January AwardCat: Costa Awards & "Best Of" Lists

Get ready - it's time for the first AwardCat of 2017! In January we are going to be exploring The Costa Award and some the “Best of the Year” Book Lists.

Costa Awards



The Costa Book Awards are a set of annual literary awards recognizing English-language books by writers based in Britain and Ireland. They were inaugurated in 1971, originally being known as the Whitbread Book Awards until 2006 when Costa Coffee took over sponsorship. The Costa Short Story Award was established in 2012.

The awards are given both for high literary merit but also for works that are enjoyable reading and whose aim is to convey the enjoyment of reading to the widest possible audience. As such, they are a more populist literary prize than the Booker Prize.

The Costa Awards have five categories:

* Novel
* First Novel
* Children’s Book
* Poetry
* Biography

The winners are selected from short lists by a panel of judges. The Costa Book of the Year is selected from the final group of five books, one from each category.

The Short Story Award is decided on by the voting public after a panel of judges have selected a shortlist of six.

Here is the link to the Costa Award site that has lists of all past shortlists and winners.

http://www.costa.co.uk/costa-book-awards/costa-book-awards/



2015 Costa Award Books



2016 Costa Award Shortlist - Winners Announced on January 3rd, 2017

Best Books Lists



From our own Library Thing to the New York Times you can find Best of the Year lists springing up everywhere this time of the year. There are lists out there for any number of years and any genre. You decide which book to read and which list you are following. Since we have been including past years for all our AwardCats, you can pick a Best Book List for whatever year you wish.

Here are some links to Lists of Best Books of 2016:

N.P.R. List

New York Times List

Huffington Post List



Please remember to add your selections to the AwardCat Wiki which can be found HERE

I am excited about January's AwardCat and I am planning on reading:

Solace of the Road by Siobhan Dowd – 2009 Children’s Book Short List, Costa Awards
Out of Shadows by Jason Wallace – 2010 Children’s Book Winner, Costa Awards

and for the Best Books List I am going with:

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter from the Google List of Best Books for 2012

There's a group of us reading Evicted in Jan. That's on the NPR and NYT list.

I'm planning on Evicted in January! I would also like to read Marriage Material by Sathnam Sanghera for the Costa.

So many choices!

My choice will be one of these from the Costa Awards and all on my tbr shelf:

Restless by William Boyd (2006 winner)
A spot of bother by Mark Haddon shortlist 2006)
Family Album by Penelope Lively (shortlist 2009)
Child 44 by Rob Smith (shortlist 2008)
Little Bee by Chris Cleave (shortlist 2008)

I'm on my library waiting list for Weapons of Math Destruction, so hopefully it'll arrive on time for this challenge. It's on the 100 Notable Books of 2016 list published by the New York Times.

>6 VivienneR: If it helps narrow down your choices, I was disappointed with Little Bee when I listened to it a few years ago.

I am reading Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, I know this is on the NPR best of list and probably the others so that is a for sure as it is my f2f book club read in January. It is also on the ToB long list for 2017. Happy, happy!

Oh, some excellent choices already! I better sharpen my pencil and get ready to add to my wishlist.

>8 cbl_tn: Thanks for that advice Carrie. Mine is a print copy so I'll have a look before I commit. I've always enjoyed Penelope Lively so that may turn out to be first choice.

I'll be joining in the Evicted group read.

For the Costa Award I think I will try to read God in Ruins.

Ok, I don't think any of these are on my tbr (and that's what I try to pick from), but they are all ones I've considered adding to my tbr, so possibly:

H is for Hawk / Helen Macdonald
The Fireman / Joe Hills
The Underground Railroad / Colson Whitehead
The Wonder / Emma Donoghue
The Girls / Emma Cline

I was also thinking of H is for Hawk for the Costa award. Or if i don't finish it early Barkskins.

I like to read off the American Library Association's recommended lists, which come out in early January, I believe. I'll be reading one or more books from there.

I've changed my mind on my Costa book. I hope to read Golden Hill from this year's first novel shortlist.

This was a fun (and yet tough) one to plan for because I have so many books from "Year's Best" lists--I decided to go with Here I am by Jonathan Safran Foer since I've been wanting to read it for a while and it has popped up on several lists this year.

I was happy to find that one of my TBR books was a Costa Novel winner (1996)--Every man for himself by Beryl Bainbridge and it also fits into one of my categories, yay!

>15 sushicat: Ha! And there are always jokes at PBT about how much we influence each other. We definitely do! (I think Kristel has already read it...)

>14 LibraryCin:, >15 sushicat: I've read H is for Hawk and The Girls

I'm thinking about reading The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer which was the First Novel winner in 2013 for the Costa. But I haven't had a chance to look at some of the "Best of" lists yet so subject to change.

>19 LibraryCin: >20 Kristelh: Aren't we there for exactly those influences? How could we just ignore all those interesting books everyone talks about. ;-)

Btw - I really liked The Fireman, and Underground Railway is on the wishlist.

>22 sushicat: I hope to get to The Underground Railway sometime and I think I will also get The Fireman as I've heard it's pretty good.

I will be reading from The NPR Best Books of 2016: Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

I checked all my options on overdrive and I need to put a hold on any/all of them. I couldn't tell without looking closer how long the holds lists were, so we'll see what happens. Were they all just published last year? For any of these award challenge books, I might have to make a point of looking for previous years, as they are more likely to be more easily accessible via the library.

I just picked up a copy of Joe Hill's The Fireman in an e-sale, so that will be a perfect fit for January.

Maybe I will tackle one of the books on the "100 best mysteries" list I have been working on. I don't generally read recent releases, partly for the reason voiced by >25 LibraryCin:.

>27 leslie.98: I don't usually read recent releases, either. Those were the titles that jumped out at my as I was looking through the list without realizing they were all recent! Have to be more careful next time, I think!

>27 leslie.98:, >28 LibraryCin:, I don't think a person has to read a recent release. I was thinking of A God In Ruins which was the book from 2015, Also am thinking about the The Lie Tree from 2015 (Costa Book of the year) and it is YA.

We definitely don't have to read a recent book for for the AwardCat. My "Best of" book is from 2012 and my Costa books are going to be from 2009 and 2010.

I thought folks participating in this challenge might like this list of the best fiction of 2016 that was compiled by Kobo, an ebooks retailer based in Canada but with regional retailers all over the world. It's different because it includes "best of" books from all of their regional booksellers, not just English-speaking countries.

Best Fiction of 2016 from Kobo

>31 rosalita: Thanks for that link, Julia. Now I have a couple of books that I am hoping gets translated into English soon!

I find that several of my recent acquisitions are Costa Award winners. Would The hare with amber eyes also fit the Random CAT, I wonder?

>33 MissWatson: Well, there is a search involved so I would think so. I haven't read it yet, it's been a TBR for a couple of years and I'm hoping to get to it later this year. I didn't think of it as something that would work for this CAT but it seems to me it would.

>34 clue: Thanks for the encouragement. I vaguely remember that there was a search involved, so I thought it would be nice to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.

>33 MissWatson: Yes, I'd say so. A quest to collect more netsuke!

I'll join in. I'll probably go for something from the Costa Awards. I'm meant to be reading The Story of Lucy Gault before the end of the year, so if I fail to finish...

I already have The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht (2002, First Novel winner) down for reading in 2017 so will try to get to it in January.

I'm planning on Luna: New Moon by Ian MacDonald which was on IO9 and Gizmodo's Best of 2015 list.

First one completed: The Long and Faraway Gone by Lou Berney, off the 2016 ALA Reading List. An unusual mystery that I enjoyed.

I'm going to join in this year. My January Costa Award selection will be The Gustav Sonata, which is short listed for 2016's best novel.

For the "Best of 2016" lists, I'm going to take a turn from my usual choice and go with The Huffington Post. January's book will be The Past by Tessa Hadley.

After much fussing and searching and sifting, I have decided on these three books for January's AwardCat, the Costa winners from 2004, 2008, and 2012 (election years all):

Small Island, by Andrea Levy: historical fiction examining colonialism, immigration, and racism from afar, in this case 1940s England
The Outcast, by Sadie Jones: historical fiction examining reintegration of service men after an extended war as one cause of domestic violence in 1950s England
Bring Up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel: he, Cromwell, matches wits against English nobility and removes their queen

And these books from an assortment of Best Of lists:

The Siege of Krishnapur, by J. G. Farrell (Modern Library 200 Best Novels in English since 1950)
A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini (ALA Best Books for Young Adults, 2008)
Harvest, by Jim Crace (Kirkus Best of 2013)
Never Go Back, by Lee Child (Kirkus Best of 2013)
Silken Prey, by John Sandford (Kirkus Best of 2013)
A Stranger in Olondria: Being the Complete Memoirs of the Mystic, Jevick of Tyom, by Sofia Samatar (Guardian Best Science Fiction of 2013)
When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi (Guardian Best Books of 2016)

>41 jeanned: All three are great books--enjoy!

I finished A God In Ruins which was great. Here's my review, I really liked this book and hope some day to maybe read it again. I liked the format. It wasn't at all like Life After Life and I think I liked it even better. I liked the back and forth of time and character perspectives.
I think this book along with Life After Life does contribute to the world of literature.
I found it somewhat easy to follow the back and forth of the story until the end which really did have me rewinding. I think I need to read these last chapters and I am going to do that as I have the text in a I-book format.
Characters were such that you loved or hated them and then you would get another piece of information.They were rich! The setting was both modern times, hippy/Acid or post war and WWII. I did not have a book of this, it was audio and e reader format. I enjoyed the reader and his accent. I think he did a great job.
This book, explained by the author at the end, did achieve what she set out to achieve; describing what the absence (death) of people have on our lives. It also shows how man is a god in ruins through the a look at Teddy as younger brother, would be author turned gardener and lover of nature, husband, father and grandfather and the changing world of the 20th century. An apt description, "exploration of one ordinary man's path through extraordinary times". 2015 Costa Award for Novel.

I finished Never Go Back, the book on which the current film adaptation starring Tom Cruise is based. The book was a Kirkus Best for 2013. My favorite thing about these Jack Reacher books by Lee Child is psychology of the main character. He refuses to live in a world other than the one he makes for himself. It is a very different drummer than we typically see in our need/want-driven society, but it makes him quite a lonely character. 3 1/2 stars

I've begun reading my first entry for this CAT, The Fireman by Joe Hill. I find him to be as engaging a writer as his dad (Stephen King) but more focused. I'm enjoying it so far.

>45 jeanned: I was in a conversation the other day about how Reacher should get a cat, and what that would mean for his lifestyle. In one pocket, his atm card and a toothbrush, in the other, cat food, treats, litter box and scratching post. Of course, Reacher's cat would be the rugged outdoor type, so he could do away with the box and post, but he's still carrying around a bag of Meow Mix.

>47 RidgewayGirl: I can see people he's meeting with sniffing, smelling liver or mackerel treats. And it's making me smile. But if ever the cat were the best available option in Reacher's arsenal....

Costa Awards were announced yesterday. I can't find a good link but http://www.foyles.co.uk/news/Costa-Category-Winners-2016
Days Without End Sebastian Barry
Dadland by Keggie Carew
Falling Awake by Alice Oswald
The Bombs that Brought Us Together by Brian Conaghan.

Anyone pick the right one to read?

The first two books I read for my challenge -- Crosstalk by Connie Willis and The Hating Game by Sally Thorne -- are both on NPR's Best Books of 2016 list. I think they definitely deserve to be there, as I enjoyed them both immensely!

I will be reading The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge - 2015 Costa Book of the Year.

Finished Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi which is on many best of lists and on the ToB longlist.

I just finished the first book I plan to read for this challenge: The Fireman by Joe Hill. I thoroughly enjoyed it, as much as one can enjoy a book about a dystopian future where the human race is bursting into flame all over the world. Unexpected side effect: It kind of made me want to get a tattoo.

I read The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer which won the 2013 First Novel Costa Award.

I have completed Solace of the Road by Siobhan Dowd which was nominateed for the 2009 Costa Children's Book of the Year. Such a shame that this author passed away at an early age, there no telling what she might have done.

Penelope Lively's Family Album may be my dud of the year! Costa must have been short of candidates when they shortlisted it.

I finished The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge. It was a good YA adventure-fantasy story, but I don't know if it should have won the 2015 Costa prize.

I was surprised to see how many Costa shortlisted books I have. I plan to read Elizabeth is Missing, the winner of the 2014 first novel award.

I have read News of the World by Paulette Giles. Its on many best books list including Washington Post Best Books of 2016. And no wonder, it's a really fine book and it does my heart good to have a great Western in my hands again.

I finished The Vegetarian by Han Kang, which was on the New York Times List for 2016. I also listened to the Costa short story finalists for 2016: The Boatman, The Persistence of Memory and Dirty Little Fishes. I liked the Persistence of Memory the best of the three. The Costa awards website has all of the previous short story winners & finalists available to read or listen to, so I would like to get through the rest of those since I have a short story category this year. I also plan to start The Accidental by Ali Smith which was the Costa Novel winner in 2005.

I am reading The Girl on the Train which was on the 2015 NPR list.

>60 staci426: I didn't know that the Costa winning short stories were available - I will have to check those out! Thanks for the info.

I finished The Hare with Amber Eyes for the Costa award. It won the 2010 Biography category. Last year I read Thomas Harding's The House by the Lake, which was shortlisted for the 2015 biography category but didn't win that year. The books are broadly similar. Both authors are English grandsons of Jewish women whose families lost homes and possessions to the Nazis. Family history/biography is also a secondary theme in both books. The primary thread in The Hare with Amber Eyes is the history and provenance of the netsuke collection that became a family heirloom, while the primary thread in The House by the Lake is the house and its occupants throughout the 20th century. Although Harding's book didn't win the award, I think it's the better book of the two.

>62 cbl_tn: Interesting comment, as I am reading The hare with amber eyes myself at the moment and find myself a little underwhelmed. I am struggling to finish this.

>63 MissWatson: But I finally managed it.

I just finished The Fireman by Joe Hill which made the NPR list and probably several other lists for 2016. I really liked it. Hadn't read this author before. I tend to avoid horror but this book is light on horror and more toward science fiction in my opinion.

I finished The Unwinding by George Packer, a 2013 National Book Award non fiction winner) today. It seems appropriate that I finished it on this U.S. inauguration day.

All the Costa award books I found that I wanted to read have way too long of hold lists at the library, so I looked for a "best books" list for Canadian books. I found this on a "CBC 100 Novels That Make You Proud to be Canadian" list.

Bone and Bread / Saleema Nawaz
3.5 stars

Beena and Sadhana have an East Indian father and a white mother. They were raised in Montreal, Quebec. Sadhana is two years younger than Beena. Their father died when they were young and their mother when they were teenagers; they are then in the custody of their uncle, who runs the bagel shop (originally owned by their father) downstairs. As they grow up, they each run into teen girl problems (serious ones, not small ones), which I won’t mention, as they aren’t revealed until later in the book (though the blurb does reveal them, as do some tags).

The book is told by Beena in the “present day”, just after Sadhana has died. Sadhana lived alone and was not discovered for a week. Beena has to go clean up the apartment, and brings along her teenage son to help. The book goes back and forth between present day and Beena’s memories of she and her sister growing up.

It started off slow for me, but it did get better. I didn’t always like Beena and the decisions she made, but I could say the same of Sadhana. I don’t have a sister, but it seems that it was likely a good portrayal of sisters. There really was a Canadian flavour to the book, as well, with a look at some of the politics in Quebec.

Hmmmm, did I misunderstand?

I went to add mine to the wiki, and the heading says "Year's Best Lists". In the post at the top, it just says "Best Books List", so I just searched for a "best books list" for Canada, rather than a year-specific list. I guess I should have re-read the description (rather than just the heading) when I switched what I was going to read (I had originally thought I'd read a Costa one).

Oh, well. I guess I'll not post to the wiki after all, but I won't be choosing a different book to read.

>68 LibraryCin:, I think it might be 'any' year best lists.

>68 LibraryCin: Please do add your book to the Wiki as any year works for the Best Books List. I will change the heading so it doesn't seem to just mean 2016.

>68 LibraryCin: I read from a 2015 'best of' list so I am happy to agree with >69 Kristelh:!

Thanks, everyone! I'm just not even sure the list focused on a particular year. It was just a "CBC 100 Novels That Make You Proud to be Canadian", which I took as a "best books" list. I don't think there was any specification to any year for that list.

I would have looked a bit further for another list had I read the description closer!

I finished Hag-Seed, which appeared on the NPR Best of 2016 list. I loved this re-imagining of The Tempest; it's Margaret Atwood at her most brilliant!

I also finished Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil, about the dangers that arise from misunderstanding and misuse of mathematical models and analytics software. This appeared on the NYT 100 Notable Books list.

Finished The Vegetarian by Han Kang, New York Times Best Books of the Year (2016).

I've completed by second Costa Award read, Out of Shadows by Jason Wallace was the 2010 Children's Book winner and was a very good read.

I got in one more: When We Were Animals by Joshua Gaylord, which was on the 2016 ALA Reading List shortlist.

I finished Elizabeth is Missing, winner of the 2014 Costa first novel award. It was excellent. Written from the point of view of a woman in her 80's who I think is suffering from Alzheimer's, it's tells of the mysterious disappearance of the narrator's sister 70 years earlier. It's wound together with the disappearance of one of the woman's current-day friends. As the novel progresses, you can see how the woman's mind deteriorates. It's very sad and frustrating and also compelling and satisfying that the woman is able to solve the mystery (with some help).

I read two books that I think fit the "Best Of Lists" criteria:
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert: Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2016
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell: Arthur C Clarke Award 1998

Enjoyed them both!

>78 bluebird_: Oh, The Sparrow is one of my all-time favorite books. Glad you enjoyed it.

Unfortunately time ran out on me and I didn't get to Beautiful Ruins from the Google List of Best Books of 2012.

Thanks for participating everyone. I am looking forward to moving on to February's AwardCat with Canada Reads and The Tournament of Books.