This is my first Sunday Salon and I’m joining via the Facebook page. Sunday Salon is hosted by Debra Hamel. Enjoy my week in books.

Book Honors:

The Honorable Derek Walcott’s White Egrets won the TS Eliot Prize for Poetry. Walcott is the first Caribbean to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. White Egrets has also been nominated for the Warwick Prize for Writing and a NAACP Image Award. Terrance Hayes’ Lighthead won the 2010 National Book Award for Poetry and has been announced as a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle (NBCC). The finalists for NBCC were announced on January 22nd and other notables include Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration in the non-fiction category.

Karen Lord has been named the winner of the 2011 William L. Crawford Award for her first novel Redemption in Indigo (Small Beer Press). The award is for a new fantasy writer whose first book appeared in the previous year. Also shortlisted for this award was N.K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (Orbit). Both of these books had been chosen in Amazon’s Top 10 of 2010 in the Science Fiction & Fantasy category.

On Thursday, Duke Libraries announced that Paula J. Giddings was the inaugural winner of the John Hope Franklin Book Award for her critically acclaimed biography of anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells (“Ida: A Sword Among Lions”). Giddings will receive the award at ‘Atelier@Duke’, a series of panel discussions focusing on the theme “The Idea of Archive: Producing and Performing Race.” The panel discussions, which are free and open to the public, will take place Feb. 25-26 in Perkins Library’s Gothic Reading Room at Duke University. For more information, and to register, visit library.duke.edu/atelier.

2011 Carolina Summer Reading Program

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University are collaborating in a joint initiative for the 2011 Summer Reading Program. A joint book selection committee comprised of faculty, staff, and students will select a book that incoming students at both institutions will read this summer. The finalists are:

The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Loosing My Cool: How a Father’s Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture by Thomas Chatterton Williams
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work by Michael B. Crawford

Author Events Attended:

Last Sunday, I attended a discussion of the book Thomas Day: Master Craftsman and Free Man of Color by one of the authors, Jo Ramsay Leimenstoll, at the Durham County public library. I was planning on attending an exhibit of Day’s works at the NC Museum of History located in Raleigh, but Raleigh is hosting the NHL All-Star game this weekend and I’m avoiding that part of town like the plague. Therefore, I plan to attend the exhibit next week and then will create a spotlight post of the book, the author event, and the exhibit.

Book News:

Transitions: Samuel F. Yette, influential newsman, first black Washington correspondent for Newsweek (Washington Post)
Article: A tender spot in master-slave relations – Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez (Washington Post)
Book Review: “Harlem Is Nowhere”: Travels in a City of Dreams (Salon.com)
Book Review: Revisiting The Renaissance In ‘Harlem Is Nowhere’ (NPR)
Book Review: Young Writer Searches for Harlem in ‘Harlem is Nowhere’ (NY Times)
Excerpt: Harlem is Nowhere (NY Times)
Book Review: Akata Witch reviewed by Nisi Shawl (Ms. Magazine via author’s blog)
Book Review: What Africa Brought to the Table – ‘High on the Hog’ by Jessica B. Harris (NY Times)

Books Currently Reading:

Seeing by José Saramago
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

Books Completed This Week:

Bookmarks: Reading in Black and White by K.F.C. Holloway
When Washington Was In Vogue by Edward Christopher Williams
Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson
Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow

Upcoming Reads:

A Connecticut in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain
Harlem is Nowhere by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts

Weekly Reviews and Posts:

Meme: Booking Through Thursday (Heaviest Book Read)
Born on this Day: Gloria Naylor (January 25, 1950)
Post: Deja Vu (Re-usable Cover Art)
Meme: Mailbox Monday
Event: Bloggiesta – Final Wrap Up
Review: Zora and Me by Victoria Bond and T.R. Simon
Review: Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler
Born on this Day: Derek Walcott (January 23, 1930)

Books Purchased:

I purchased twenty-eight books this week through Amazon.com or Nice Price Used Books in Durham.

1. Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
2. Changless by Gail Carringer
3. Souless by Gail Carringer
4. The Vintage Book of African American Poetry by Michael S. Harper & Anthony Walton
5. The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics 1934-1960 by Lawrence P. Jackson
6. High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America by Jessica B. Harris
7. Washington’s U Street: A Biography by Blair A. Ruble
8. Forest Gate by Peter Akinti
9. The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna
10. The Heart Does Not Bend by Makeda Silvera
11. Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority by Tom Burrell
12. Beneath the Lion’s Gaze by Maaza Mengiste
13. American Uprising: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave Revolt by Daniel Rasmussen
14. The Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and Flavors of Africa by Marcus Samuelsson
15. Bloodfever by Karen Marie Moning
16. Seeds of Change edited by John Joseph Adams
17. Game Change by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin
18. Holding Company: Poems by Major Jackson
19. Children of the Waters by Carleen Brice
20. Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi
21. White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi
22. Losing My Cool: How a Father’s Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture by Thomas Chatterton Williams
23. The Word: Black Writers Talk about the Transformative Power of Reading and Writing edited by Marita Golden
24. When and Where I Enter by Paula Giddings
25. Harlem is Nowhere by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts
26. Shadow Walker: A Neteru Academy Novel by L.A. Banks
27. The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro
28. Allen Dulles: Master of Spies by James Srodes

Kindle Purchases:

1. Tides From the New Worlds by Tobias Buckell
2. Her Daughter in Darkness by Michael Boatman
3. The Red Wake by Michael Boatman

Upcoming Twitter Reading Events:

Jan 31, Feb 2, Feb 4: Author Carleen Brice (“Orange Mint and Honey”) will be guest host for African American authors week at hashtag #Litchat starting at 4 pm

Feb 5: Read Native Son by Richard Wright for Twitter chat at hashtag #RLTReads – Sponsor: RLTReads

Feb 6: British author Aminatta Forna of Memory of Love will host a special #blacklitchat at 7pm EST

Giveways:

Tayari Jones’ publisher is giving away three copies of her upcoming novel Silver Sparrow. The deadline for the giveaway is February 1st.