Here’s a complete list of the finalists for the 2009 Delete Key Awards, which recognize authors who don’t use their delete keys enough. Click on this link to read passages that earned these books a place on shortlist, posted on Feb. 26 in ten separate posts. More comments on these awards appear at www.twitter.com/janiceharayda.
1. Why We Suck: A Feel Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid (Viking), by Denis Leary.
2. Death Benefits: How Losing a Parent Can Change an Adult’s Life — For the Better (Basic Books), by Jeanne Safer.
3. The Underneath (Atheneum, ages 8 and up), by Kathi Appelt with drawings by David Small
4. Wolf Totem (Penguin), by Jiang Rong, translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt:
5. Change of Heart (Simon & Schuster/Atria), by Jodi Picoult.
6. Leisureville: Adventures in America’s Retirement Utopias (Atlantic Monthly Press), by Andrew Blechman.
7. Read All About It! (HarperCollins, ages 4–6), a picture book by Laura Bush and Jenna Bush, illustrated by Denise Brunkus.
8. The Host (Little, Brown) by Stephenie Meyer.
9. Bright Shiny Morning (Harper), by James Frey.
10. Audition: A Memoir (Knopf), by Barbara Walters.
Randy Pausch has posthumously received the first Delete Key Awards Lifetime Achievement Award for The Last Lecture (Hyperion), in part for his unabashed acknowledgment of his love of football cliches. As long as there was still time left on the clock, he kept the drive alive.
The winners of the 2009 Delete Key Awards will be announced March 16 on the One-Minute Book Reviews blog.
Thanks for visiting One-Minute Book Reviews, a site for people who like to read but dislike hype and review inflation.
(c) 2009 Janice Harayda.
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