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Awards and Buzzy Books

Memorial Drive: A Daughter's Memoir by Natasha Trethewey (Ecco: Harper; LJ starred review), The Prettiest Star by Carter Sickels (Hub City Press), and I Am Every Good Thing by Derrick Barnes, illustrated by Gordon C. James (Nancy Paulsen Books: Penguin), are the 2021 Southern Book Prize winners.

Finalists for the Baltimore Science Fiction Society's 2021 Compton Crook Award are out. Locus has details.

The Writers' Trust of Canada introduced the Balsillie Prize for Public Policy, a "$60,000 award that recognizes the best Canadian book about public policy," according to the CBC. The first winner will be announced this fall.

Publishers Weekly picks "The Most Anticipated Books of Spring 2021."

Lit Hub recommends "15 new books to hunker down with."

BuzzFeed picks 10 new books for the week.

Bustle also chooses its favorites out this week.

AutoStraddle suggests "8 Books Featuring Big Queer Families, Found and Otherwise."

While patrons wait for the top hold of the week, A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas (Bloomsbury: Macmillan), Library Reads and LJ have read-alike suggestions. 

Barbara Hoffert has new Prepub Alert columns in LJ. 

Reviews

The NYT reviews Consent: A Memoir by Vanessa Springora and translated by Natasha Lehrer (HarperVia): "'Consent' is a Molotov cocktail, flung at the face of the French establishment, a work of dazzling, highly controlled fury." Also, Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound by Daphne A. Brooks (Belknap: Harvard): "Her book is at its most generative when it’s doing this — inviting voices to talk to one another, seeing what different perspectives can offer, opening up new ways of looking and listening by tracing lineages and calling for more space."

Entertainment Weekly reviews A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas (Bloomsbury: Macmillan), which earns an A: "It's a viciously vibrant epic, determined to remind us why forgiveness is the bravest act of all."

The Washington Post reviews Vibrate Higher: A Rap Story by Talib Kweli (MCD: Macmillan): "The push-pull between commercial hip-hop, with its frequent emphasis on empty materialism, and Kweli’s message-driven, occasionally preachy and invariably less popular conscious rap is one of the main preoccupations at the heart of the swift, sturdy 'Vibrate Higher.'"

NPR reviews The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey (Tor: Macmillan): "Cooked right, science fiction and murder mysteries taste great together, and Gailey layers those ingredients together with a chef's kiss."

The L.A. Times reviews True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee by Abraham Riesman (Crown: random House): "...a well-researched, engrossing and compulsively readable book. It’s also brutal."

Briefly Noted

Tor.com has an excerpt from Chain of Iron by Cassandra Clare (Margaret K. McElderry: S. & S.). It's due out March 2.

The Seventy-Five Pages, a previously unpublished book by Marcel Proust, will be published in France next month by Gallimard. The Guardian has details.

Entertainment Weekly has a preview of the forthcoming comic series ExtraOrdinary by V.E. Schwab, which is set in the period between her novels Vicious and Vengeful. 

Mark Greaney, Relentless (Berkley: Penguin), tells Amazon what goes into a good thriller and shares a few favorites.

The NYT speaks with Kliph Nesteroff about We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans & Comedy (S. & S.).

People talks with Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey, former costars on The Office, who will publish Office BFFs: Tales of The Office from Two Best Friends Who Were There (Dey Street: HarperCollins) next year. Also, an interview with Jason June, author of the new picture book Porcupine Cupid (Margaret K. McElderry: S. & S.) and the forthcoming YA novel Jay's Gay Agenda (HarperTeen). Plus, news of the cookbook Feeding the Soul (Because It's My Business) (William Morrow) from vegan food and TikTok star Tabitha Brown. 

"Looking at a high-rise building is like walking in a forest," says Wayne Thom in an L.A. Times interview with him and Emily Bills, author of Wayne Thom: Photographing the Late Modern (Monacelli: Penguin). 

The Shelf Awareness "Reading with…" column features Paul Vidich, The Mercenary (Pegasus: S. & S.).

The L.A. Times profiles Tracy Clark-Flory, Want Me: A Sex Writer's Journey into the Heart of Desire (Penguin).

Esquire has a profile of Patricia Lockwood, No One Is Talking About This (Riverhead: Penguin), that includes several photos with her cats. She also does a Q&A with with Shondaland, and an interview at Vanity Fair.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. talks about The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song (Penguin) with O: The Oprah Magazine.

"I also believe at least some of that non-writing time is productive," says Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown (Pantheon: Random House), in a chat for the PBS NewsHour/NYT book club.

The BookPage "Behind the Book" column features Hope Adams, Dangerous Women (Berkley: Penguin).

Elle interviews Melissa Broder, Milk Fed (Scriber: S. & S.).

"Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk'," according to a report from the BBC.

Reminder: In the event of fire, Yale's Beinecke Library is not designed to kill humans in order to save the rare books. Lit Hub explains the myth.

The Authors Guild sent a letter to the new administration calling for, among other things, the creation of a new Federal Writers Project.

Authors on Air

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Andrew Sean Greer and screenwriter David Gilbert will adapt The Man Who Ate Too Much by John Birdsall, the recent biography on James Beard. The Hollywood Reporter has details.

A series based on the novella Voluntary Committal by Joe Hill is in the works. Deadline reports.

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon discusses The Daughters of Kobani: A Story of Rebellion, Courage, and Justice by (Penguin; LJ starred review) on NPR's All Things Considered.

Poet Ross Gay talks about Be Holding (Univ. of Pittsburgh) on the Tin House podcast Between the Covers.

NPR's Fresh Air interviews Rosa Brooks, Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City (Penguin).

The Today Show features How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates (Knopf: Random House).

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