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For more info on the awards, please visit Critical Mass. They have live blogging and all kinds of good stuff.

Autobiography

• Heart Like Water: Surviving Katrina and Life in Its Disaster Zone by Joshua Clark (Free Press)
• Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat (Knopf)
• The Journals of Joyce Carol Oates, 1973–1982 by Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco)
• Writing in an Age of Silence by Sara Paretsky (Verso)
• Russian Diary: A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption and Death in Putin's Russia by Anna Politkovskaya (Random House)

Nonfiction

• American Transcendentalism by Philip Gura (FSG)
• What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America 1815-1848 by Daniel Walker Howe (Oxford University Press)
• Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet Washington (Doubleday)
• Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA by Tim Weiner (Doubleday)
• The World Without Us by Alan Weisman (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s)

Fiction

• Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra (HarperCollins)
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (Riverhead)
• In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar (Dial)
• The Gravediggers Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates (HarperCollins)
• The Shadow Catcher by Marianne Wiggins (S&S)

Biography

• Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer by Tim Jeal (Yale University Press)
• Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee (Knopf)
• Ralph Ellison by Arnold Rampersad (Knopf)
• The Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932 by John Richardson (Knopf)
• Thomas Hardy by Claire Tomalin (Penguin)

Poetry

• Elegy by Mary Jo Bang (Graywolf)
• Modern Life by Matthea Harvey (Graywolf)
• Sleeping and Waking by Michael O'Brien (Flood)
• The Ballad of Jamie Allan by Tom Pickard (Flood)
• New Poems by Tadeusz Rozewicz (Archipelago)

Criticism

• Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints by Joan Acocella (Pantheon)
• Once Upon a Quniceanera by Julia lvarez (Viking)
• The Terror Dream by Susan Faludi (Metropolitan/Holt)
• Coltrane: The Story of a Sound by Ben Ratliff (FSG)
• The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross (FSG)

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The Last Apprentice: Night of the Soul Stealer by Joseph Delaney

After Revenge of the Witch, I wondered how quickly the premise would get old and these books start to all read the same. Three books in, this hasn't happened yet, and I'm starting to think it won't.

The weather is cooling and it's time for Tom and the Spook to move to his winter house. It promises to be a long, cold winter and Anglezarke is nowhere near as nice as Chippenden. There's no garden-- the witches and boggarts are buried in the basement. The Spook's past is coming back to haunt Tom with dire consequences. It's going to be a bitter winter, and when the Spook is taken out of comission, it's up to Tom to make sure that spring will eventually come.

The dark is gathering forces and it's starting to become obvious that these first few volumes in the series are just the warm-up for what's about to come. I can't wait.

(Reviews of Revenge of the Witch here, Curse of the Bane here)

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So, you know how when you are totally in love with a series and you pre-order the next volume as soon as possible and then just kinda drop everything to read it when it comes through the door? Please tell me I am not the only person like this.

Anyway, here are some books that fall in that category. I read these most of these day they came out. I'm just slow to talk about them.

The Last Apprentice: Curse of the Bane by Joseph Delaney.

Ok, I didn't preorder this. But I totally pre-reserved it at the library. If anything, this book is scarier, creepier, and grosser than the first one. And possibly even better.

Thomas Ward and the Spook are off to Priestown (which, as you can imagine, is a town full of Priests, and they're never fans of Spooks). The Bane is an evil thing that crushes its victims flat and is starting to control the minds of the people living near its prison, in the catacombs underneath the church. Thomas and the Spook need to finish it once and for all, but the Spook has tried, and failed before.

Oh, and they're going to be hanged for being Spooks. All in a days work!

Regarding the Bathrooms: A Privy to the Pastby Kate Klise

Ok, once again, something I pre-reserved. I only have so much bookshelf space people!

The kid's in Sam N's class are back. It's summer, and they've all found jobs. Marriages are on the rocks, international crime rings seemingly have ties to Geyser Creek and deep secrets of the past are uncovered. Probably the best book in this series since the first one.

The Sisters Grimm: Once Upon a Crime by Michael Buckley

When we last saw Sabrina, Daphne, Puck & Co., Puck's wings had been torn off and he was dying. SO! The family makes its way to New York City, the heart of the Faerie Kingdom so Puck can get well...

It turns out that Veronica Grimm (before she went missing) was a hero here. Sabrina is NOT HAPPY to find this out. She is angrier than ever. Then, King Oberon is found poisoned and an innocent Faerie is blamed. Sabrina wants out of the game, and Grandma Grimm lets her quit, but now Daphne won't talk to her...

This is one of my favorites in the series. The change of locale and new cast of characters keeps the scenario from getting repetitive and old. Also, it's not often that you see the cast of A Midsummer Night's Dream making fractured appearances in children's literature. Where it's funnier if you're familiar with the play, it still works for people who haven't read or seen it (and I think most of the target audience falls into this category).

I also love the introduction of the Godfathers. More Mafia than turning pumpkins into coaches, they're brilliant. As is Bluebeard as a Wall Street financier. Once again, all jokes that younger readers aren't going to fully understand, but it's not only for adults.

The changing and evolving relationship between Sabrina and Daphne is one of the best, and most subtle, parts of this series, and this is a good volume (if less subtle) in that regard.

And yes, I've already pre-ordered Magic and Other Misdemeanors
Clarice Bean, Don't Look Now by Lauren Child

This hasn't even been published in the US yet, but Amazon will obtain a UK copy for you.

Clarice has some bigger worries in this latest installment (and more pages in which to explore them! yippee!) It's still zany and fun and silly and everything you love about Clarice, but also deeper and older. Betty moves away and everyone's cranky and she's so worried and anxious about everything that she's not sleeping anymore, which isn't helping with school. There's a new girl, Clem, and everyone seems to love her, but Clarice doesn't trust her at all.

There's still a lot of Ruby, a lot more of Marcie (as she's back from France) and less of Minal Cricket. A must read for Clarice fans.

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