Book World Mourns Alice Munro | Book Pulse

Nobel laureate and beloved short story writer Alice Munro has died at the age of 92. Ian Penman wins the RSL Ondaatje Prize for Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors. The CWA Daggers shortlists are announced. Summer booklists start to arrive. LibraryReads and LJ offer read-alikes for this week’s top holds title, The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren. Plus, interviews with George Stephanopoulos, Melissa Mogollon, Michael McDonald, and Miranda July.

Want to get the latest book news delivered to your inbox each day? Sign up for our daily Book Pulse newsletter.

Remembering Alice Munro

Nobel Prize winner and beloved short story writer Alice Munro has died at the age of 92, Penguin Random House Canada announced. NYT, CBC, Globe & Mail, BBC, The Guardian, People, Time, and Publishers Weekly have obituaries.

NYT offers an appraisal of Munro’s career and distills the author’s essential works

Remembrances pour in from LitHub, The Guardian, Toronto Star, PBS Canvas, NPR, and Slate. 

Canadian authors remember Munro at CBC, and author Lorrie Moore reflects on “What Alice Munro Has Left Us” at The Atlantic.

Awards & Summer Reading

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ian Penman wins the RSL Ondaatje Prize for Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors (Semiotext(e)). The Guardian has coverage.

The CWA Daggers shortlists are announced

The Atlantic has a summer reading guide.

LA Times gathers 20 new books for summer.

Seattle Times previews six new books for summer.

Reviews

NYT reviews Henry Henry by Allen Bratton (Unnamed Pr.): “In Hal, Bratton offers a psychologically acute portrait of the kind of trauma-born narcissists who yo-yo between judging everyone else as beneath them and hating themselves for those very judgments”; and Our Kindred Creatures: How Americans Came To Feel the Way They Do About Animals by Bill Wasik & Monica Murphy (Knopf): “The authors’ tone is restrained throughout the book but they make a hard—and welcome—pivot in the final chapter. In those pages, they press the case for a ‘new type of goodness’ that would elevate food animals and other mistreated species to the realm of our concern.”

Washington Post reviews Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball by Keith O’Brien (Pantheon): “Charlie Hustle gets better and better as it builds to Rose’s ultimate downfall. No spoilers, but O’Brien ends his fantastic book in grand walk-off fashion, painting a brilliant, harrowing picture of Rose today, pathetic and willing to sign anything for a buck”; Phantom Orbit by David Ignatius (Norton): “Then throw in the accessible explanations of math and science necessary for readers to understand the vulnerabilities inherent in satellites, and well, you can see what an ambitious novel it is. It’s one well worth reading”; and Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space by Adam Higginbotham (Avid Reader/S. & S.): “One can hope that NASA today has learned the lessons from Challenger and that “we’ll launch when we’re ready” is an inviolable doctrine. Still, danger lingers, as it did then.”

NPR has a paired review of Julia Alvarez’s The Cemetery of Untold Stories (Algonquin) and Diego Gerard Morrison’s Pages of Mourning (Two Dollar Radio): “Both of these novels, one from an emerging writer and one from a long celebrated author, walk an open road of remembering love, grief, and fate. Both find a destiny not in death, but in the reality of abandonment and in dreams that come from a hope for reunion.”

Briefly Noted 

LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren (Gallery; LJ starred review), the top holds title of the week. 

LJ has new prepub alerts

People shares details from George Stephanopoulos’s new book, The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis (Grand Central). Vanity Fair has a Q&A with Stephanopoulos.

Vanity Fair features Kevin Kwan’s new novel, Lies and Weddings (Doubleday), out next week.

Melissa Mogollon, Oye (Hogarth), answers 10 questions at Poets & Writers

Rita Mae Brown talks about her latest Mrs. Murphy mystery, Feline Fatale (Bantam), and shares a few of her favorite books at Parade.

Washington Post highlights a “fascinating split in genre fiction” and suggests cozy fantasy and dark science fiction titles.

In People, Michael McDonald discusses his forthcoming memoir, What a Fool Believes, written with Paul Reiser (Dey Street), due out next week. Washington Post talks with McDonald and Reiser about their collaboration on the memoir.

People shares astrological book recommendations

CrimeReads highlights six queer mysteries

Authors on Air

Miranda July discusses her novel All Fours (Riverhead) with NPR’s It’s Been A Minute. July has featured interviews in LA Times

Salman Khan, Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That's a Good Thing) (Viking), visits CBS Mornings tomorrow.

Helen Rebanks, The Farmer’s Wife: My Life in Days (Harper Horizon), will appear on The View.

Want to get the latest book news delivered to your inbox each day? Sign up for our daily Book Pulse newsletter.
Comment Policy:
  • Be respectful, and do not attack the author, people mentioned in the article, or other commenters. Take on the idea, not the messenger.
  • Don't use obscene, profane, or vulgar language.
  • Stay on point. Comments that stray from the topic at hand may be deleted.
  • Comments may be republished in print, online, or other forms of media.
  • If you see something objectionable, please let us know. Once a comment has been flagged, a staff member will investigate.


RELATED 

ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER?

We are currently offering this content for free. Sign up now to activate your personal profile, where you can save articles for future viewing

ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER?