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Awards, News & Book Clubs

The 2024 Compton Crook Award finalists are named. Locus reports.

Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman win the 2024 Edward E. Smith Memorial Award for Imaginative Fiction.

The late James Hosek wins the 2024 Kevin O’Donnell Jr. Service to SFWA Award.

Author Khaled Hosseini weighs in on US book bans, at The Guardian.

Publishers Weekly reports from Winter Institute 2024.

Reviews

NYT reviews What Have We Here?: Portraits of a Life by Billy Dee Williams (Knopf): “At 86, he still enjoys the ride, but hasn’t forgotten to savor the magic. This book is an invitation to join him”; The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor by Hamilton Nolan (Hachette; LJ starred review): “As The Hammer shows, the kind of solidarity that might naturally arise from shared frustrations on the conveyor belt doesn’t necessarily translate to the broader movement all on its own”; The Blueprint by Rae Giana Rashad (Harper): “What occupies the book’s primary real estate is Black girlhood and its constrictions in the past, present and future of these disunited states, the broken promise of it”; and Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories by Amitav Ghosh (Farrar): “By refusing to treat opium (or the planet, or nutmeg) as inert matter, Ghosh is resisting the mechanistic mind-set, dating from the violence of colonial conquest, which reduces our complex world to resources for human use.”

Washington Post reviews Literary Theory for Robots: How Computers Learned To Write by Dennis Yi Tenen (Norton): “While Tenen’s book helps us understand how we got here, it doesn’t take stock of where ‘here’ is and whether it’s where we want to be”; and Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk’s Twitter by Zoë Schiffer (Portfolio): “What matters is money, and Musk has been allowed to acquire enough of it that he appears to be able to do whatever he likes.”

Datebook reviews The Book of Love by Kelly Link (Random): “The Book of Love, Link’s hotly anticipated first novel, delivers plenty of that trademark dream logic while also making full use of the longer form to simmer characters, relationships and setting to the point of profound tenderness.”

Star Tribune reviews End of Story by A.J. Finn (Morrow): “It could be dangerous to name-drop Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Raymond Chandler and others…. Finn, however, knows what he's doing.”

Briefly Noted

Kelly Link discusses her new novel, The Book of Love (Random), with Esquire.

LA Times has an interview with Amitav Ghosh about his new book, Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories (Farrar). 

Billy Dee Williams talks about his new memoir, What Have We Here?: Portraits of a Life (Knopf), with USA Today. Washington Post also has an interview with Williams about the “unexpected literary figure who inspired his memoir, why he shunned blaxploitation films and how he dealt with irate Star Wars fans.” People also has a feature.

Ed Zwick discusses his new memoir, Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood (Gallery), with LA Times. 

NPR talks with Julie Schwartz Gottman and John Gottman about their new book, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection (Harmony).

Io9 has a sneak preview of the forthcoming trilogy from Nnedi Okorafor.

Nine librarians, booksellers and authors select their favorite love stories at AARP.

LitHub highlights 23 new books for the week. 

B&N shares “Story Collections From Black Women Writers.”

CrimeReads has “6 Books That Elevate the Serial Killer Thriller.”

ElectricLit shares “8 New Dystopian Novels that Explore Hope in the Climate Crisis,” 9 romantic dark academia books, and 7 books about sex, love, and intimacy.

Authors on Air

Kelly Link discusses her new novel, The Book of Love (Random), with B&N’s Poured Over podcast. 

The 2023 Governor General’s Literary Award winners explore identity in a new series, IDEAS. CBC has the announcement. 

Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything is being adapted as an animated TV series. Deadline has the story. 

BBC’s In History series shares a 2003 interview with Toni Morrison. 

Sarah Gelman, editorial director at Amazon Books, appears on CBS Mornings today.

Ray Isle, The World in a Wineglass: The Insider’s Guide to Artisanal, Sustainable, Extraordinary Wines To Drink Now (Scribner), will be on CBS Mornings tomorrow.

Niro Feliciano, This Book Won’t Make You Happy: Eight Keys to Finding True Contentment (Broadleaf), will be on Today tomorrow.

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