By Alison

The Governor General Literary Award nominations were announced yesterday morning at the Nicholas Hoare bookstore on Front Street. The joint was packed to the gills with media and publishing types, sucking back java and nibbling at fruit trays as Russell Smith announced the English-language shortlist. Torontoist was pleased to see that retribution was in store for Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road, previously (and, the general consensus is, egregiously) overlooked on the Giller shortlist. Most of the nominated authors were not in attendance, however, as the shortlist was top secret until Monday morning – we even saw a couple of excitable Thomas Allen reps race outside with their cellphones, presumably to make ecstatic calls to their authors. But either Russell Smith talks too fast, or people were too distracted by the danishes to pay attention to him, because not three minutes after the shortlist was announced everyone was clamouring for those bookmarks that list all the nominees. Doesn’t anyone in this town take notes anymore? Click here for the full list of nominees.