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From Hawthorne to Twain to White to Roth: if American fiction and personal essays “are at times nearly impossible to distinguish,” it’s “because they share a common ancestor.” (Thanks, NYRB.)

This morning the National Book Foundation (NBF) announced the finalists for the 2010 National Book Awards. Novelist Pat Conroy made the official announcement at the Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home in Savannah, Georgia.

Many were surprised to see Jonathan Franzen‘s critically acclaimed novel Freedom did not make the cut.  In a pleasant fiction surprise, Karen Tei Yamashita‘s I Hotel earned a nomination for  indie publisher, Coffee House Press.

The LA Times broke the news this morning. We’ve updated our original post with the NBF’s official list. Follow this link for more details.

Fiction
Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America (Alfred A. Knopf)
Jaimy Gordon, Lord of Misrule (McPherson & Co.)
Nicole Krauss, Great House (W.W. Norton & Co.)
Lionel Shriver, So Much for That (Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)
Karen Tei Yamashita, I Hotel (Coffee House Press)

Nonfiction
Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group)
John W. Dower, Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9-11, Iraq (W.W. Norton & Co.)
Patti Smith, Just Kids (Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)
Megan K. Stack, Every Man in This Village Is a Liar: An Education in War (Doubleday)
Justin Spring, Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

continued…

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