The winners of the National Book Awards for 2009 have just been announced. The winners are:

Fiction: Wolf Hall: A Novel by Hilary Mantel
General Nonfiction: The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
Biography: Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey
Autobiography: Somewhere Towards the End: A Memoir by Diana Athill
Poetry: Versed by Rae Armantrout
Criticism: Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays Eula Biss

I own the fiction and the general nonfiction winners; guess it's about time I read them! And the Athill sounds particularly fascinating to me. It is a memoir of old age -- which is creeping up on me faster every year. (I'm not old yet: I'm 53. But I can see it on the horizon.)

Many of the links above are to paperback versions of these books, and for others paperbacks are due out relatively soon.