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A new book prize has joined the lists, the Medici Book Club Prize, which will go to a “distinguished work of fiction that has inspired thoughtful conversation and contributed to a deeper undestanding of the human experience.” A $5,000 dollar prize goes with the award.

The first winner is Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin, also the winner of the 2009 National Book Award, Amazon’s 2009 Book of the Year,  and listed on RUSA’s Notable Books list for 2010. It’s the tale of several New Yorkers who view Philippe Petit’s famous tightrope walk between the two buildings of the World Trade Center in 1974 and the city that they live in.

Do we need another literary prize? I don’t know, but I like the idea of a prize devoted to  books that have served book groups well.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 28th, 2010 at 12:01 am and is filed under Fiction, Good Books for Book Clubs, In the News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.