National Book Critics Circle

Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses (Alfred A. Knopf), the El Paso novelist's coming-of-age tale about a Texas ranch hand and his bitter adventure in Mexico, and Carol Brightman's Writing Dangerously (Clarkson N. Potter), a spirited biography of the late writer Mary McCarthy, have won the 1993 National Book Critics Circle Awards for fiction and biography respectively, the NBCC board of directors has announced. The group made its selections at its annual awards meeting, held on Friday.

A study of poet Walt Whitman's life and Richard Ford's story of a former sportswriter contending with family travails and American values were nominated yesterday for 1995 National Book Critics Circle awards. The books were among 25 titles nominated in five categories by the organization's board of directors, after a mail vote by 500 book editors, critics and reviewers. Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography (Knopf) by David S. Reynolds looks at the poet's life and work in the context of his times.

Two novels by British authors - Jim Crace's well-received Being Dead (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and Zadie Smith's highly acclaimed White Teeth (Random House) - stood out among the fiction nominations announced yesterday by the National Book Critics Circle, an organization of more than 500 book reviewers, critics and scholars around the country. Only one American novel - Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (Random House), a tale of two cousins in the comic-book industry of the 1940s - was nominated in fiction.

The board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle, meeting here yesterday, announced its awards for the best American books of 1985. They were: General Nonfiction: J. Anthony Lukas, Common Ground (Knopf). Fiction: Anne Tyler, The Accidental Tourist (Alfred A. Knopf). Poetry: Louise Gluck, The Triumph of Achilles (The Ecco Press). Criticism: William H. Gass, Habits of the Heart (Simon & Schuster). Biography: Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life. (Harper & Row)

Jonathan Franzen's novel The Corrections (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), already the winner of this season's National Book Award for fiction, and W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz (Random House), the last novel by the acclaimed German novelist who was killed in a car crash in December, are among 25 books in five categories nominated for this year's National Book Critics Circle prizes, the organization announced here yesterday. The other nominees in fiction are Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro (Knopf)

Paul Hendrickson and Susan Stewart, professors at the University of Pennsylvania, were among the winners of this year's National Book Critics Circle awards, announced in New York on Thursday. The fiction award went to Edward P. Jones, author of The Known World, the tale of an educated black slaveowner set 20 years before the Civil War. Jones said it took him 10 years to finish the novel, a delay that embarassed him so much he couldn't bear to tell his agent he'd finally completed it. Hendrickson, a Penn writing professor since 1998, won in the general nonfiction category for Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and Its Legacy, a history of racial intolerance.

Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography (Cambridge), a highly praised life of the Nobel Prize-winning author by University of Pennsylvania English professor Peter Conn, is among the 25 books nominated by the National Book Critics Circle as the best books of 1996. The NBCC also bestowed its Ivan Sandrof Award for lifetime achievement in arts and letters on the novelist and critic Albert Murray. The organization of more than 500 book critics, editors and freelance reviewers nominated titles in five categories at a meeting in New York Saturday.

Two works by Philadelphia authors were among those nominated yesterday by the National Book Critics Circle as finalists for awards as the best books of 1985. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World by Elaine Scarry, an associate professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, was nominated in the category of general nonfiction. It was published by Oxford University Press. Pierrots on the Stage of Desire: Nineteenth-Century French Literary Artists and the Comic Pantomime by Robert Storey, an associate professor of English at Temple University, was nominated in the criticism category.

Kate Vaiden by Reynolds Price was named the best novel of 1986 yesterday by the National Book Critics Circle, an organization of 500 book critics and editors, which announced the winners of its annual book awards at the Hotel Algonquin. Price's 14th work of fiction, Kate Vaiden (Atheneum) is the recounting by an ailing, middle-aged country woman of an early life filled with tragedy and loss - of her parents when she was 15, her lover when she was 16, the son she abandoned when she was 17 - and how she reclaimed herself from bitterness.

So few book reviews, so many books. No, it hasn't started appearing on T-shirts yet, but wait. For the last half year, thanks in part to vigorous noisemaking by the National Book Critics Circle and its energetic president, Swarthmore grad John Freeman, the publishing world has done almost as much talking about the "book review crisis" as it has about the rectangular objects it sells. So far in September, no fewer than five panels in New York, at venues from Columbia Journalism School to Scandinavia House, have been devoted to some version of the "The Vanishing Book Review.

You'd think that literature itself had died, the way the literati reacted to Monday's news that the Pulitzer Prize board had withheld its award for fiction for the first time in 35 years. Were there no good novels this year, or where there too many to choose from? Was this a message to the publishing world? A statement about the state of American letters? The 18-member board said it simply failed to reach a majority vote on a winner, rebuffing the year's three finalists - Denis Johnson ( Train Dreams )

The King's Speech claimed the crown for best film at the Producers Guild of America Awards on Saturday, knocking off Golden Globes best-drama winner and presumed Oscar front-runner The Social Network . It also beat out 127 Hours , Black Swan , Inception , The Fighter , The Kids Are All Right , The Town , Toy Story 3 , and True Grit . The PGA Awards were hosted by filmmaker Judd Apatow at the...

So few book reviews, so many books. No, it hasn't started appearing on T-shirts yet, but wait. For the last half year, thanks in part to vigorous noisemaking by the National Book Critics Circle and its energetic president, Swarthmore grad John Freeman, the publishing world has done almost as much talking about the "book review crisis" as it has about the rectangular objects it sells. So far in September, no fewer than five panels in New York, at venues from Columbia Journalism School to Scandinavia House, have been devoted to some version of the "The Vanishing Book Review.

Sorry, Thomas Pynchon (wherever you are). Maybe next time, National Book Award-winner Richard Powers. The National Book Critics Circle, the nationwide organization of more than 500 book critics, editors and reviewers, announced finalists in six categories for its 2006 book awards this past weekend, and neither highly honored novelist made the cut. Among the fiction nominees are the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for Half of...

Like an AWOL-ing stone, singer Bob Dylan didn't make it to the National Book Critics Circle awards here last night to see if his Chronicles, Vol. I had won the organization's prize for biography/autobiography. No matter. It didn't. "De Kooning liked to say that nothing is certain about art except that it is a word," said Mark Stevens, coauthor with Annalyn Swann of the book that did win, De Kooning: An American Master (Knopf). In the end, the modernist master known for his "thick, succulent swirls of paint," in the phrase of one NBCC critic, had bested the troubadour of the '60s and three other finalists.

Paul Hendrickson and Susan Stewart, professors at the University of Pennsylvania, were among the winners of this year's National Book Critics Circle awards, announced in New York on Thursday. The fiction award went to Edward P. Jones, author of The Known World, the tale of an educated black slaveowner set 20 years before the Civil War. Jones said it took him 10 years to finish the novel, a delay that embarassed him so much he couldn't bear to tell his agent he'd finally completed it. Hendrickson, a Penn writing professor since 1998, won in the general nonfiction category for Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and Its Legacy, a history of racial intolerance.

Jonathan Franzen's novel The Corrections (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), already the winner of this season's National Book Award for fiction, and W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz (Random House), the last novel by the acclaimed German novelist who was killed in a car crash in December, are among 25 books in five categories nominated for this year's National Book Critics Circle prizes, the organization announced here yesterday. The other nominees in fiction are Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro (Knopf)

Two novels by British authors - Jim Crace's well-received Being Dead (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and Zadie Smith's highly acclaimed White Teeth (Random House) - stood out among the fiction nominations announced yesterday by the National Book Critics Circle, an organization of more than 500 book reviewers, critics and scholars around the country. Only one American novel - Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (Random House), a tale of two cousins in the comic-book industry of the 1940s - was nominated in fiction.

Jamaica Kincaid isn't one for small talk. She'd rather not talk about her life. Just about her most recent book, My Brother (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $19). After all, her books basically are about her life. Even when other lives are discerned through that life. My Brother is ostensibly the story of Devon Drew, her 13-year-younger brother, whom she hadn't seen in years when she learned he had HIV, the AIDS virus. Her early memories of her brother are few. She remembers red ants nearly killing him the day after he was born.

Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography (Cambridge), a highly praised life of the Nobel Prize-winning author by University of Pennsylvania English professor Peter Conn, is among the 25 books nominated by the National Book Critics Circle as the best books of 1996. The NBCC also bestowed its Ivan Sandrof Award for lifetime achievement in arts and letters on the novelist and critic Albert Murray. The organization of more than 500 book critics, editors and freelance reviewers nominated titles in five categories at a meeting in New York Saturday.