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The Oscars aren't the only thing creating buzz in LA this week. Here are the 2011 Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalists. It's an eclectic mix of excellent books. Congratulations to all the finalists, and good luck on April 20th when they announce the winners!
Biography
Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned by John A. Farrell (Doubleday)
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable (Viking)
Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie (Random House)
Reading My Father: A Memoir by Alexandra Styron (Scribner)
My Long Trip Home by Mark Whitaker (Simon & Schuster)
Current Interest
Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything by David Bellos (Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
El Narc Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency by Ioan Grillo (Bloomsbury Press)
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Pakistan: A Hard Country by Anatol Lieven (PublicAffairs)
The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science and Fear by Seth Mnookin (Simon & Schuster)
Fiction
Ghost Light by Joseph O'Connor (Frances Coady Book/Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje (Knopf)
The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka (Knopf)
Binocular Vision: New & Selected Stories by Edith Pearlman (Lookout Books/University of North Carolina Wilmington)
Luminarium by Alex Shakar (SoHo Press)
The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach (Little, Brown)
Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson (Ecco/HarperCollins)
Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner (Coffee House Press)
Shards by Ismet Prcic (Grove Press, Black Cat)
The Arriviste by James Wallenstein (Milkweed Editions)
Graphic Novel
I Will Bite You! And Other Stories by Joseph Lambert (Secret Acres)
Celluloid by Dave McKean (Fantagraphics)
Finder: Voice by Carla Speed McNeil (Dark Horse)
Congress of the Animals by Jim Woodring (Fantagraphics)
Garden by Yuichi Yokoyama (PictureBox)
History
The Anatomy of a Moment: Thirty-Five Minutes in History and Imagination by Javier Cercas (Bloomsbury Press)
1861: The Civil War Awakening by Adam Goodheart (Knopf)
To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 by Adam Hochschild (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Molotov's Magic Lantern: A Journey in Russian History by Rachel Polonsky (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America by Richard White (W.W. Norton)
Mystery-Thriller
Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson (Reagan Arthur Books/Hachette Book Group)
Plugged by Eoin Colfer (Overlook Press)
11/22/63 by Stephen King (Scribner)
Snowdrops: A Novel by A.D. Miller (Doubleday)
The End of Wasp Season by Denise Mina (Reagan Arthur Books/Hachette Book Group)
Poetry
Songs of Unreason by Jim Harrison (Copper Canyon Press)
Discipline by Dawn Lundy Martin (Nightboat Books)
The Public Gardens by Linda Norton (Pressed Wafer)
Double Shadow: Poems by Carl Phillips (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Devotions by Bruce Smith (University of Chicago Press)
Science & Technology
A Hole at the Bottom of the Sea: The Race to Kill the BP Oil Gusher by Joel Achenbach (Simon & Schuster)
The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick (Pantheon)
Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men by Mara Hvistendahl (PublicAffairs)
Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius by Sylvia Nasar (Simon & Schuster)
Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution by Holly Tucker (W.W. Norton)
Young Adult Literature
Beauty Queens by Libba Bray (Scholastic Press)
The Big Crunch by Pete Hautman (Scholastic Press)
A Monster Calls: Inspired by an idea from Siobhan Dowd by Patrick Ness (Candlewick Press)
Life: An Exploded Diagram by Mal Peet (Candlewick Press)
The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater (Scholastic Press)
