Bookbits for 23 March 2016

Awards! The Kitchies (‘for speculative and fantastic fiction’) have been announced, and Margaret Atwood won the coveted red tentacle award this year, for The Heart Goes Last. See the full list of winners here. The Bookseller’s YA Book Prize was won this year by Louise O’Neill, for Only Ever Yours. Proving once again that ABC customers are more discerning than most, since she was picked several times for your Favorite Reads of 2015!

If you’re up for reading a prolonged and increasingly inventive birthday celebration twitter exchange, read the Kitschies Invisible Tentacle shortlisted ‘Daniel Barker’s Birthday’. It features clowns, stunted mutants, MANY BIRTHDAY SONGS and war candles. Unmissable, in my opinion. X-D

Awards II! The Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title was won by Too Naked For The Nazis by Alan Stafford. Congratulations, good sir, and may you long enjoy your prize bottle of passable claret. Finally, the National Book Critics Circle Awards were handed out in various categories: The Sellout by Paul Beatty (Fiction), Dreamland: The True Story of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones (General Nonfiction), Negroland by Margo Jefferson (Autobiography), Romantic Outlaws by Charlotte Gordon (Biography), The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (Criticism), and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay (Poetry).

This bookvending machine will sell you a random book for $2. They claim to have 12 million titles on offer, so if you have $24million (and change) to spare, you can try to complete the set.

‘Our’ Corinne Duyvis wrote an Author’s Opinion on the Guardian‘s website titled ‘Fiction, like life, tells disabled people their lives have less value’. A thoughtful piece on how marginalized people are depicted in fiction. Come meet Corinne on April 16th at ABC Amsterdam, where she will talk about and sign her new book On the Edge of Gone! Or, if you have tickets to Dutch Comic Con this weekend, come meet her at the ABC stand there. 🙂

Lists! 20+ Of the Most Creative Bookshelves Ever (personal favorites are #3 and #11). 10 Books About the Dangers of the Web. 14 Brilliant Women Poets To Read On World Poetry Day (well, any day of the year really).

A fun piece about author pseudonyms. Apparently Elena Ferrante is a pseudonym (I learn something new every day :-)), and literary detectives are still on the hunt for the actual human behind the name – 24 years and counting!