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Awards & Valentine's Day Booklists

2023's Gotham Book Prize finalists are announced. LitHub has coverage. 

England’s Young Writer of the Year Award shortlist is announced. Publishing Perspectives reports. 

The Judith Wright Poetry Prize and Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize shortlists are announced. Books+Publishing has details. 

Shondaland shares “22 Authors on Their Favorite Love Stories.”

BookRiot has 8 cozy mysteries for Valentine’s Day. 

OprahDaily shares 13 books that celebrate love. 

Buzzfeed lists 25 new and forthcoming LGBTQIA+ romance books.

The Atlantic suggests “The Best Books to Read With Someone You Love.”

Indie Booksellers recommend 26 books for Valentine’s Day at LitHub. 

ALA’s Call Number podcast celebrates the romance genre. 

NYT pens “A Love Letter to Libraries, Long Overdue.”

Reviews

NYT reviews Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World by Malcolm Harris (Little, Brown): “As a piece of capitalist branding (hey, don’t blame Harris, he’s just an impaled butterfly like the rest of us), Harris’s subtitle is in the hyped-up, ‘insanely great’ tradition of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. But the intellectual product he rolls out is more like Elizabeth Holmes’s Theranos than Apple’s iPhone”; The Applicant by Nazli Koca (Grove; LJ starred review): “Koca especially shines when illuminating ‘women’s pain,’ which ’lies beneath the territories of countries, of languages we speak’”; The Laughter by Sonora Jha (HarperVia): “This is a smart and hilarious book not just for anyone who wants to laugh at the absurdity of academia, but for anyone who wants to become a better person by doing it”;  and Who Does That Bitch Think She Is?: Doris Fish and the Rise of Drag by Craig Seligman (Public Affairs): “He piles a lot of historical weight on Fish’s shoulders, but his subject carries it like Joan Crawford in a padded Adrian frock.” There are paired reviews of Brutes by Dizz Tate (Catapult) and On the Savage Side by Tiffany McDaniel (Knopf; LJ starred review), two books which “challenge and reshape the way stories about abused and murdered women are told.” Plus, there are short reviews of four crime and mystery books including Scorched Grace by Margot Douaihy (Gillian Flynn Books): “Sister Holiday, the protagonist of Margot Douaihy’s showstopper of a series debut…isn’t what you’d imagine a nun to be like, even in laissez-faire New Orleans.”

NPR reviews All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me by Patrick Bringley (S. & S.): “As rich in moving insights as the Met is in treasures, All the Beauty in the World reminds us of the importance of learning not ‘about art, but from it.’ This is art appreciation at a profound level.”

The Rumpus reviews Flux by Jinwoo Chong (Melville House): “In the flux of the post-MeToo era, whose backlash manifests in bad-faith conflation of censorship and censure, Jinwoo Chong has charted us a way forward that doesn’t throw away the past, but travels back to it with purpose.”

LA Times reviews Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara (St. Martin’s): “Kara’s goal is to shine a light under that rock, so we in the developed world get an honest look at who pays the highest price for our consumer goodies and luxury electric cars.”

Briefly Noted

ABC News writes about thousands of books under review in Florida based on new laws. 

The Idaho Stateman reports on a new bill that would allow parents to sue over “harmful” books in schools, libraries.

The Millions talks with Daisy Alpert Florin, My Last Innocent Year (Holt), about “nineties nostalgia, the intricacies of writing consent, and the unexpected timeliness of her novel.”

The Washington Post shares an excerpt of costume designer Patricia Field’s new memoir, Pat in the City: My Life of Fashion, Style, and Breaking All the Rules (Dey Street), in which she outfits Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. Shondaland also speaks with Field about her 60-year career in fashion. 

CrimeReads excerpts A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe by Mark Dawidziak (St. Martin’s), which explores why Poe's death is inextricable from his fiction.

LitHub recommends 18 new books for the week. 

BookRiot highlights new releases for the week, 24 of the best history books of all time, and 20 genre-bending sci-fi books. 

ElectricLit shares “9 Novels About Finding Purpose and Identity Through Someone Else” and 8 novels about work. 

Authors On Air

NPR’s Morning Edition talks with musician Mark O’Connor about 50 years in music and his new memoir, Crossing Bridges (Mark O’Connor Musik International)

Isabel Wilkerson discusses her book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (Random; LJ starred review), on B&N’s Poured Over podcast.

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