I just missed one of my favorite Big Apple book events: The New York City Book Awards. They are hosted by the New York Society Library, a well-stocked subscription library where my husband Don, a retired English professor, and I are members—and where, for years, Don has run reading groups that tackle the classics with gusto.

I’ve enjoyed previous awards evenings at the NYSL, a venerable institution which has the distinction of being not just the oldest library but the oldest cultural institution in New York City. I had to forego the festivities this year, because the Science, Industry and Business Library, like the New York Book City Awards itself, marked its 20-year anniversary and thus the first week in May found me otherwise engaged. From all reports, the 2016 NYC Book Awards was a warm and celebratory gathering of readers much like the one that had so charmed me four years ago.

As its name suggests, the New York City Book Awards recognizes books that evoke the spirit or enhance the appreciation of New York City and that range across genres—biography, fiction, history, memoir, policy analysis, pictorial compendia.

Full disclosure here—I’ve not yet read these books. But I trust the judgment of the NYC Books Awards jury and want to highlight their selections. When I saw the list of winners, the first to catch my eye (perhaps because of my current Hamilton fixation?) was Prince of Darkness: the Untold Story of Jeremiah G. Hamilton, a biography of Wall’s Street’s first African American financier.

Next, One Righteous Man: Samuel Battle and the Shattering of the Color Line in New York jumped out at me. Then I realized why. Two years ago, the New York City Book Award nod went to Black Gotham by Carla Peterson, whom I was delighted to meet up with again at the 2015 Awards fête. After Dr. Peterson shared with me her decade-long experience researching this history at The New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Black Culture and as a Fellow at NYPL's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, I nominated her for the Research Advisory Committee where she now serves. Just the kind of connection that I love!

The third winning title, City on a Grid: How New York Became New York resonated with me after a week of assuring our West coast visitors that they'd never get lost if they pictured New York on a grid. For a minute I wondered if this was the book catalog from the marvelous 2012 exhibition, The Greatest Grid, at the Museum of the City of New York. (It’s not.) Instead, the author has produced a narrative with a cast of colorful characters and lively anecdotes. Funnily enough, another 2015 winner Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861-2008, is the book catalog of a show at Hartford Connecticut's Wadsworth Antheneum Museum of Art.

The NYSL Awards jury extended special recognition to two authors for their cumulative body of work. My sports page–skimming friends, hearing that Boys of Summer author Rogell Angell was honored, were sorry to have missed meeting the celebrated sports writer. So too were fans of Vivian Gornick, the other lifetime achievement awardee. Both Angell and Gornick published memoirs in 2015 with eerily parallel titles: This Old Man: All in Pieces and The Odd Woman and the City: A Memoir.

Of special interest to me as an NYPL research library director was the winner of the Hornblower Award, an outstanding work that is a first book: Reading Publics: New York City’s Public Libraries, 1754-1911.

Author Tom Glynn (Rutgers University) has told a “vivid story” that chronicles roughly 150 years of public and private reading trends right up to the year that the iconic New York Public Library flagship building at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street opened. In a recent online interview I see that Glynn reminds readers to support the NYPL’s research libraries—surely an authorial stance with which I cannot argue.

The New York Society Library will display the book winners through the end of May. I’m delighted to report that multiple copies of all of the 2015 New York City Award winning titles mentioned in this post are available for borrowing at the New York Public Library which, I should add, hosts its own book award events. The Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism will be presented on May 19 to one of five finalists, including two who will be talking about their book projects at NYPL on May 9 and May 16. Come meet them if you have a chance or just stay tuned for the Bernstein Award announcement.