Toronto Book Awards finalists

It seems impossible that three book prize lists were released yesterday, but they were. I posted the Man Booker shortlist and the Giller Prize longlist when they became available, but I just didn't have the energy to wrangle through the Toronto Book Awards too. I'm going to have to get used to this pace, though, since we're barreling head first into book awards season and that means many lists to come.

Anyway, the Toronto Book Awards. These city-specific awards “honour authors of books of literary or artistic merit that are evocative of Toronto.” It's one of the few inter-genre awards (non-fiction doesn't competes with fiction very often), and it's got a nice twist, and both of those attributes help to keep it fresh. So, here the finalists are:

• James FitzGerald, What Disturbs Our Blood (Random House Canada) – non-fiction
• James King, Étienne’s Alphabet (Cormorant Books)
• Rabindranath Maharaj, The Amazing Absorbing Boy (Knopf Canada)
• Nicholas Ruddock, The Parabolist (Doubleday Canada)
• Alissa York, Fauna (Random House Canada)

It's a short list, and each of the authors on it will receive $1,000. The winner – to be announced on Oct. 13 – receives an additional $9,000.

here has been a lot of discussion about the value of libraries and reading in Toronto over the last few months, so I'm glad to see the book awards haven't been cancelled.