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Award & Buzzy Book News

The National Book Critics Circle Award Finalists are announced.

Colm Tóibín is named the 2022–2024 Laureate for Irish Fiction by the Arts Council of Ireland. 

Celeste Ng is coming out with a new novel, Our Missing Hearts, in October, according to Entertainment Weekly. Lit Hub gives a take on this news.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s library is currently up for auction, according to The Guardian. 

Page to Screen

January 21:

The King’s Daughter, based on the book The Moon and the Sun by Vonda N. McIntyre. Gravitas Ventures. Reviews | Trailer

Redeeming Love, based on the book by Francine Rivers. Universal Pictures. No reviews | Trailer

The Tiger Rising, based on the book by Kate DiCamillo. The Avenue. No reviews | Trailer

Munich—The Edge of War, based on the book by Robert Harris. Netflix. Reviews | Trailer

January 22:

Brazen, based on the book Brazen Virtue by Nora Roberts. Netflix. Reviews | Trailer

January 24:

Snowpiercer, based on the graphic novel La Transperceneige by Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand, and Jean-Marc Rochette. TNT. Reviews | Trailer

January 25:

Birds Like Us, based on the poem The Conference of the Birds by Attar of Nishapur. Lionsgate. No reviews | Trailer

January 26:

Compartment No. 6, based on the book by Rosa Likson. Sony Pictures Classics. Reviews | Trailer

Resident Alien, based on the comic book by Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse. Syfy. Reviews | Trailer

January 27:

Gomorrah, based on the book by Roberto Saviano. HBO Max. Reviews | Trailer

Reviews

NYT reviews The Fifties: An Underground History by James R. Gaines (S. & S.): “‘The Fifties’ is an excellent starting point for understanding how we got to where we are, and what we risk returning to if we don’t rediscover the faith these men and women had in America’s enduring potential to remake itself in the image of justice.” Also, Lost in the Valley of Death by Harley Rustad (Harper): “By patient accumulation of anecdote and detail, Rustad evolves Shetler’s story into something much more human, and humanly tragic, into a layered inquisition and a reportorial force that pushes Shetler beyond his white-lib entitlement into a technicolor mystery.”

The Washington Post reviews You Don't Know Us Negros and Other Essays by Zora Neale Hurston, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Genevieve West (Amistad): “‘You Don’t Know Us Negroes’ reveals Hurston at the top of her game as an essayist, cultural critic, anthropologist and beat reporter. The volume includes 51 essays that cover an extensive swath of history, through the glories of the Harlem Renaissance into the early days of the civil rights movement; they record an American landscape in transition.” Plus, Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History by Lea Ypi (Norton): “‘Free’ is the most probing memoir yet produced of the undefined ‘transition’ period after European communism. But it is more profoundly a primer on how to live when old verities turn to dust. Ypi has written a brilliant personal history of disorientation, of what happens when the guardrails of everyday life—a family’s past, the signposts of success, the markers of a normal future—suddenly fall away.” Also, Garbo by Robert Gottlieb (Farrar; LJ starred review): “His ‘Garbo,’ like his previous biographies of actress Sarah Bernhardt and choreographer George Balanchine, is invested in the complicated mixture of temperament, talent, nonconformity and outsize public expectations that is responsible for making the famed famous. But Gottlieb does not privilege potential, or realized, infamy over an artist’s contributions to culture.” And, a few more reviews posted today.

NPR reviews Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World by Peter S. Goodman (Custom House: HarperCollins): “Davos Man isn’t likely to change the minds of the most hardcore defenders of our current economic system, but there’s not much that will, and it doesn’t seem like that’s Goodman's goal, anyway—his book is intended for lay readers who might not be familiar with just how huge the wealth gap has grown, and continues to grow. It’s a powerful, fiery book, and it could well be an essential one.”

Locus Magazine reviews The Cabinet by Un-Su Kim (Angry Robot): “Regarding structure and theme, The Cabinet is reminiscent of Yan Ge’s Strange Beasts of China, which I reviewed in August. They are both wildly imaginative mosaic novels centered on the taxonomy of a unique and marginalized group of individuals. In chronicling beasts and symptomers, Yan Ge and Un-Su Kim not only question our understanding of what’s normal, but they also shine a light on humanity’s reflexive knack for shunning and exploiting those we consider to be “other.” Where The Cabinet differs from Strange Beasts of China is that the novel presents a stark and powerful portrait of loneliness.”

Tor.com reviews Present Tense Machine by Gunnhild Øyehaug, trans. by Kari Dickson (FSG): “Gunnhild Øyehaug’s Present Tense Machine, translated by Kari Dickson, is a novel about parallel universes. In that way, it’s like a host of other novels—some long and others short, some intimate in their scope and others focusing on the largest possible canvas. What makes Øyehaug’s novel stand out is the relative modesty of its scale, along with a tone that’s at once playful and philosophical.”

Electric Lit reviews I Came All This Way To Meet You by Jami Attenberg (Ecco; LJ starred review): “Attenberg has written a guidebook, in more than one sense, for the resurgence of the genre. I Came All This Way to Meet You instructs us on writing about navigating our own, particular worlds through the lens of our own experiences. If travel writing is to persist, writers must turn their gaze equally inward, and outward.”

Datebook reviews The Loop: How Technology Is Creating a World Without Choices and How To Fight Back by Jacob Ward (Hachette): “Ward’s titular ‘loop’ presages a future that is a bait and switch: a pleasure dome of frictionless ease and convenience yet creatively impoverished with bigotry and tribalism more ingrained than ever.”

Book Marks selects “The Best Reviewed Books of the Week.”

Briefly Noted

Chloe Gong speaks to People about her newest novel, Foul Lady Fortune (Margaret K. McElderry: S. & S.), as a spin-off to These Violent Delights (Margaret K. McElderry: S. & S.) to come out in September. Also, an interview with Jessi Klein about her second collection of essays, I’ll Show Myself Out (Harper), to be published in April. Plus, a feature on William Barr’s memoir, One Damn Thing After Another (Harper), and what it will reveal about “the legacies of Presidents Bush and Trump.”

Ella Baxter talks “suburban kink parties and scorched-earth novels” like her newest book, New Animal (Ingram), with Shelby Hinte for Bomb Magazine. 

Bernardine Evaristo, Manifesto: On Never Giving Up (Grove Press), discusses her memoir as “a manual for creativity, activism, and reinvention” with The Seattle Times. 

Silvia Moreno-Garcia chats with CBC about her “genre-bending novels” like her latest, Velvet Was the Night (Del Rey: Ballantine; LJ starred review).

Popsugar interviews Lindsey Vonn about her relationship with anxiety and her book Rise (Dey Street).

NYT speaks to Michael Schur, How to Be Perfect (S. & S.), about moral philosophy and what it takes to be a good person.

The Washington Post discusses the creative process with Gillian Flynn, Carmen Maria Machacho, and other authors.

AV Club profiles “four new futuristic sci-fi novels” including: Anthem by Noah Hawley (Grand Central), The High House by Jessie Greengrass (Scribner), How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu (Morrow; LJ starred review), and The Unfamiliar Garden by Benjamin Percy (Mariner).

CrimeReads has “12 Thrillers Set In Paradise” and “5 Paranormal Cozies to Help You Escape Everyday Reality.”

The Atlantic lists “15 Books You Won’t Regret Re-reading.”

Lit Hub gives “5 Books You May Have Missed in December.”

Bustle provides “9 Must-Read New Books Out This Week.”

The Millions lists “Writers to Watch: Spring 2022.”

Oprah Daily shares “The 28 Most Anticipated Romance Novels of 2022, Curated by Experts.”

Electric Lit gives “22 Great New Books to Read in 2022” and “7 Books About Medieval Protofeminism for the Modern Feminist.” 

NYT provides “New in Paperback” featuring The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song by Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Penguin) and others. Plus “11 New Books We Recommend This Week.”Also, The Shortlist reviews three “novels of heartache”: The Four Humors by Mina Seçkin (Catapult), Bright Burning Things by Lisa Harding (HarperVia; LJ starred review), and Defenestrate by Renée Branum (Bloomsbury). Plus, another shortlist of crime and mystery books such as Targeted by Stephen Hunter (Atria), Real Easy by Marie Rutkoski (Holt & Co.), The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections by Eva Jurczyk (Poisoned Pen: Sourcebooks), and Survivor's Guilt by Robyn Gigl (Kensington).

Authors on Air

NPR’s Morning Edition interviews Carl Erik Fisher, author of The Urge: Our History of Addiction (Penguin), who believes that “calling addiction a disease is misleading.”

Stan Parish’s book Love and Theft (Anchor) will be adapted by Will Packer Productions for Universal, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

There is more news on Anthony Veasna So’s Afterparties (Ecco) TV adaptation. Deadline has details.

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