discovery, before forgetting

Catching up on GalleyCat this morning, I came across this quote from the lovely Karen Joy Fowler from one of last week's editions of PW Daily for Booksellers (the quote was made at NACS-CAMEX):

"When I told my book club that I was writing about a book club, it seemed in response that they became more colorful and actually read the books and had interesting things to say--as if they were thinking this would look good on page. When we read Emma, none of them liked the book, and afterwards I became crosser and crosser and decided I could make up a better book club."

(GalleyCat also has quotes from Andrei Codrescu and David Baldacci at the link above.)

Which reminded me I've been meaning to point to this year's Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Awards winners; the fiction recipients were chosen by judges Karen, Mark Dunn (the divine and delicious Ella Minnow Pea) and Meg Wolitzer (who I still need to read).

And the fiction winners were (and I'm going to lift the 'from the judges' B and N includes for each one):

1st place: Heaven Lake by John Dalton -- "In this stunning debut novel, John Dalton examines the nature of love and faith as he takes his protagonist on a long, scenic journey into the heart of modern China. Graceful and evocative without being labored, Dalton's prose establishes his credentials as a first-rate storyteller, and as an equally gifted translator of the language of the fragile human soul." Mark Dunn

2nd place: The Hamilton Case by Michelle de Kretser -- "The Hamilton Case is a stunning, lush, and labyrinthine novel. Covering the lifetime of one man, but also the decades of Ceylonese colonialization and independence, de Kretser is as deft in creating the interior landscape as she is the exterior. The result is a literary mystery of politics and family, poetry and murder. Comic, tragic, haunting, hallucinatory and elusive, but vivid and exact, this is a brilliant book by a brilliant writer." Karen Joy Fowler

3rd place: How the Light Gets In by M.J. Hyland -- "In How the Light Gets In, M.J. Hyland writes beautifully about adolescence, and in doing so she allows the reader to visit territory that seems strange and surprisingly, breathlessly new. Hyland's protagonist Lou is as misunderstood as Holden Caulfield was 54 years ago, but her particular brand of witty, hyper-observed and observant pathos is very much her own. This is an exquisite and powerful novel." Meg Wolitzer

Nonfiction winners were Alison Smith's Name all the Animals (which is in my TBR pile right now), Suketu Mehta's Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found and Edward Conlon's Blue Blood.