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Awards News & March Reads

The 2022 Joyce Carol Oates Prize finalists are announced.

The 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction finalists are announced.

The Founder of Books on Tape, Duval Hecht has died at age 91, according to The New York Times.

NYT covers book banning in Tennessee public schools. 

The NYPL blog provides a reading list for “Understanding the History of Ukraine.”

The Millions shares their “most anticipated” books for the month and so does Bustle. 

Good Morning America has “15 March reads to get you through the month.”

Shondaland lists “The Best Books for March 2022.”

Vanity Fair provides “8 New Books To Read This Month.”

Page to Screen

March 4:

The Batman, based on associated titles. Warner Bros. Pictures. Reviews | Trailer

The Boys Presents: Diabolical, based on a comic book by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. Prime. No reviews | Trailer

Pieces of Her, based on the book by Karin Slaughter. Netflix. No reviews | Trailer

March 5:

Stolen by Their Father, based on the book by Lizbeth Meredith. Lifetime. No reviews | No trailer

March 6:
Outlander, based on the book series by Diana Gabaldon. Starz. Reviews | Trailer

When Calls the Heart, based on the book by Janette Oke. Hallmark. No reviews | Trailer

Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, based on the book Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s by Jeff Pearlman. HBO. No reviews | Trailer

March 9:

The Flash, based on associated titles. CW. Reviews | Trailer

Kung Fu, based on the Tao Te Ching attributed to Lao-tzu. CW. Reviews | Trailer

The Last Kingdom, based on the Saxon Stories series by Bernard Cornwell. Netflix. Reviews | Trailer

March 10:

Kotaro Lives Alone, based on a manga series by Mami Tsumura. Netflix. No reviews | Trailer

Reviews

The Washington Post reviews The Second Half: Forty Women Reveal Life After Fifty by Ellen Warner (Brandeis): "While the narratives share themes of love and faith, the expression differs according to the cultural lens though which a woman sees her life’s circumstances." Also, Seven Games: A Human History by Oliver Roeder (Norton): "accessible, enjoyable and ultimately quite challenging. It raises provocative and sometimes unsettling questions about the nature of intelligence and the unintended consequences when machines play better than we do. Roeder makes lots of sage observations but doesn’t offer answers, just philosophical paths to follow." And, The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives by Adolph L. Reed Jr. (Verso): "If some observers today are tempted to look at the racial injustices that still abound — White violence, mass incarceration, segregated schools and neighborhoods, systemic poverty, the return of restrictive voting laws — and claim that little has changed since the days of Jim Crow, Reed shows the folly of such a conclusion." Plus, Trapped in the Present Tense: Meditations on American Memory by Colette Brooks (Counterpoint): "By preserving the capacity to be surprised, she concludes, we may be more open to keeping memory alive. With her caring but purposively unmoored essays, she has done just this." And, Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World by Peter S. Goodman (Custom House: HarperCollins): "shows us that today’s extreme wealth is inextricably linked to a great crime, perhaps the greatest one of this century: the hijacking of our democracy."

NYT reviews Empire of the Scalpel: The History of Surgery by Ira Rutkow (Scribner): "Readers of the book looking for the blood and drama that is such a vital part of surgery will not find much of it. Instead, they will learn that the history of modern surgery is the history of the rise of the modern world, with all that has involved — not just science and technology but also politics, architecture, demographics and institutions."

NPR reviews The Believer: Encounters with the Beginning, the End, and our Place in the Middle by Sarah Krasnostein (Tin House): “succeeds at its goal of bridging distances, of transcending the self to comprehend the other.”

The Los Angeles Times reviews When I'm Gone, Look for Me in the East by Quan Barry (Pantheon): “the author exposes overlooked places and history in a world where, against all odds, there is always something new under the desert sun.”

Book Marks shares "The Best Reviewed Books of the Week."

Briefly Noted

The Seattle Times interviews Sasha LaPointe, Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk (Counterpoint), about “resilience, inheritance and punk music.”

Bethany C. Morrow, author of Cherish Farrah (Dutton), discusses “the coming of age of black social horror” with Electric Lit. 

Margaret Atwood talks to Shondaland about her new collection of essays, Burning Questions (Doubleday).

Refinery29 asks Hillary Jordan and Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, editors of Anonymous Sex (Scribner) what they learned about sexuality during the experience of editing this book and what inspired them.

Kathy Gilsinan, The Helpers: Profiles from the Front Lines of the Pandemic (Norton), highlights those who “are working to fix different pieces of American life the pandemic broke” in an article for The Atlantic.

Datebook features Monique Jenkinson as a “San Francisco drag anthropologist” in her book Faux Queen (Amble). 

Dolly Parton and James Patterson chat with AARPabout their new thriller Run, Rose, Run (Little, Brown, & Co.).

Brandon Sanderson, author of Dawnshard (Tor: Macmillan), has raised $15.4 million in 24 hours via Kickstarter to publish his own books. NYT reports.

The Washington Post gives a primer on books for an interested reader new to the Jack Reacher character and series of books.

CrimeReads shares “Six Crime Novels Set in Public School Classrooms," “Six Thrillers That Will Make Even the Steeliest Readers a Little Squeamish," and "A List of Multigenerational Family Mysteries."

Tor.com has “Five Recent Books With Superpowered Characters” and “Six Wintry SFF Romances That Will Melt Your Heart.”

Electric Lit lists “8 Jamaican Women Writers You Should Be Reading.”

AV Club publishes “10 essential Batman comics from the last decades.”

NYT has "10 New Books We Recommend This Week."

Authors on Air

Farah Jasmine Griffin, author of Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature (Norton), discusses “book bans targeting Black writers.”

Sarah Manguso, Very Cold People (Hogarth), chats about “the coldness and quietness of New England girlhood” on The Maris Review podcast.

Robby Doyle talks about the “snapshots of 10 relationships shifting under the weight of the current pandemic” in his book Life Without Children (Viking) with CBC Listen.

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