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

Oprah’s Book Club Pick & News

Oprah picks Jesmyn Ward’s Let Us Descend (Scribner; LJ starred review), for her book club. Winfrey revealed the pick on CBS Mornings.

Shondaland considers “The Long Legacy of Book Clubs.”

“Penguin Random House launches high schoolers’ award to combat book bans,” writes The Guardian.

Publishers Weekly rounds up last week’s news in libraries.

Reviews

NYT reviews America Fantastica by Tim O’Brien (Mariner): “America Fantastica is a catalog of thieves and con men, each dumber than the next but convinced that they alone are the smartest person in the room. And while that may describe the never-ending Trump circus, by using such a broad brush to paint the nation, O’Brien has created a novel that reads more like a cartoon”; Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream by David Leonhardt (Random): “Ours Was the Shining Future is an interesting book, with many provocative points, but I found it too tendentious to be the last word on the fate of the American dream”; Organ Meats by K-Ming Chang (One World): “This novel feels like Chang’s stab at finding that language, digging it out of her body like a buried dog tooth, accompanied by a fine spray of blood”; The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading by Dwight Garner (Farrar): “For those of us who live to read and eat, this book is a feast”; and Julia by Sandra Newman (Mariner): “As a retelling it is highly readable, innovative and entertaining. But as a political or feminist project, it only adds to the obfuscation of Orwell’s critique.” Washington Post also reviews: “Although I wouldn’t presume to say that Newman’s novel is better than Orwell’s, I find Julia more humane than 1984, which, admittedly, may sound preposterous given Orwell’s intentions.” There is also a paired review of the memoirs Being Henry: The Fonz…and Beyond by Henry Winkler (Celadon) and If You Would Have Told Me by John Stamos (Holt).

Washington Post reviews The Secret Life of John le Carre by Adam Sisman (Harper): “Whatever one ends up thinking about this book, it will surely shape the way future readers and biographers view le Carré, not only as a human being but as a writer.” Plus, there are reviews of two newly translated Godzilla novels. 

NPR reviews I Must Be Dreaming by Roz Chast (Bloomsbury; LJ starred review): “I Must Be Dreaming demonstrates that Chast has figured out a way to catch and release her dreams—transforming them in the process into yet another charmingly relatable book.”

LA Times reviews Night Side of the River by Jeanette Winterson (Atlantic Monthly): “More typical, in these stories and in ghost stories generally, is the consciousness manifest in the lingering presence of the uneasy dead—or, as Winterson renders it, the Dead—a lost lover, a mother mourned, a victim seeking revenge or recognition, or those who simply won't go away.”

Briefly Noted

Vanity Fair features the book Head Over Heels: Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman : A Love Affair in Words and Pictures by Melissa Newman, ed. by Andrew Kelly (Voracious). Newman also talks with FoxNews about the book and how she couldn’t include her father’s “naughty” letters.

LA Times shares a conversation with John Stamos, If You Would Have Told Me (Holt), over Greek food. People also shares details from his memoir.

Revelations from The Woman in Me by Britney Spears (Gallery) continue in USA Today and Variety. GMA takes a look at the singer’s iconic career.

CrimeReads hosts a roundtable on indigenous horror.

The Guardian lists October’s best paperbacks. 

CBC highlights 40 Canadian books to read this fall. 

LitHub shares 25 new books for the week. 

BookRiot has notable new releases. 

Shondaland offers “A Retrospective on Author Ann Petry.”

Seattle Times arts critic Moira Macdonald shares her favorite moments from her six years on the job. MacDonald is under contract at Dutton with a new novel and will no longer cover books.

Historian Natalie Zemon Davis dies at 94. NYT has an obituary. 

Authors on Air

NPR’s Fresh Air talks with biographer McKay Coppins about his new book, Romney: A Reckoning (Scribner), which reveals a “startling dysfunction” in the Senate.

Tan Twan Eng discusses his latest novel, The House of Doors (Bloomsbury), with NPR’s All Things Considered.

Marisa Meltzer’s Glossy: Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss’s Glossier (Atria/One Signal), will be adapted for TV. Deadline reports.

John Stamos, If You Would Have Told Me (Holt), visits Jimmy Fallon tonight.

Ava DuVernay’s film Origin will compete as an original screenplay, rather than an adapted screenplay for awards season. Hollywood Reporter has the story. The film is inspired by Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.

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