National Book Critics Circle finalists

This type of thing doesn't happen very often here at Continuum, so forgive my excitement. But it's *awesome* to have Jonathan Coe's Like a Fiery Elephant as a finalist in the Biography category for these awards. If you haven't read it yet (and, looking at our hardcover sales figures, none of you have) then wait a few more weeks for the paperback: it has one of the best cover designs I've ever seen.

Here's the whole list of finalists. Memoir would seem to be the Group of Death, in footballing terminology. And I'm rooting for Simon Armitage in Poetry: he's a great, great writer.

Fiction
Europe Central by William T. Vollmann
The March by EL Doctorow
Veronica by Mary Gaitskill
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Small Island by Andrea Levy

General Nonfiction
Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich
The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East by Robert Fisk
Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild by Ellen Meloy
Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees by Caroline Moorehead
Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War by Anthony Shadid

Memoir
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk
Them by Francine du Plessix Gray
Fat Girl by Judith Moore
Two Lives by Vikram Seth

Biography
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Mark Twain: A Life by Ron Powers
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
Lee Miller: A Life by Carolyn Burke
Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson by Jonathan Coe

Criticism
Still Looking: Essays on American Art by John Updike
Unnatural Wonders by Arthur C. Danto
Gather at the River: Notes From the Post-Millennial South by Hal Crowther
The Undiscovered Country: Poetry in the Age of Tin by William Logan
What Happened Here: Bush Chronicles by Eliot Weinberger

Poetry
The Incentive of the Maggot by Ron Slate
Crush by Richard Siken
The Shout by Simon Armitage
Bent to Earth by Manuel Blas de Luna
Refusing Heaven by Jack Gilbert