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News, Awards, & Book Clubs

Reese Witherspoon picks Lucky by Marissa Stapley (S. & S.) for her December Book Club. 

HarperCollins pulls the forthcoming Chris Cuomo book. The NYT reports. LA Times also reports.

NYT shares “The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2021."

CBC lists “The best Canadian fiction of 2021.”

Publishing Perspectives takes a look at this year’s Watty Awards, as asexual romance, The Mask of Celibacy by Carolyn Hill, (Wattpad Books), takes top prize.

The Winter Book & Author Festival, sponsored by PRH, LJ, and SLJ, is tomorrow, December 9th. Register for the free virtual event and view the speaker lineup.  

Reviews

USA Today reviews Sea State: A Memoir by Tabitha Lasley (Ecco), giving it 2 out of 4 stars: “This isn’t a book about oil rig workers, it’s a book about avoiding writing a book about oil rig workers.”

NYT reviews Call Us What We Carry: Poems by Amanda Gorman (Viking): “Yeats said we produce rhetoric out of the quarrel with others and poetry out of the quarrel with ourselves. Gorman makes the case — often convincingly — that poetry may come from both.” The Washington Post also reviews: “Her poetry insists that not just she but an entire country is capable of growing itself to a place of glory, like Tupac’s rose in concrete. Her emergence in this very moment is the instantiation of our ability to press on.”

The Washington Post reviews Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Grove; LJ starred review): “Grand gestures, extravagant generosity, moments of surprising forgiveness all have their rightful place in our holiday legends. But Small Things Like These reminds us that the real miracle in any season is courage. Get two copies: one to keep, one to give.” And, Silenced No More: Surviving My Journey to Hell and Back by Sarah Ransome (HarperOne): “In this scathing, less-than-literary book, Ransome reiterates the claims of her 2017 lawsuit, adding that Maxwell, the heiress now on trial on charges of sex trafficking, is as responsible as Epstein was in operating a ‘rape pyramid scheme for twenty-plus years’.”

Briefly Noted

LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for The Ballerinas by Rachel Kapelke-Dale (St. Martin’s), the buzziest book of the week.

USA Today writes about how Call Us What We Carry: Poems by Amanda Gorman (Viking), inspires fellow WriteGirls.

LA Times interviews Tabitha Lasley, Sea State: A Memoir (Ecco), about how she wrote her new book. 

The Guardian covers Nobel winner Abdulrazak Gurnah’s acceptance lecture. 

People talks with Jonathan Van Ness about his forthcoming book of essays, Love That Story: Observations from a Gorgeously Queer Life (Harper One), due out in April.

Anne Helen Petersen and Charlie Warzel talk with Esquire about their new book, Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home (Knopf), and the remote work revolution.

ElectricLit interviews Asali Solomon, The Days of Afrekete (FSG), about "queer Blackness and the cost of upward mobility."

Shondaland has a Q&A with Rebecca Carroll about her memoir, Surviving the White Gaze (S. & S.).

Margaret Verble, When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky (Mariner: HarperCollins), Anna North, Outlawed (Bloomsbury: Macmillan), and more share their Year in Reading at The Millions. 

Entertainment Weekly has a preview and cover reveal of Ruth Ware’s forthcoming psychological thriller, The It Girl (Gallery/Scout Pr: S. & S.), due out in July. 

CrimeReads hosts the 2021 African Crime Fiction Round Table, featuring discussions about cultural influences, audience, and reading recommendations.

BBC explores “The Matrix and the sci-fi stories that became a reality.”

NYT suggests 8 newly-published books.

Buzzfeed has read-alikes for the Eternals movie.

ElectricLit has 8 books about Tennessee.  

“Greg Tate, a powerful chronicler and critic of Black life and culture, has died at 64.” NPR has an obituary. Vulture also has a profile.

Authors On Air

NPR’s Fresh Air talks with Mel Brooks, All About Me! My Remarkable Life in Show Business (Ballantine; LJ starred review), about the meaning of life.

NPR’s Code Switch discusses How the Other Half Eats: The Untold Story of Food and Inequality in America with author Priya Fielding-Singh (Little, Brown, Spark).

Robert Jones, Jr., author of The Prophets (Penguin Random House), and Laird Hunt, Zorrie (Bloomsbury: Macmillan; LJ starred review), talk about “tragedies and overlooked histories” on NPR’s Book of the Day. 

Reading Rainbow will return in early 2022 as Reading Rainbow Live after 15-year hiatus. CBS News reports. AV Club has more.

LA Times has a feature on the serial podcast, Once Upon a Time at Bennington, about the class of '86 which includes literary brat packers Donna Tartt, Bret Easton Ellis, and Jonathan Lethem.

Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell talks with People about her Off-Broadway, one-woman show, Is There Still Sex in the City?

Upper Cut: Highlights of My Hollywood Life by Carrie White (S. & S.), will be adapted for film. Deadline reports.  

Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience (Random House), will visit Ellen tomorrow.

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