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Awards & News

John Lorinc wins the 2022 Balsillie Prize for Public Policy for his book Dream States: Smart Cities, Technology, and the Pursuit of Urban Utopias (Coach House Books). Quill&Quire reports. CBC has coverage. 

Scientist Henry Gee wins the Royal Society Science Book Prize for his book, A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Pithy Chapters (St. Martin’s). Publishing Perspectives has more. 

The longlist for the 2022/2023 Wingate Prize includes Gabrielle Zevin, Omer Friedlander, and Linda Kinstler, The Bookseller reports. The Jewish Chronicle has the full longlist.

NYT has a feature on the 2022 German Book Prize winner Kim de l’Horizon.

Parade suggests the 222 Best Books of All Time. 

Reviews

NYT reviews Empire of Ice and Stone: The Disastrous and Heroic Voyage of the Karluk by Buddy Levy (St. Martin’s): “There are few happy endings in this story. It is an ugly tale, very well told. The only beauty is in the ice—and that is as cold as beauty can be.” And, Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela (University of Chicago Pr.): “She follows the evolution of Americans’ attitudes toward working out over the past century, from skepticism to downright obsession: for those who can afford them, there are now dollar-a-minute workout classes, and personal trainers have become a common accessory for affluent professionals—something that was unthinkable for anyone but athletes or celebrities before 1990.”

The Washington Post reviews The Twist of a Knife by Anthony Horowitz (Harper; LJ starred review): “The Twist of a Knife is a classic race-against-the-clock crime fiction cocktail.” And, The Magic Kingdom by Russell Banks (Knopf): “He’s interested in the way grand schemes intended to perfect human nature produce instead a combination of secrecy and shame that can spark wildly unpredictable results.”

LA Times reviews A Left-Handed Woman: Essays by Judith Thurman (FSG): “Like many writers with whom she bears comparison—Joan Didion, Janet Malcolm, Susan Sontag—Thurman is often a character in her own work: cruising through Bergdorf’s, pedaling through France, motionless in the perfect darkness of a cave. She is a polyglot and a chameleon, precise, erudite, forthright.”

The Guardian reviews the latest British celebrity novelists’ books.

Briefly Noted

AARP has a new issue of “The Weekly Read.”

CBC has the bestselling Canadian books of the week.

In a new interview with LA Times, Celeste Ng calls her new book, Our Missing Hearts (Penguin Pr.; LJ starred review), “scarily real.” Ng will join the LA Times’s Book Club for a live streaming event on December 8th. 

The Millions chats with Allie Rowbottom about her novel, Aesthetica (Soho), navigating social media as a writer, and the intersection of beauty and aesthetic. 

Shondaland talks with Rob Delaney about his memoir, A Heart That Works (Spiegel & Grau), grief, love, loss, and hope. 

Vogue speaks with Jeanna Kadlec, Heretic: A Memoir (Harper), about writing and religious trauma.

Vanity Fair shares details from the forthcoming biography Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait by Gyles Brandreth, which publishes in the UK on December 8. 

Entertainment Weekly has a preview and cover reveal of RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Sasha Velour’s forthcoming book, The Big Reveal: An Illustrated Manifesto of Drag, due out from Harper on April 4.

Vox examines the recurring popularity of Viktor Frankl’s seminal work, Man’s Search for Meaning, and asks: “What gets lost in the appropriation?”

The Atlantic considers “What kind of man was Anthony Bourdain?”

Vogue shares the five books that changed Gwendoline Christie’s life. 

ElectricLit takes a culinary tour through Proust’s In Search of Lost Time with the book Dining with Marcel Proust: A Practical Guide to French Cuisine of the Belle Epoque by Shirley King (Univ. of Nebraska Pr.). 

Sofia Copppola, who provides the forward to the new Penguin Classics edition of The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton, takes Elle’s “Shelf Life” literary survey.

CrimeReads recommends romances for crime fiction fans, and vice versa.

Popsugar compiles all the new mysteries that came out in 2022.

The Root shares “December 2022 Books by Black Authors We Can’t Wait To Read.”

In honor of the beloved author’s birthday, CBC shares “75 facts you might not know about Anne of Green Gables and author Lucy Maud Montgomery.”

Science-fiction author Greg Bear passed away last week. Gizmodo has more on his life and Seattle Times has a remembrance.

Authors on Air

NPR’s Fresh Air talks with reporter Luke Harding about his new book, Invasion: The Inside Story of Russia’s Bloody War and Ukraine’s Fight for Survival (Vintage). 

NPR’s All Things Considered speaks with author Jas Hammonds about their new book, We Deserve Monuments (Roaring Brook Pr.). 

LitHub discusses Netflix’s new adaptation of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. 

Tess Gunty’s National Book Award–winning debut, The Rabbit Hutch (Knopf; LJ starred review), will be adapted for the big screen. LitHub has the story.

GMA recaps episodes of The Book Case podcast with Kate and Charlie Gibson.

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