Yesterday, the winners of the RUSA Adult Books and Media Awards were announced live in a virtual ceremony. I will post the links to the winners here with comments on each. Where I have quoted the award committee, I have added quotation marks and a link to the press release.
Overall, these are the books that our colleagues, library workers from all over the country, think are worth your time. These are crowdsourced and consensus titles. You can use these lists to help readers with confidence. Also, all winners come with a short "sound bite" annotation at the least, readalikes at the most.
Use these lists to check your collections, make displays, and offer suggestions.Think about including these titles or lists in your curbside RA work too. [Click here for my popular post on that topic.] Also click here for backlist access to every award. They have not added the 2021 winners to this site yet, but they will soon.
The Andrew Carnegie Medals for Fiction and Nonfiction: The most prestigious of the adult awards went to Deacon King Kong by James McBride and Fathoms: The World in the Whale by Rebecca Giggs. At this link you can access the winners, short list, and long list. There is also a link for information on how to promote the winners. This is a great "best" list resource for last year's titles and the full 10 year backlist. Click here to access it all.
The Reading List: "an annual best-of list comprised of eight different fiction genres for adult readers. A shortlist of honor titles, up to 4 per genre was also announced." I love this list. It gives a winner in each genre, and 3 readalikes for that title, and honorable mention titles. This is the very best resource to help genre readers. I use this list to keep myself up to speed on the genres too. If you are looking to brush up on a specific genre yourself, this is the first place you should turn. Read one of the winners or honorable mention titles. On the horror front, for the first time ever, I think they got it right with the 5 titles. I have read and reviewed all 5 and they are solid choices for a general, public library audience. Click here to access the current winners and here for the backlist.
The Listen List: "Adhering to established criteria, these benchmarks of excellence are available for purchase by libraries. Committee members matched the twelve titles on the list with three listen-alikes each which match in some way the tone, theme or style of the title on the list. None of these titles have appeared on any previous Listen Lists. Titles are named to the list because the narration creates a new experience with an outstanding performance in terms of voice, accents, pitch, tone, inflection, rhythm and pace, offering listeners something they could not create by their own visual reading. This juried list, designed for both avid listeners and those new to the pleasures of stories read aloud, includes fiction and nonfiction and features voices that enthrall, delight, and inspire." The Listen List is a great "start with" list for those looking for a good audio book, but it is with the readalikes that this list shines. The RA work put into this list is tremendous and you should take advantage of it. Click here to access the current winners and here for the backlist.
Notable Books: "The Notable Books Council, first established in 1944, has announced the 2020 selections of the Notable Books List, an annual best-of list composed of twenty-five titles written for adult readers and published in the US including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry." This list does not have readalikes but it should be used as a core collection resource. You need to own all of these titles. Click here to access the current winners and here for the backlist.
The other awards are less useful to you, the library worker helping leisure readers, on a day to day basis, but you can access the winners here. Also backlist access to every award and winner is always available here.
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