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Awards News & Looking Ahead

Lit Hub writes that the Booker Prize has named its trophy “Iris”; The Bookseller has more on this news. Also, a shortlist is revealed for Dinesh Allirajah Prize. Joanna Briggs has won the inaugural Bridport Prize for her memoir The Scientist Who Wasn’t There. 

“The OverDrive library ebook app is shutting down on May 1,” as reported by The Verge. 

“Missouri Slams DEI Programs for Promoting White Guilt,” according to The Root. 

Jenna Bush Hager picks Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling (Atria) for her April Book Club.

NYT recommends “11 New Books Coming in April” and 9 new books for the week.

Popsugar provides “45 Swoon-Worthy Romance Novels Hitting Bookshelves in 2023” and “38 Mystery-Thriller Novels You Need to Get Your Hands On, Including the Latest ‘You’ Book.”

LibraryReads has the “top ten books published this month that library staff across the country love” for April.

Lit Hub lists “20 new paperbacks hitting shelves this April.”

Page to Screen

March 31:

Black Clover: Sword of the Wizard King, based on the “Black Clover” manga series by Yuki Tabata. Netflix. No reviews | Trailer

The Power, based on the book by Naomi Alderman. Prime Video. Reviews | Trailer

April 2:

My Home Hero, based on the manga series by Naoki Yamakawa. Crunchyroll. No reviews | Trailer

April 3:

Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear, based on the light novel series by Kumanano. Crunchyroll. No reviews | Trailer

April 4:

Skip and Loafer, based on the manga series by Misaki Takamatsu. Crunchyroll. No reviews | Trailer

April 5:

The Crossover, based on the book by Kwame Alexander. Disney+. No reviews | Trailer

The Good Mothers, based on the book by Alex Perry. Hulu. No reviews | Trailer

Journey to the Center of the Earth, based on the book by Jules Verne. Disney+. No reviews | Trailer

April 6:

The Ancient Magus' Bride, based on the manga series by Kore Yamazaki. Crunchyroll. No reviews | Trailer

The Legendary Hero Is Dead, based on the manga series by Subaruichi. Crunchyroll. No reviews | Trailer

Yuri Is My Job!, based on the manga by Miman. Crunchyroll. No reviews | Trailer

Reviews

The Washington Post reviews The New Earth by Jess Row (Ecco): “Isn’t mere satire; Row retains a deep affection for his cast, arguably more than they deserve. He breathes wondrous life into them. Their neuroses—so many neuroses—click into place. Each character’s thoughts scamper like mice through mazes, a science experiment gone wrong, and yet the data they yield bolsters a tale that’s both experimental and Balzacian, lighthearted and dead serious. No small feat.”

NYT reviews Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad (Grove): “The novel seems to argue, real growth and connection, both political and personal, cannot begin until everyone’s ghosts have emerged from hiding. Art is, if nothing else, a powerful tool for coaxing them out”; and A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung (Ecco): “In her clear, concise prose, Chung makes the personal political, tackling everything from America’s crushingly unjust health care system to the country’s gauzy assumptions about adoption, a practice that is itself rooted in economic inequality.”

NPR reviews Hang the Moon by Jeannette Walls (Scribner): “Walls has written a stunning and compelling tale—not surprising considering the acclaim she received for her memoir The Glass Castle. The novel Hang the Moon gives us a chance to think about something that hasn't gotten much attention—the lives of women bootleggers in America.”

Locus Magazine reviews White Cat, Black Dog: Stories by Kelly Link (Random): “May be the most thematically uni­fied of Link’s collections so far, but as always each story remains a delightful surprise, leav­ing us where we never quite expected to be.” Slate also reviews: “Link’s fiction can be funny, but it never strains to be. At its core is the tranquil authority of time-polished lore. The brevity of the short story suits her because she is a master of leaving things out, of the shiver induced by the unsaid.”

Book Marks lists “The Best Reviewed Books of the Month.”

Briefly Noted

Shondaland has a few author interviews including with Rachel Heng on her book The Great Reclamation (Riverhead) that questions the definition of home “in the face of change”; Gina Chung talking about how the protagonist in her new book Sea Change (Vintage) “has to sink to swim”; and Allegra Hyde discussing how she “balances both hope and despair in her new short story collection” The Last Catastrophe (Vintage). Hyde also speaks with Electric Lit on “finding humor and hope amidst the climate apocalypse.”

Judy Blume takes part in an extensive interview with Variety. 

CBC Books features day 3 of Canada Reads with author Gurdeep Pandher sharing his thoughts on how Hotline by Dimitri Nasrallah (Esplanade) “will shift Canadians perspective on the immigrant experience,” and actor Michael Greyeyes on why he’s championing Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (Knopf; LJ starred review). 

Clancy Martin “explains his journey with suicidal ideation—and how he's reaching out to others who are struggling” with his book How Not To Kill Yourself: A Portrait of the Suicidal Mind (Pantheon) in an interview with Esquire. Esquire also delves into popular comic and graphic novelist Brandon Sanderson’s “Fantasy Empire.” Plus, recommended reading “if you miss Daisy Jones & The Six.”

Kyle Chayka, The Longing for Less: Living with Minimalism (Bloomsbury: Macmillan), participates in a Q&A about his “cultural investigations” with Columbia Journalism Review.

Lit Hub revisits a 2004 interview with Octavia Butler on how Kindred “became a novel.”

Book Riot’s Leah Rachel von Essen explores one recipe at a time from The Princess Bride: The Official Cookbook by Jenn Fujikawa (Smart Pop). 

Elle has a first look at Lauren Groff’s latest book, The Vaster Wilds (Riverhead), to come out this fall.

Town & Country has an excerpt from The World: A Family History of Humanity by Simon Sebag Montefiore (Knopf).

Tor.com shares an excerpt from The Ten Percent Thief by Lavanya Lakshminarayan (Solaris). Also, a cover reveal for Courtney Smyth’s book The Undetectables. 

The Rumpus Book Club provides an excerpt of Debra Magpie Earling‘s The Lost Journals of Sacajewea (Milkweed). 

Book Riot has multiple book lists: “9 of the Very Best Alternate History Books,” “8 Doorstopper Comics and Graphic Novels,” “8 Brilliant Books by Indian Authors Set in India,” “8 Compelling Horror Manga,” and “10 Books Other Than the Bible U.S. Politicians Have Been Sworn in On.”

CrimeReads lists “8 Novels Featuring Artificial Intelligence” and Harini Nagendra, Murder Under a Red Moon: A 1920s Bangalore Mystery (Pegasus), has a compiled a list of their “favourite historical mysteries.”

The Root’s It’s Lit shares a slideshow featuring “15 Black Women Writers We Love.”

Tor.com has “Seven Scary Stories About Frightening Fungi.”

Authors on Air

Rebecca Serle’s recently released book One Italian Summer (Atria) will be adapted for film with Paramount Pictures, according to Variety. 

Picturestart has acquired the film rights to Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Ballantine; LJ starred review). Deadline reports. 

Lit Hub explores “How One Young Screenwriter Snagged the Rights to Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.”

Joe Quesada, former editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics, has been tapped by Amazon to “develop new and existing comic book projects for the streamer.” The Hollywood Reporter has the scoop.

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