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The Galaxy British Book Awards

The newly elected president of the United States Barack Obama appears twice on the shortlists of the 2009 Galaxy British Book Awards. This year’s finalists also include no fewer than nine major literary prize-winners, reinforcing the status of the Nibbies – so-called because of their distinctive pen-nib trophies – as the publishing industry’s answer to the Oscars. The awards, now in their 20^th year, will be presented at a glittering ceremony at the Grosvenor House Hotel on London’s Park Lane on Friday 3^rd April.

Barack Obama is shortlisted as Borders Author of the Year for the The Audacity of Hope, which outlines his own deep-felt political and personal values. Dreams from My Father, his memoir of his early life and African-American heritage, is a candidate for Tesco Biography of the Year. Both have been extraordinarily successful bestsellers, as readers in the UK seek out background on the new president’s life story.

The Nibbies, which cover commercial bestsellers and literary prize winners, remain the only book awards to give readers across Britain a say with the winners decided by a mix of industry academy and public voting. This gives a host of national treasures every chance of beating Obama in the ballot of the books. Fellow Biography of the Year finalists include entertainers Paul O’Grady (At My Mother’s Knee – and Other Low Joints) and Julie Walters (That’s Another Story). Or will Dawn French’s Dear Fatty have the last laugh? Empire of the Sun’s creator J G Ballard is also a contender with his autobiography Miracles of Life.

This year’s shortlist for Borders Author of the Year reads like a roll call of literary champions – which will prove to be the public’s most popular prize winner? Aravind Adiga won the 2008 Man Booker Prize with his novel The White Tiger; Sebastian Barry walked away with the Costa Book of the Year Award for his lyrical novel about a centenarian Irishwoman, The Secret Scripture; and Diana Athill, author of the rather more uplifting account of her own old age, Somewhere Towards the End, carried off the Costa Biography prize. Joining them on the journey is Rose Tremain and her 2008 Orange prizewinning novel The Road Home. But fighting back with the help of her teenage vampire tale, Breaking Dawn is Stephenie Meyer, whose four books have been phenomenal bestsellers in the UK and the US, rivalling the success of J K Rowling.

J K Rowling, who won Outstanding Achievement Award in last year’s Nibbies, will be hoping to work the same magic in 2009 with The Tales of Beedle the Bard, shortlisted for W H Smith Children’s Book of the Year. Once again, the 2009 award will be presented to an author who has made an exceptional contribution to the world of books. The Galaxy Book of the Year, the ultimate prize for the reading public’s very best book of the year, will be selected on the night from a shortlist of the other award winners.

GALAXY BRITISH BOOK AWARDS

2009 SHORTLIST

Borders Author of the Year

• The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (Atlantic Books)
• Somewhere Towards The End by Diana Athill (Granta Books)
• The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry (Faber & Faber)
• Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer (Atom)
• The Audacity Of Hope by Barack Obama (Canongate)
• The Road Home by Rose Tremain (Vintage)

Tesco Biography of the Year

• At My Mother’s Knee … and other low joints by Paul O’Grady (Bantam Press)
• Coming Back To Me by Marcus Trescothick (HarperSport)
• Dear Fatty by Dawn French (Century)
• Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama (Canongate)
• Miracles of Life by J.G Ballard (Fourth Estate)
• That’s Another Story by Julie Walters (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

Books Direct Crime Thriller of the Year

• The Business by Martina Cole (Headline)
• Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith (Simon & Schuster)
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (MacLehose Press)
• No Time For Goodbye by Linwood Barclay (Orion)
• Revelation by C.J Sansom (Pan)
• When Will There Be Good News? By Kate Atkinson (Doubleday)

Waterstone’s Newcomer of the Year

• Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith (Simon & Schuster)
• Inside the Whale by Jennie Rooney (Vintage)
• Loving Frank by Nancy Horan (Sceptre)
• The Marriage Bureau For Rich People by Farahad Zama (Abacus)
• Mudbound by Hilary Jordan (Windmill)
• One of Us by Melissa Benn (Vintage)

Sainsbury’s Popular Fiction Award

• Azincourt by Bernard Cornwell (HarperCollins)
• Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks (Michael Joseph)
• The Outcast by Sadie Jones (Vintage)
• Thanks for the Memories by Cecelia Ahern (Harper)
• Things I Want My Daughers to Know by Elizabeth Noble (Penguin)
• This Charming Man by Marian Keyes (Michael Joseph)

Play.com Popular Non-Fiction Award

• The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson (Allen Lane)
• Call The Midwife by Jennifer Worth (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
• A History of Modern Britain by Andrew Marr (Pan)
• The Mighty Book of Boosh by Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt (Canongate)
• Stephen Fry in America by Stephen Fry (HarperCollins)
• The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale (Bloomsbury)

Richard&Judy’s Best Read of the Year

• The Bolter by Frances Osborne (Virago)
• The Brutal Art by Jesse Kellerman (Sphere)
• The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway (Atlantic)
• December by Elizabeth H. Winthrop (Sceptre)
• The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson (Canongate)
• The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite by Beatrice Colin (John Murray)
• Netherland by Joseph O’Neill (Fourth Estate)
• The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff (Doubleday)
• The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale (Bloomsbury)
• When Will There Be Good News? By Kate Atkinson (Doubleday)

WHsmith Children’s Book of the Year

• Dinosaurs Love Underpants by Claire Freedman, illus Ben Cort (Simon & Schuster Children’s Books)
• Horrid Henry Robs the Bank by Francesca Simon (Orion Children’s Books)
• Captain Underpants and the Preposterous Plight of the Purple Potty People by Dav Pilkey (Scholastic)
• Artemis Fowl & the Time Paradox by Eoin Colfer (Puffin)
• The Tales of Beedle the Bard by JK Rowling (Bloomsbury)
• Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer (Atom)

Posted: March 14th, 2009
Author: Floresiensis
Categories: Andrew Davidson, JK Rowling, Stephenie Meyer

The Iron Giant by Ted Hughes now available as eBook

First published in 1968, Ted Hughes’s classic tale is a powerful tribute to peace on earth – and in all the universe.

Read The Iron Man book review

A mysterious creature stalks the land, eating barbed wire and devouring tractors and plows. The farmers are mystified – and afraid. And then they glimpse him in the night: the Iron Giant, taller than a house, with glowing headlight eyes and an insatiable taste for metal. Where has he come from? Nobody knows. How was he made? Nobody knows. What they do know is that the Iron Giant must be stopped. But the real threat hovers above, darkening the sky with its scaly wings: a space-bat as big as Australia, hungry for every living thing it sees. And suddenly, the world needs a hero – a giant hero – like never before…

Buy The Iron Man eBook from Random House Inc.

Ted Hughes was born in Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire on the 17th of August 1930. He was the Poet Laureate from 1984 and was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1998, the year in which he died.

The eBook is illustrated by Andrew Davidson, author of The Gargoyle. Andrew Davidson was born in Pinawa, Manitoba, and graduated in 1995 from the University of British Columbia with a B.A. in English literature. He has worked as a teacher in Japan, where he has lived on and off, and as a writer of English lessons for Japanese Web sites. The Gargoyle, the product of seven years’ worth of research and composition, is his first book. Davidson lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Posted: December 31st, 2008
Author: Lee
Categories: Andrew Davidson

Fantasy Book Review: The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

Indra has reviewed The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson.

Strangely told by a nameless narrator, The Gargoyle is a tale of love, pain, transformation and more. The narrator, is involved in a serious car accident causing horrendous burns to his body, forcing him into hospital for many months to under go numerous painful surgeries and rehabilitation. During the stay in hospital he is visited by a beautiful, mysterious woman in her thirties who, unlike his so-called friends, doesn’t flee at the sight of his disfigured, charred body. She tells him that she knows him, is sorry he has been burned like this again and that she has been waiting for him for hundreds of years.

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson – full book review

The first novel by Davidson, this book is simply captivating, it leaves it’s images with you when you have put the book down and walked away, like photographic ghosts. The Gargoyle’s one drawn back has to be that it is very difficult to review without giving away the storyline!

Andrew Davidson was born in Pinawa, Manitoba, and graduated in 1995 from the University of British Columbia with a B.A. in English literature. He has worked as a teacher in Japan, where he has lived on and off, and as a writer of English lessons for Japanese Web sites. The Gargoyle, the product of seven years’ worth of research and composition, is his first book. Davidson lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Posted: October 20th, 2008
Author: Lee
Categories: Andrew Davidson