Awards Announced

This is the press release for the 2008 PNBA Award Winners. I'm putting this up here 'cause it's a great list, and because it's the last of my three years on the committee. I'd love to report that leaving behind this responsibility meant I would be able to read more of whatever it was I wanted, but I'm still not back to a full reading schedule since my job switch. D'oh! In any event, if any of this sounds familiar, it may have to do with the fact that anywhere a quote is attributed to the committee, it was really my words...

PNBA Announces

2008 Pacific Northwest Book Awards

Eugene, Oregon - January 4, 2008 - The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association is proud to announce the winners of its 2008 Book Awards, which were selected by a committee of independent booksellers from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Alaska. The committee chose the following six books from nearly 200 nominees, all of which were written by Northwest authors and published in 2007.

About the Award-winning Books

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
In his first young adult novel, Sherman Alexie hilariously and heartbreakingly chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one unlucky but resilient boy trying to rise above the life everyone expects him to live on the Spokane Indian Reservation.

Returning To Earth by Jim Harrison
"Life and death; family and friends; past and future -- Returning to Earth covers the full range of human experience as the reader shares a journey with a Michigan man of Finnish and Native American ancestry. Told as four stories, each with a different central character, Jim Harrison deftly explores how we all search for redemption." --PNBA Awards Committee

Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
"Instantly compelling, Tree of Smoke is, at its core, a novel about the Vietnam War and the people, places, and history that were forever changed because of it. Like the war itself, the storylines dart and weave and are only truly understood as they connect themselves in the end." --PNBA Awards Committee

Dancing With Rose: Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer's by Lauren Kessler
"Lauren Kessler confronts the confounding disease that took her mother as only a journalist could -- she becomes a caregiver at an Alzheimer's facility. By turns brutally honest, compassionate, and instructive, Kessler finds grace, humor and unexpected connections with the patients and the caregivers." --PNBA Awards Committee

The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle
A breathtaking debut novel about a girl growing up amid a dying way of life on a horse ranch in small-town Colorado, The God of Animals beautifully captures familiar themes of the West: families, horses, love, death, class and weather. As novelist Andrew Sean Greer says, it's "a perfect read."

Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff
Matt Ruff wins his second PNBA Award with this page-turning, psychological thriller full of funhouse twists and turns. Bad Monkeys is, as Neal Stephenson says, "Fast. Wicked. Scarily clever and equally fun for those who like thrillers and those who don't."