Building a buzz for books…
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“The Road,” this year’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Cormac McCarthy, is one of five nominees for the third annual Quill Award in fiction, publishing industry officials announced in New York. But that’s pretty much the only overlap with the more prestigious Pulitzers and National Book Awards among the 90 Quill finalists unveiled in 18 categories Saturday at BookExpo America, the nation’s largest gathering of booksellers.
Other fiction finalists are Da Chen for “Brothers,” Phil LaMarche for “American Youth,” Marisha Pessl for “Special Topics in Calamity Physics” and Matthew Sharpe for “Jamestown.” In mystery and suspense, “The Collaborator of Bethlehem” by Matt Beynon Rees is vying with “What the Dead Know” by Laura Lippman, “Body of Lies” by David Ignatius, “The Overlook” by Michael Connelly and “A Welcome Grave” by Michael Koryta.
The Quill Awards were created as a populist answer to the more rarified Pulitzer and National Book Foundation winners, who are selected by small committees of literary practitioners. By contrast, the Quills were launched to let the public vote online for their favorites across a broad range of categories that are mostly shunned by the literati, including romance, food, health, audio, science fiction, mystery and children’s picture books.
Last In October, for example, Tyler Perry’s “Don’t Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings: Madea’s Uninhibited Commentaries on Love and Life,” was named book of the year at the second annual Quill Awards, an event televised on some NBC-TV stations.
Last year’s lack-luster voting for Quill finalists prompted organizers to change the process. The 2007 finalists were chosen by editors at the trade magazine Publishers Weekly. Booksellers and librarians will announce their choices in each category on Sept. 10, then the public will be able to vote online for best book of the year among the 18 winners. That selection will be revealed in a New York ceremony on Oct. 22, to be broadcast Oct. 27.
--Josh Getlin