WCLS

When you are looking for your next read, award winners and nominees generally do not disappoint.  Check out the recently announced Pulitzer Prize winners!  This year's prize for fiction went to Adam Johnson for The Orphan Master’s Son, a fictional exploration that takes the reader below the “papier-mâché” North Korea created by propaganda to touch the hopes and desires of its citizens.  In the nonfiction category, Gilbert King's Devil in the Grove beat out the contenders.  A riveting account of at-the-time NAACP special counsel Thurgood Marshall’s defense of the Groveland Boys - four African-American men who were falsely accused of rape in Florida, one of them hunted down and killed by a posse.

Every so often, a first novel like The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (the current Oprah's Book Club 2.0 title) gets an Oprah "nudge" into super-stardom.  But if you are a first-time author, don't hold your breath waiting for that break.  There are many, many other first novels out there well worth discovery by authors whose careers you'll want to keep on eye on.  Feed your spring reading with this selected list of debut titles published so far this year, highly praised by critics, and popular with readers.

(from Poets.org) Celebrate national Poem in Your Pocket Day on Thursday, April 18, 2013!  The idea is simple: select a poem you love during National Poetry Month then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends. You can also share your poem selection on Twitter by using the hashtag #pocketpoem.

Find poems in poetry anthologies available in the library catalog and share them using these easy suggestions provided by poets.org:

Longlists of fiction and nonfiction candidates have been announced for this year's Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence.  These awards were established in 2012 by the Carnegie Corporation and the American Library Association in to recognize the best fiction and nonfiction books written for adult readers and published in the U.S. the previous year.  The selection committee is made up of library professionals who work closely with adult readers and Nancy Pearl is the committee chairperson!  The six-title shortlist—three each for the fiction and nonfiction medals—will be announced in late April, and the two winners will be announced at the ALA Annual Conference on June 30th in Chicago.