Goodreads Choice Awards

The 2011 Goodreads (http://www.goodreads.com/) best book award results are in! The awards covered a variety of genres in both childrens, YA, and adult fiction, as well as non-fiction for adult categories.

The winner for best 2011book is the extremely popular Divergent by Veronica Roth. Divergent also won for best YA in the category of Fantasy/Sci-fi.

Divergent takes place in future Chicago, where sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior must choose among five predetermined factions to define her identity for the rest of her life, a decision made more difficult when she discovers that she is an anomaly who does not fit into any one group, and that the society she lives in is not perfect after all.

Read more about the awards--and check out an amazing site to keep track of what books you've read and want to read--here: http://www.goodreads.com/award/choice/2011

2011 Printz Award

Congratulations to Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi for winning the 2011 Printz Award! The Michael L. Printz Award is given to one book each year that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature. We must have had a good feeling about this book because we picked it months ago for our Buzz Book Club Discussion to take place on Monday, January 24 @ 7pm. You can get a copy at the Circulation Desk and join us for our book club.

The Printz Honor books were awarded to:

Stolen by Lucy Christopher, the story of a sixteen-year-old British girl who is kidnapped and brought to Australia by her captor.

Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King, a dark comedy in which Vera's dead best friend will not leave her alone.

Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick (my personal favorite!) is set in the Arctic Circle and is the chilling tale of a teen named Sig who finds his father's frozen body and then finds an armed stranger at his home demanding stolen gold.

Nothing by Janne Teller, the unsettling story of seventh grader searching for the meaning of life.

Other awards were given yesterday as well. For a complete list click here.

Award Winners

It was a big weekend for awards. Following the Golden Globes the book award winners were announced Monday morning. Congratulations to Going Bovine by Libba Bray which won the Printz Award! I truly enjoyed this book, so I was glad that it was recognized. The honor books are Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman, The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey, Punkzilla by Adam Rapp and Tales from the Madmen Underground: An Historical Romance, 1973 by John Barnes. Overall, I think the committee made a good selection.