Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
Now that the nominations are winding down, I feel as if I can breathe a public sigh of relief that a book I loathed but dreaded might be suggested didn't get nominated. Early this year, I read, that is, abandoned, The Library Book by Susan Orleans, which heads my list of worst of the year. Shallow, smug, elitist and self-involved, Orleans made a dog's breakfast of a subject I thought was a slam-dunk for me, the fire that destroyed the Los Angeles Public Library. While the book was surprisingly (to me) popular, my short, negative review at Goodreads got a ton of likes, so it's not just me. But it's a book about books, and I was apprehensive.
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Ha. If I'd remembered it, I would have considered nominating it. It was a title I'd thought of when the categories were being discussed way back when, but then I forgot it. I did like Orlean's book about Rin-Tin-Tin, but that might be because I love dogs and grew up watching the TV show. So lucky for you my memory failed me.
Among the books I considered are these.
Unbuttoning America: A Biography of Peyton Place by Ardis Cameron. I really wanted to nominate this, but in some countries only the audiobook is available, and even where the ebook is available, it's expensive, so I reluctantly passed on it.
Spoiler:
Published in 1956, Peyton Place became a bestseller and a literary phenomenon. A lurid and gripping story of murder, incest, female desire, and social injustice, it was consumed as avidly by readers as it was condemned by critics and the clergy. Its author, Grace Metalious, a housewife who grew up in poverty in a New Hampshire mill town and had aspired to be a writer from childhood, loosely based the novel’s setting, characters, and incidents on real-life places, people, and events. The novel sold more than 30 million copies in hardcover and paperback, and it was adapted into a hit Hollywood film in 1957 and a popular television series that aired from 1964 to 1969. More than half a century later, the term “Peyton Place” is still in circulation as a code for a community harboring sordid secrets.
In Unbuttoning America, Ardis Cameron mines extensive interviews, fan letters, and archival materials including contemporary cartoons and cover images from film posters and foreign editions to tell how the story of a patricide in a small New England village circulated over time and became a cultural phenomenon. She argues that Peyton Place, with its frank discussions of poverty, sexuality, class and ethnic discrimination, and small-town hypocrisy, was more than a tawdry potboiler. Metalious’s depiction of how her three central female characters come to terms with their identity as women and sexual beings anticipated second-wave feminism. More broadly, Cameron asserts, the novel was also part of a larger postwar struggle over belonging and recognition. Fictionalizing contemporary realities, Metalious pushed to the surface the hidden talk and secret rebellions of a generation no longer willing to ignore the disparities and domestic constraints of Cold War America.
The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Iturbe. I was shocked that this one isn't available everywhere, but it isn't.
When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II by Molly Guptill Manning. This was my first choice, but, again, geographical restrictions killed it.
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. While there were no availability problems with this one, I didn't think of it till the other day and figured there are enough nominations already.