A Different Shoulder to Rub

I mingled with the literati at the National Arts Club last night where the finalists for the LA Times Book Award were announced. Made me think that I should get myself a job in book publishing (that's not to say I don't have a book in me). Thinking went like this: If magazine journalism has become just like selling thanks to the rampant consumerism of our time then I am nothing but a sales person. And if I'm nothing but a sales person, what is the one thing I wouldn't mind selling? Other people's novels. I'm looking into it.

By the way, the National Arts Club is a fascinating place. It is housed in the historic Tilden Mansion (15 Gramercy Park) and has been there since 1898.

Architect Philip Johnson called the mansion, "among the most beautiful in New York."

The awards will be announced in April.

And the nominees are....
Fiction

Junot Diaz, THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO (Riverhead)
Andrew O'Hagan, BE NEAR ME (Harcourt)
Stewart O'Nan, LAST NIGHT AT THE LOBSTER (Viking)
Per Petterson, OUT STEALING HORSES (Graywolf)
Marianne Wiggins, THE SHADOW CATCHER (Simon & Schuster)

ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION

Antonia Arslan (Translated by Geoffrey Brock), SKYLARK FARM (Knopf)
Rebecca Curtis, TWENTY GRAND AND OTHER TALES OF LOVE AND MONEY (Harper)
Pamela Erens, THE UNDERSTORY (Ironweed Press)
Ellen Litman, THE LAST CHICKEN IN AMERICA (W.W. Norton)
Dinaw Mengestu, THE BEAUTIFUL THINGS THAT HEAVEN BEARS (Riverhead)


Biography

Nancy Isenberg, FALLEN FOUNDER: THE LIFE OF AARON BURR (Viking)
Tim Jeal, STANLEY: THE IMPOSSIBLE LIFE OF AFRICA'S GREATEST EXPLORER (Yale)
Simon Sebag Montefiore, YOUNG STALIN (Knopf)
Robert Morgan: BOONE: A BIOGRAPHY (Algonquin)
Michael J. Neufeld, VON BRAUN: DREAMER OF SPACE, ENGINEER OF WAR (Knopf)


Current Events

Ishmael Beah, A LONG WAY GONE; MEMOIRS OF A BOY SOLDIER (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Tom Bissell, THE FATHER OF ALL THINGS: A MARINE, HIS SON, AND THE LEGACY OF VIETNAM (Pantheon)
Ronald Brownstein, THE SECOND CIVIL WAR: HOW EXTREME PARTISANSHIP HAS PARALYZED WASHINGTON AND POLARIZED AMERICA (Penguin Press)
Naomi Klein, THE SHOCK DOCTRINE: THE RISE OF DISASTER CAPITALISM (Metropolitan)
Elizabeth D. Samet, SOLDIER'S HEART: READING LITERATURE THROUGH PEACE AND WAR AT WEST POINT (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)