolo Bacigalupi, Ship Breaker
Kathryn Erskine, Mockingbird
Laura McNeal, Dark Water
Walter Dean Myers, Lockdown
Rita Williams-Garcia, One Crazy Summer

The winners will be announced on November 17th.

Have you read any one of these? Will you read them now because they are finalists? Will you wait and only read the winners? What about the poetry collections?