2009 National Book Award nominees announced

The nominees for the 2009 National Book Awards were announced today. I knew only one of the five books in the fiction category -- Jayne Anne Phillips' Lark and Termite. The other nominees are: American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell, Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann, Daniyal Mueenuddin's In Other Rooms, Other Wonders and Far North by Marcel Theroux.

Non-fiction nominees are:

• David M. Carroll, Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook
• Sean B. Carroll, Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species
• Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City
• Adrienne Mayor, The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates,
• Rome's Deadliest Enemy
• T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

Visit the National Book Foundation's website for the nominees in poetry and young people's literature.

Never Say Never: Lehane to write sixth Kenzie-Gennaro novel

File this under the category of Never Say Never.

Author Dennis Lehane has long insisted he would never write another book featuring Boston P.I.s Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. But, now, Lehane has announced that the sixth entry in the series will be published sometime in 2010! And it will be a sequel to, Gone, Baby, Gone.

Read more about it here.

And, while we're on the subject of mystery writers, George Pelecanos has won the 2009 Dashiell Hammett Award (for literary excellence in the field of crime writing) for The Turnaround.

Nice to see George recognized.

Pelecanos appeared last month at the National Book Festival on the Mall in Washington D.C. He told me then that he doesn't have a novel in the pipeline, but is, instead, working on a new television series with the crew from The Wire.

Pike's Back!

In an email to fans, Robert Crais indicates that Joe Pike will make a return appearance as the star of his own novel.

The novel, The First Rule, is tentatively set for publication in February, 2010.

Here's what Crais has to say about the novel:

Frank and Cindy Meyer had the American dream – until the day a professional robbery crew invaded their home and murdered everyone inside. The only thing out of the ordinary about Frank was that – before his family, business, and oh-so-normal life – a younger Frank Meyer worked as a professional mercenary . . . with a man named Joe Pike.

Pike learns of the crime when the police question him. The same crew has done other home invasions, and all the targets have been criminals with large stashes of cash or drugs. The police believe the same is true of Frank, but Pike does not, and with the help of Elvis Cole, he sets out to clear his friend . . . and punish the people who murdered him.

They won’t know what hit them.

The first rule: Don’t make Pike mad.

Reading Update

I've been reading rather than posting. I'll try to do better.

Here's my reading since the last time I posted a summary. On pace to read 180 books this year with 90 books completed by the end of June.

A quick explanation of the numbers: the column on the left represents the number of books read. For example, Victory Over Japan is the 78th book is read in 2009. I completed it on June 5 and it had 277 pages.

78. Victory Over Japan, Ellen Gilchrist. Stories 6-5 277

79. Brooklyn, Colm Toibin. Fiction 6-7 262

80. Road Dogs, Elmore Leonard. Thriller 6-8 262

81. Gone Tomorrow, Lee Child. Thriller 6-9 421

82. Nocturnes, Kazuo Ishiguro. Stories 6-11 221

83. The Scarecrow, Michael Connelly. Thriller 6-13 419

84. Leadership on the Line, Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty

Linsky. Leadership 6-14 236

85. The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters. Fiction 6-17 499

86. The Complete Game, Ron Darling. Baseball 6-19 255

87. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Alan Bradley. Mystery 6-21 370

88. The Angel’s Game, Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Fiction 6-26 531

89. Lark & Termite, Jayne Anne Phillips. Fiction 6-29 254

90. Miracle Ball, Brian Biegel. Baseball 6-30 227

July

91. In the Kitchen, Monica Ali. Fiction 7-3 430

92. I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a

Woman, Nora Ephron. Humor 7-4 137

93. Exiles in the Garden, Ward Just. Fiction 7-5 279

94. A Short History of Women, Kate Walbert. Fiction 7-7 237

Post features Connelly, Scarecrow

The Washington Post has an interesting story this morning on Michael Connelly's new thriller The Scarecrow. The article focuses on how the decline in the newspaper business -- an element of the novel -- posed challenges for the author.

A round-up of today's reading

June 4th and 5th brought eight new books to my door. Six of those have been dispatched. Only Monica Ali's new book and Alan Bradley's The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie remain. Bradley is up next.

Today, I read a couple of chapters in The Complete Game by former Mets pitcher Ron Darling. The best of books on baseball combine something instructive about the game and a few wonderful anecdotes. Darling's book does exactly that. It is an extraordinary look into the mind of the major league pitcher.

I also read:

• Susan Glaspell's Trifles. Written in 1917, this play about a farm wife who murders her husband holds up remarkably well.
  
  
• Two short stories by Robert Crais. The stories, With Crooked Hands and The Dust of Evening, represent Crais' first published work. Both are works of science fictions. Crais later turned to mystery writing, where he established a name for himself with his characters Elvis Cole and Joe Pike.
  
  
• An article in the June 22 The New Yorker on romance novelist Nora Roberts. I have never read Ms. Roberts, which makes me an exception among the novel-reading public today. The article reports that according to Forbes Roberts grosses $60 million a year -- that's more than Stephen King or John Grisham. She wrote three of the 10 best-selling mass-market paperbacks last year. 27 Nora Roberts books are sold every minute.

Pixar hires Chabon to write John Carter of Mars script

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon has been hired to write Pixar's John Carter Of Mars movie. You can read more here.