ABA Indies Choice Book Award Winners

The American Booksellers Association has announced the winners of the inaugural Indies Choice Book Awards. Formerly the Book Sense Book of the Year Awards, the new Indies Choice Book Awards reflect the spirit of independent bookstores nationwide through new categories and a broader range of winners and honor books.

The 2009 Indies Choice Book Award winners, chosen by the owners and staff at ABA member bookstores during more than four weeks of voting, are:

• Best Indie Buzz Book (Fiction): The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (The Dial Press)
  
  
• Best Conversation Starter (Nonfiction): The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell (Riverhead)
  
  
• Best Author Discovery: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski (Ecco)
  
  
• Best Indie Young Adult Buzz Book (Fiction): The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins)
  
  
• Best New Picture Book: Bats at the Library, by Brian Lies (Houghton Mifflin)
  
  
• Most Engaging Author: Sherman Alexie

"On behalf of independent booksellers across the country, we're proud to announce the first Indies Choice Book Award winners," said ABA CEO Avin Mark Domnitz. "Each perfectly represents the array of unique and thought-provoking titles championed by ABA members. We look forward to saluting the winning authors and illustrators at a very festive Celebration of Bookselling Luncheon at BEA."

Five Indies Choice Book Awards honor recipients were also named in each category:

Best Indie Buzz Book (Fiction) Honor Books

• City of Thieves, by David Benioff (Viking)
• The Given Day, by Dennis Lehane (Morrow)
• Netherland, by Joseph O'Neill (Pantheon)
• People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks (Viking)
• Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri (Knopf)

Best Conversation Starter (Nonfiction) Honor Books

• American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon, by Steven Rinella (Spiegel & Grau)
• The Forever War, by Dexter Filkins (Knopf)
• Hurry Down Sunshine: A Memoir, by Michael Greenberg (Other Press)
• A Voyage Long and Strange: On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America, by Tony Horwitz (Holt)
• What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami (Knopf)

Best Author Discovery (Debut) Honor Books

• Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith (Grand Central)
• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson (Knopf)
• Mudbound, by Hillary Jordan (Algonquin)
• The Story of Forgetting, by Stefan Merrill Block (Random House)
• White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga (Free Press)

Best Indie Young Adult Buzz Honor Book (Fiction)

• Graceling, by Kristin Cashore (HMH)
• Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic)
• Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow (Tor)
• My Most Excellent Year, by Steve Kluger (Dial)
• Savvy, by Ingrid Law (Dial)

Best New Picture Book Honor Books

• Louise, the Adventures of a Chicken, by Kate DiCamillo; illustrated by Harry Bliss (HarperCollins)
• Monkey and Me, by Emily Gravett (Simon & Schuster)
• The Pout Pout Fish, by Deborah Diesen; illustrated by Dan Hanna (FSG)
• Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes, by Mem Fox; illustrated by Helen Oxenbury (Harcourt)
• Wave, by Suzi Lee (Chronicle)

Most Engaging Author Honor Recipients

• Michael Chabon
• Ann Patchett
• Jon Scieszka
• David Sedaris
• Terry Tempest Williams

Winners and honor books are all titles appearing on the 2008 Indie Next Lists, which launched last July, and on the Book Sense Picks Lists from the first half of the year. Most Engaging Author honorees are being recognized for being engaging at in-store appearances, as well as for having a strong sense of the importance of independent booksellers to their communities at large.

I'm happy to note that several of the authors selected for Most Engaging Author honor have appeared in Portland recently thanks to the efforts of Literary Arts -- and having heard many of them myself I can assure you they are well deserving of such an honor.

How many of these books have you read? Do you agree with the selections? Come on down and talk to us about them. We love to talk about all things books!