November AwardsCAT - Local awards

LOCAL AWARDS

I have long thought about what to do with this – and how „a regional award of your choice“ is to be understood. Should I choose an award? Or can everyone pick their own favourite? I'm still not sure, but here it is, the November thread – with both options. :)

As I am German, my first idea was to pick the German Book Prize. Which is what I did, but as it is quite limited for international readers (a lot of the books are not translated), I chose a second award to give you more options.

At the same time, I would like to hear from you if you follow any regional awards, that we all should know about? Do you have favourites (which have not been covered in the other months)? Have you read any price-winning books that should get to a broader audience (like us here)?

Pick whatever local award and book you like and give us a little bit of background info.

And don't forget to update the wiki

German Book Prize
The German Book Prize (Deutscher Buchpreis) was first awarded in 2005. A jury annually picks a fiction work of a German-writing auther (who does not ncecessarily have to be German). The winner is announced each year in October, right in time for the book fair in Frankfurt. I am not following as closely as I would like to, but my wishlist grows each year when I check out the longlist. As mentioned above, this might by a bit tricky for international readers, because all of the books have been written in German – and only some of them have been translated.

Some suggestions are:
Daniel Kehlmann – Measuring the World (shortlist 2005)
Saša Stanišić – How the soldier repairs the gramophone (shortlist 2006)
Julia Franck – The Blind Side of the Heart (winner 2007)
Eugen Ruge – In Times of Fading Light (winner 2011)
Lutz Seiler – Kruso (winner 2014)

More books are here.

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Glass Key Award (Nordic crime fiction)
The Glass Key Award dates back to the 1990s and is given to a crime novel written by an outher from the Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland). The winner is chosen by the members of teh Crime Writers of Scandinavia association and announced each year during summer. You'll find names like Henning Mankell, Karin Fossum or Jussi Adler-Olsen on the list, but also authors that are not as known internationally.

Winners were for example:
Peter Høeg – Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow (1993)
Jo Nesbø – The Bat (1998)
Arnaldur Indriðason – Jar City (2002)
Malin Persson Giolito – Quicksand (2017)

The full list of winners is here.

I was thinking of the Arthur Ellis Awards for Canadian crime writing.

I am in Alberta, Canada, and found a book that was nominated (last year, I think) for the Alberta Reader's Choice Awards that is on my tbr. It also works for RandomCAT, so it works well for me:

Road Trip Rwanda / Will Ferguson.

The author is also local to me, in that he also lives in Calgary.

I follow the Minnesota Book Awards as a local award as I live in Minnesota. That would probably be the most "local" award for me. Of the German Award books you listed, I've read;
Julia Franck – The Blind Side of the Heart (winner 2007) which is also a 1001 Book and I own Daniel Kehlmann – Measuring the World (shortlist 2005), another 1001 book.
From the Glass Key Award, I've read Smilla's Sense of Snow Another 1001 book. This also includes Faceless Killers and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

This year's Minnesota Book Awards go to
Middle Grade Literature The Secret of Dreadwillow Carse by Brian Farrey
Minnesota Nonfiction The Big Marsh: the Story of a Lost Landscape by Cheri Register
Novel & Short Story: Wintering by by Peter Geye
Young Adult: The Memory Book by Laura Avery
General Nonfiction: The war on Science: Who's waging It, why it matters, What we can do about it by Shawn Lawrence Otto
Genre Fiction: The Heavens May Fall by Kao Kalia Yang
Poetry: Unbearable Splendor by Sun Yung Shin.

I am looking at a couple of awards, one from my Province of Brtish Columbia and the other a Canada wide award.

The B.C. Book Prizes were established in 1985 and give out 7 awards in different categories. I am considering reading a 2011 nominee for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, The Forest Laird by Jack Whyte.

The Canadian Govenor General's Literary Prize was established in 1937. I am planning on reading a 2010 nominee for the English Fiction Award, Waiting For Joe by Sandra Birdsell.

A local award in my case would be the Schweizer Buchpreis. I even have a book on the shelf for it: Koala by Lukas Bärfuss. I could set the scope a bit wider geographically and narrower genre wise and go for the Deutscher Krimi Preis and read Die Mauer by Max Annas.

I'll choose from Buffalo Jump: a woman’s travels by Rita Moir 2000 winner of the Van City Book Prize and the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize (both British Columbia awards) or Curtains for Roy by Aaron Bushkowsky finalist on the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour (Canadian award).

My local award is The New York Society Library Book Award.The awards are presented by the New York Society Library to books that are well written, engaging, of literary quality or historical importance, that "enhances appreciation of New York City". The city must play a significant role in the book and not just be the setting.
I'm planning to read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, the winner of the fiction category in 2000.

When I did a Google search, I discovered an annual Virginia literary award: the Library of Virginia Annual Literary Award. It has been going on for 20 years and includes separate categories for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. I will probably read something from its list of winners and runners-up. I have already read the 2016 and 2017 nonfiction winners: Something Must Be Done about Prince Edward County by Kristen Green and Hidden Figures by Margaret Lee Shetterly. I'm particularly glad the Hidden Figures won.

Although technically not an award (I suppose), Rhode Island does a "Read across Rhode Island" book every year and last year's book was The Wright Brothers by David McCullough. So that's what I'm going to go with. Plus I can use it for the Random Cat next month. I think the only book awards here are a teen book award and a children's book award. I had the same trouble a couple of years ago when we did local awards. So - that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

(After all, we're so small)

>12 dudes22: That counts in my books! Picking one book for the whole state to read would be a big honour.

Earlier this year I read Island: The Collected Stories, by Alistair MacLeod as my local awards -- I chose it from the list of Atlantic Canada's 100 Greatest Books. (I am not "local" to Atlantic Canada, but I wanted to read something from a different part of Canada.) It was all right, but I prefer his novel, No Great Mischief.

I see some people are already setting up their threads for next year. I haven't started checking them out yet, only the Cat threads. I've really in a dilemma about next year's thread. I'm thinking I'm just going to repeat this year and not have a theme. All the themes I've thought of seem to be too restrictive in one way or another.

>13 rabbitprincess: - I never thought of it that way - that's true.

I guess that I will listen to one of my audiobook ROOTs, Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad by M.T. Anderson, which won one of the 2016 Massachusetts Book Awards as well as the 2016 Boston Globe - Horn Book Award for Nonfiction.

>13 rabbitprincess: Now that I've finished No Great Mischief (which I loved), I'll have to seek out some of Alistair MacLeod's short stories.

I finished The Break by Katherena Vermette, which was a Canada Reads finalist this year. It is also one of the Ontario Library Association's Evergreen Award nominees. I try every year to read most of the 10 nominees on the OLA's annual list. The books must be Canadian books published in the past year but they don't have to be from Ontario. The Break was a five-star read for me. Highly recommended!

I wasn't totally taken with Waiting For Joe by Sandra Birdsell a 2010 nominee for the Canadian Governor General's Literary Award. I was expecting a different story but there is no question that this author can write.

I just finished Crow Lake by Mary Lawson which won the 2003 Books in Canada First Novel Award and found it excellent. I saw this on the shelf at the library and remembered that Paulina has written a very favorable review of it last month so I grabbed it!

>19 DeltaQueen50: That one sounds excellent! Adding it to the wishlist (if it's not there already).

>19 DeltaQueen50: Glad you liked it too!

The little town of Husum on the North Sea is the birthplace of Theodor Storm and they have an award in his name that went to Das Nordseegrab in 2014. The bicentenary of his birthday seemed a suitable occasion to finally read this. Storm was a lawyer in real life, and the author uses this for his mystery involving a gruesome death warning, several deaths and a shipwreck. The plot wasn't very clearly unfolded, but his descriptions of life in a small town in 1843 made up for it.

Winner Of The 2014 Indie Awards Debut Fiction Of The Year
Winner Of The Victorian Premier's Literary Award People's Choice Award 2014
Winner Of The Faw Christina Stead Award 2014
Winner Of The Aba Nielson Bookdata Booksellers' Choice Award 2014
Shortlisted For The Stella Prize 2014
Shortlisted For The Baileys Women's Prize For Fiction 2014
Shortlisted For The Victorian Premier's Literary Award For Fiction 2014
Shortlisted For The Abia Literary Fiction Book Of The Year 2014
Shortlisted For The Als Gold Medal 2014
Shortlisted For The Guardian First Book Award 2013
Shortlisted For The Nib Waverley Award For Literature 2013

The book I read for this month was a big winner in Australia, and made multiple shortlists (as listed above). Burial Rites by Hannah Kent, is an excellent atmospheric novel based on the true story of the last woman ever to be executed in Iceland. I listened to the audio version and thought it was a thought provoking book, with beautiful language.

>23 Roro8: Impressing list!

>12 dudes22: That absolutely counts. :)

I've seen very intresting award and book choices and am looking forward to this month's second half. For myself, I have ordered Ach diese Lücke, diese entsetzliche Lücke by Joachim Meyerhoff, which was on the 2016 longlist of the German Book Prize.

My reading for this challenge won the Van City Book Prize and was a finalist for the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize, both in 2000.

Buffalo Jump: a woman's travels by Rita Moir
Part travel narrative, part biography, but mostly an account of reminiscences shared during a journey the author made with her mother across Canada. She asked the questions that we mean to ask a parent or grandparent but never get the right moment. There was some pain, some heartache, but mostly this is an upbeat story with some very nice moments.

Although they stop and contemplate history at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in Alberta, and mention buffalo often, the title metaphor was a weak link in the story. Moir had a tough time trying to make it work.

The author currently lives in the Kootenay region of British Columbia

My final read for this month's AwardCat was The Forest Laird by Jack Whyte. This is a novel of historical fiction about William Wallace, of "Braveheart" fame. The author resides in British Columbia and the book was a 2011 nominee for the Ethel Wilson Prize of the B.C. Literary Awards.

>26 DeltaQueen50: I didn't know that Jack Whyte lived in BC! A few of his books are on my TBR.

>27 rabbitprincess: I didn't know that either. :) Apparently he was born in Scotland but now lives in Kelowna, B.C. I've been eyeing his Legends of Camelot series for year.

I have finished Symphony of the Dead.

I am counting Jackaby by William Ritter for this CAT, A Young Adult book, historical fantasy set in 1890, nominated for Georgia Peach Book Award Nominee for Honor book (2015), The Magnolia Award Nominee for 9-12 (2016)

Being as it's already the 27th and I'm still reading my Random book for this month, it's highly unlikely that I will get to my book for this Cat.

Road Trip Rwanda / Will Ferguson
4 stars

Author Will Ferguson has a friend in Calgary, Canada, who is originally from Rwanda, Jean-Claude. A 19-year old Jean-Claude, a Tutsi, got out of the country mere months before the genocide in 1994. The two take a trip to Rwanda for a few weeks and Jean-Claude tours Will around.

I learned that Rwanda has come back from the genocide socially and economically ahead of the game, ahead of other African countries, and ahead of many other countries in the world. It’s an impressive turn-around; of course, the ghosts of the genocide are still everywhere in the country. The book includes a brief history of what led to the genocide and the genocide itself, and of course, we learned more about various things that happened in various places throughout the country as Will and Jean-Claude took their trip.

There were a couple of respites from genocide “memories”: they did a tour in the Virunga Mountains to see Dian Fossey’s gorillas; they also went to a national park, where the wildlife is protected. I’ve read about both the genocide and Dian Fossey and the gorillas, so much of the information wasn’t new to me, but this was a reminder. Ferguson often adds humour to his travel books, but this one is a tough one to do that with. There is a bit, but not as much as in his other books. Overall, I thought this was a very good book to get information about the tough topic of the Rwandan genocide, in addition to updates about the country.

>32 LibraryCin: - After having read Ferguson's 419, I am intrigued that he has more books with an African connection. Will keep an eye out for a copy of Road Trip Rwanda.

I finished World's End by T. C. Boyle (It won the Pen Faulkner Award) but it also won a local award, California Book Award Silver Medal for Fiction (1987)

>33 lkernagh: I hope you like it!

I finished The Wars by Timothy Findley. It won the Canadian Governor General's Award in 1977. However, Findley also won an award that's even more of a local award. He was the winner of the Harbourfront Festival Prize in 1996. This prize is given during the International Festival of Authors at Toronto's Harbourfront each year. I live close to Toronto and have attended a number of literary events at Harbourfront, including the IFOA.

Another winner of the Harbourfront Festival Prize is Alberto Manguel, in 1992. I'm currently reading his book, A History of Reading.