Guardian First Book Award Longlist Announced

The longlist for the Guardian First Book Award 2009 was announced last Friday, August 31st. The longlisted books are:

• The Secret Lives of Buildings, by Edward Hollis, coming from Henry Holt in North America (non-fiction)
• Direct Red, by Gabriel Weston, Bond Street Books (non-fiction)
• The Strangest Man, by Graham Farmelo, Basic Books (non-fiction)
• A Swamp Full of Dollars, by Michael Peel, IB Tauris (non-fiction)
• The Rehearsal, by Eleanor Catton, Granta in the UK, coming from Little Brown Spring 2010 (novel)
• The Wilderness, by Samantha Harvey, Nan A. Talese Books (novel)
• The Girl With Glass Feet, by Ali Shaw, coming January 2010 in North America from Henry Holt (novel)
• The Selected Works of TS Spivet, by Reif Larsen, Hamish Hamilton/Penguin (novel)
• An Elegy for Easterly, by Petina Gappah, Faber (short story)
• The Missing, by Sian Hughes, Salt (poetry)

The lucky winner receives a £10,000 prize. Previous winners of the Guardian First Book Award have included Zadie Smith and Jonathan Safran Foer.

The five shortlisted books will be announced in November and the overall winner will be announced in December.

It's such an interesting list, and I'm thrilled to be representing three of the books on it- The Secret Lives of Buildings, The Rehearsal, and The Girl With the Glass Feet. I've also had a copy of 'The Selected Works of TS Spivet' sitting on my coffee table since July that I've been meaning to get to.

This announcement can't have come at a better time- I'm heading off on holiday next week and desperately needed some help shortening the list of books I wanted to bring with me. I always find packing my books much harder than packing my clothes, as my typical vacation reading 'longlist' looks more like the IMPAC Dublin Longlist (much, much, longer than the one above)...