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Awards & News

PEN America’s new report out today, Banned In The USA: Narrating the Crisis, documents nearly 4,000 accounts of book banning in the first half of the current school year, outpacing the entire previous year. NYT has coverage.

Major publishers have joined Penguin Random House in supporting a suit challenging Iowa’s book ban, WSJ reports. Publishers Perspectives also has coverage.

Finalists are announced for the Gotham Book Prize.

Finalists for the Nova Scotia Book Awards and the Atlantic Book Awards are announced. Quill & Quire has details.

Several authors turn down PEN America awards and nominations, citing “unhappiness with the literary and free expression organization’s stance on the war in Gaza,” PBS Canvas reports.

Rizzoli International has acquired Chelsea Green Publishing, Publishers Lunch reports. Publishers Weekly also has details. 

Bloomsbury joins Hachette UK Distribution. The Bookseller has coverage. 

“International screenwriters issue a joint statement on AI,” Publishing Perspectives reports. 

Reviews

NYT reviews The Spoiled Heart by Sunjeev Sahota (Viking): “There is an easeful precision to Sahota’s prose reminiscent of Kamila Shamsie and Jhumpa Lahiri, a painful irony that evokes Percival Everett, and a grand human downfall alongside a battle of ideas that is Ibsenesque”; Negative Space by Gillian Linden (Norton): “Negative Space beautifully executes a good amount of what feels imperative; acutely, assuredly, it mirrors a particular world back to us. That might sound easy, but it isn’t”; Crooked Seeds by Karen Jennings (Hogarth): “Initially, this plot and its aftermath seem to be the center of the novel, but Jennings cleverly uses it as a device to reveal the dysfunction of a family and of a nation”; and The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes (Riverhead): “Wit and humor percolate, like a simmering pot, throughout the scenes. On the sentence level, rhythm and cadence propel Hughes’s effortless prose.” Plus, there are short reviews of three memoirs written by daughters about their mothers: Did I Ever Tell You?: A Memoir by Genevieve Kingston (S. & S./MarySue Rucci), The Manicurist’s Daughter by Susan Lieu (Celadon), and Where Rivers Part: A Story of My Mother’s Life by Kao Kalia Yang (Atria). 

Washington Post reviews Everest, Inc.: The Renegades and Rogues Who Built an Industry at the Top of the World by Will Cockrell (Gallery): “Is all of this Everest access a good thing? As the author of a book about the guides and the guiding industry that brought this change, Cockrell doesn’t have much choice in answering; for him it’s a hard yes”; Mice 1961 by Stacey Levine (VerseChorus): “Cracking open the novel, you may at first feel like a stranger in a strange land. But stick with it, because this is a rich and surprising country of curious hilarity, skewed lighting, awkward pratfalls and ludicrous conversations”; and The Stone Home by Crystal Hana Kim (Morrow; LJ starred review): “Haunting and elegiac, The Stone Home is fearless in its clear-eyed recounting. It asks readers to consider our own secret histories, to allow hard truths to be heard and, in so doing, to never let such barbarity happen again.”

The Guardian reviews Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie (Random): “Rushdie’s triumph is not to be other: despite his terrible injuries and the threat he still lives under, he remains incorrigibly himself, as passionate as ever about art and free speech as ‘the essence of our humanity.’”

Briefly Noted

Caleb Carr reflects on life and his new book, My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-Wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me by (Little, Brown), with LA Times.

Annell López talks about her new collection, I’ll Give You a Reason: Stories (The Feminist Press at CUNY), with HipLatina. 

David Baldacci writes about how his school integration experience partly inspired his latest book, A Calamity of Souls (Grand Central), at People.

Caoilinn Hughes speaks about her new book, The Alternatives (Riverhead), and writing about climate change, at ElectricLit.

NPR’s Book of the Day shares five takeaways from Salman Rushdie’s new book, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder (Random). 

LitHub highlights 22 new books for the week. 

Harper’s Bazaar suggests “The Best Books of 2024.”

Parade shares 13 books for Passover. 

BookRiot shares books about reading. 

CBC previews Canadian books for spring.

A forthcoming book from Emily St. James and Lauren Theisen will explore the film It’s A Wonderful Life. AV Club has the story. 

Washington Post reports on the growing popularity of silent book clubs.

NPR reflects on the enduring fascination with Patricia Highsmith’s most famous character, Tom Ripley.

Authors on Air

Author Robin Cook has two new film/TV projects, including an adaptation of his forthcoming Bellevue (Putnam) and a procedural featuring his iconic characters Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery. Deadline reports. 

World champion slam poet Emi Mahmoud delivers a message on the ongoing civil war in Sudan, at BBC. 

Sue Varma, Practical Optimism: The Art, Science, and Practice of Exceptional Well-Being (Avery), visits Today.

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