In Memoriam: Tony Hillerman

Tony Hillerman died this past weekend. I feel as if I have lost a friend. His stories celebrated the Navajo culture and the beauty of the Southwest. He wrote a series of mysteries featuring Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. These characters grew with each novel. He also wrote a haunting stand-alone: Finding Moon.
I wanted to share this tribute to Hillerman from Craig Johnson, author of Another Man's Moccasins and Kindness Goes Unpunished because I think that it is most apt: "Perhaps the best words to describe his legacy are those of his protagonist Jim Chee, 'Everything is connected. The wing of the corn beetle effects the direction of the wind, the way the sand drifts, the way the light reflects into the eye of man beholding his reality. All is part of totality, and in this totality man finds his horzo, his way of walking in harmony, with beauty all around him.'"

Chicago Author Chercover at Warren Newport Public Library

Bestselling crime fiction author Sean Chercover will be at the Warren-Newport Public Library in Gurnee, Illinois on Mon., Nov. 3, at 7 p.m. The former Chicago private investigator will discuss Trigger City, just released Oct. 14. Publishers Weekly raves, "Chercover brings a crackling authenticity to Dudgeon, paying homage to the noir masters while creating a doggedly stubborn new hero all his own." Books will be available for purchase and signing at the free event. Reserve a place: www.wpln.info.

Forbes' World's Best Paid Authors

Forbes magazine recently announced its annual "The World's Best Paid Authors" list of 10 bestselling writers who "pulled in a combined $563 million between June 1, 2007, and June 1, 2008, thanks to hefty advances, impressive sales and silver screen adaptations." This year's Forbes list includes:
J.K. Rowling ($300 million)
James Patterson ($50 million)
Stephen King ($45 million)
Tom Clancy ($35 million)
Danielle Steel ($30 million)
John Grisham (tied at $25 million)
Dean Koontz (tied at $25 million)
Ken Follett ($20 million)
Janet Evanovich ($17 million)
Nicholas Sparks ($16 million)

National Book Award Finalists Announced

The National Book Foundation has named the 2008 National Book Award finalists.can Winners in each of these categories will be announced at a ceremony on November 19 in New York City. The NBA finalists are:
Fiction:The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon ; Telex from Cuba by Rachel Kushnerem;Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen; Home by Marilynne Robinson; The End by Salvatore Scibona.
Nonfiction: This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust ; The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed;The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer; Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives by Jim Sheeler; The Suicide Index: Putting My Father’s Death in Order by Joan Wickersham.
PoetryWatching the Spring Festival by Frank Bidart;Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems by Mark Doty; Creatures of a Day by Reginald Gibbons; Without Saying by Richard Howard; Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith.
Young People's Literature:Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson; The Underneath by Kathi Appelt (Atheneum);What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell;The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart; The Spectacular Now by Tim Tharp .

Aravind Adiga Awarded Man Booker Prize

Aravind Adiga won the 40th Man Booker prize for his debut novel, The White Tiger. According to the New York Times, "Adiga, who lives in Mumbai, was born in India and brought up partly in Australia. He studied at Columbia and Oxford and is a former correspondent for Time magazine in India." At 33, he is the second youngest writer to win the award after Ben Okri, who was 32 when he won the 1991 Booker for The Famished Road. Michael Portillo, chairman of the panel of judges, said Adiga's novel won "because the judges felt that it shocked and entertained in equal measure." Adiga described The White Tiger as an "attempt to catch the voice of the men you meet as you travel through India--the voice of the colossal underclass. This voice was not captured, and I wanted to do so without sentimentality or portraying them as mirthless humorless weaklings as they are usually." This year's shortlist for the Man Booker prize included The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry, Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh, The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant, The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher and A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz. Portillo stated that the main criterion for the prize is: "Does this book knock my socks off? And this did."

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio Winner Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize was awarded to Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, a French novelist, children’s author, and essayist. The announcement followed days of literary argument over remarks by the Swedish Academy’s permanent secretary, Horace Engdahl, suggesting that American writers were influenced too much by American popular culture to qualify for the prize. Engdahl had also asserted the Europe was "the center of the literary world.” The last American writer to win the prize was Toni Morrison in 1993. The Nobel Prize Committee called Le Clézio an “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.” Last year the prize was awarded to the British author Doris Lessing. Le Clézio's novel Désert (1980)won a prize from the French Academy and established him as one of France's leading writers. His other novels include:Le procès-verbal (1963),Fever(1966),The Flood(1967),and Terra Amata(1969). Le Clézio has published collections of essays describing his long stays in Mexico and Central America. His books for children and youth include Lullaby (1980), and Balaabilou (1985). The Nobel Prize Committee stated that "the emphasis of Le Clézio’s work has increasingly moved in the direction of an exploration of the world of childhood and of his own family history. Recent works include: L’Africain(2004)and Ballaciner(2007).

2008 Thurber Prize Announced

Larry Doyle has won the 2008 Thurber Prize for American Humor for his first novel, I Love You, Beth Cooper. One judge, Firoozeh Dumas, called the book "a hilarious yet painfully accurate account of high school in all its pimply glory." Doyle is a former writer and producer of the Simpsons, a contributor to the New Yorker and an Esquire columnist. The two runners-up for the prize were Patricia Marx for Him Her Him Again the End of Him and Simon Rich for Ant Farm.

Louis L'Amour Centennial

Louis L'Amour was born Louis Dearborn LaMoore on March 22, 1908, the last of seven children. His father, Louis Charles LaMoore, was a veterarian. For the first fifteen years of his life, he lived in the farming community of Jamestown, North Dakota. As a young man, L'Amour wandered and had many adventures. He skinned cattle in west Texas, baled hay in the Pecos valley of New Mexico, worked in the mines of Arizona, California, and Nevada, and in the saw mills and lumber yards of Oregon and Washington. He also had a sporadic career as a professional boxer. His stories and characters were created from his experiences. He had a life-long love of learning. He often bragged that from 1928 until 1942 he read more than 150 non-fiction books a year. He had intended to be a poet, but he was unsuccessful. He started writing short stories. He sold a short story called Anything for a Pal to a pulp magazine and launched his writing career. His first stories were mostly adventures. After he returned from World War II, the market was interested in mysteries and westerns. L'Lamour started writing his beloved westerns. The success of the film Hondo based on his short story Gift of Cochise gave L'Amour a standing and a fan base. L'Amour won many awards, including,the Western Writers of America's Golden Spur Award for Down the Long Hills,the North Dakota's Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award, and the Golden Saddleman Award from the Western Writers of America. In 1983, the U.S. Congress awarded L'Amour the National Gold Medal, and a year later, the Medal of Freedom. He died in 1988, and his books continue to be published and read widely.
In his memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, L'Amour wrote: "Our family was one in which everybody was constantly reading....All of us had library cards and they were always in use...Reading was as natural to us as breathing."

Old Mill Creek Boasts New Author of Photography Book

Michal McClure, a retired entrepreneur who lives in Old Mill Creek, wanted to introduce people to a mostly unknown part of Hawaii. He did so with the recent publication of his book Hawaiian Cowboys: A Photographic Journal. The book composed of 90 photographs documents the traditional and contemporary ways of Hawaiian cowboys. McClure first learned about the culture of Hawaiian cowboys on a business trip to Hawaii. McClure took 12 trips over the course of three years, several with his sons: "We'd go up into the mountains. We like to explore and hike, and that's what got us into those areas. We would see guys transporting these horses back and forth in their trailers. I had a friend who lived up there where the ranches are, and I asked him if he could introduce me one of the ranchers he knew. And that's what got me going." His sons,Brian and Chris McClure, are contributing photographers to Hawaiian Cowboys.