Bookpulse

LitHub releases its Ultimate Summer 2023 Reading List. Canada’s International Cundill History Prize names its 2023 jury. A Utah school district has banned the Bible from primary schools. Filmmaker Noah Baumbach will publish a memoir with Knopf. Actress Elizabeth Banks is starting a wine-drinking book club. Interviews arrive with Lisa See, Ocean Vuong, Keith Ellison, David Von Drehle, Robert Waldinger, Alan Philps, Barbara Kingsolver, and Amelia Possanza. Plus, Robert Thorogood will adapt his novel The Marlow Murder Club for PBS Masterpiece.

Cross Down by James Patterson and Brendan DuBois leads holds this week. Other buzzy books include: Unfortunately Yours by Tessa Bailey, Same Time Next Summer by Annabel Monaghan, The Paris Daughter by Kristin Harmel, and Pageboy by Elliot Page. AudioFile announces the June 2023 Earphones Award Winners. The 2022 Aurealis Awards winners are announced, along with the 37th Annual Asimov’s Readers’ Award winners. Seven LibraryReads and 10 Indie Next picks publish this week. People’s book of the week is Good Night, Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea. The June Costco Connection features Lady Tan’s Circle of Women by Lisa See and The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand. Plus, a poem written by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón will travel to a moon of Jupiter.  

A new national NPR/Ipsos poll reveals that 52% of Republicans are opposed to banning books from schools, whereas book bans are supported by 5% of Democrats, 16% of Independents, and 35% of Republicans. Paige Cowan-Hall has won the Women’s Prize Trust 2023 Discoveries Prize for her yet-to-be-published historical fiction novel Marooned. The Society of Authors announced this year’s Authors’ Awards shortlists across 11 categories. Donna Tartt’s agent has debunked the rumor that she is releasing a new novel in June 2023.

USA Today’s June Book Club pick is T.J. Newman’s Drowning: The Rescue of Flight 1421. The July Indie Next List is out; the top pick is The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel. Crime Writers’ Association appoints Vaseem Khan as its first non-white chair. The 2023 Premios Kelvin finalists are announced. Jasmine Sealy’s The Island of Forgetting wins the Amazon First Novel Award, honoring the best debut Canadian novel. The Royal Society of Literature has released a shortlist for the 2023 Encore Award, celebrating outstanding achievements in second novels. Plus new title best sellers.

June book club picks are out, including the top hold title of the week, The Celebrants by Steven Rowley (Read with Jenna), Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs (GMA), and Good Night, Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea (B&N). More summer booklists arrive, along with interviews with Megan Abbott, Amelia Possanza, Dr. Ian K. Smith, Emerson Whitney, Camille T. Dungy, James Comey, and Brandon Taylor.

Steven Rowley’s The Celebrants leads holds this week. Other titles in demand include new books by Martha Wells, Jo Nesbo, Megan Abbott, and T.J. Newman. The James Tait Black Prize shortlist is announced. ALA’s Freedom to Read Foundation joins publishers and bookstores in a lawsuit over Arkansas SB 81. Three LibraryReads and seven Indie Next picks publish this week. Summer reading previews arrive, including People’s must-read picks for summer. NYT explores the staying power of Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. Plus, The Guardian has a guide for “where to start with Kazuo Ishiguro.”

The 2023 Ignyte Awards finalists are announced. Starting their runs at the top of best seller lists are Only the Dead by Jack Carr, Yellowface by R.F. Kuang, King: A Life by Jonathan Eig, and The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings To Amass Power and Undermine the Republic by Stephen Vladeck. There are author interviews with Gene Luen Yang, Luis Alberto Urrea, Laura Tillman, and Suzannah Lessard.

Georgi Gospodinov wins the International Booker Prize for Time Shelter. Haruki Murakami wins Spain’s Princess of Asturias Award. Amanda Gorman’s poem “The Hill We Climb” has been banned from a Florida K–8 school. LibraryReads and LJ offer read-alikes for Identity by Nora Roberts. Knopf will publish Gabriel García Márquez’s final novel, Until August, in 2024. Plus, summer booklists arrive. 

Biographers International Organization receives $1 million gift from famed biographer Kitty Kelley. Ryan Manucha wins the 2022 Donner Prize for Booze, Cigarettes, and Constitutional Dust-Ups. Mazin Lateef Ali Wins IPA’s Prix Voltaire. The TikTok Book Awards launch in the U.K. and Ireland. Mahmud El Sayed wins 2023 Future Worlds Prize for Fantasy. Andy Serkis narrates a new unabridged audiobook of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. A new Folio Society edition of Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy arrives in time for Towel Day on Thursday. The Color Purple gets a trailer, and Japanese Breakfast posts a casting call. Plus, PW has full coverage from this week’s U.S. Book Show.