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Awards & News

The Hugo Awards are announced at DisCon III, along with The Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book and the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. Network Effect by Martha Wells (Tor: Macmillan) wins for best novel.

The 2021 African Speculative Fiction Society (ASFS) Nommo Awards are announced. The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi (Riverhead; LJ starred review) wins best novel.

Locus presents the 2021 World Fantasy Convention Report.

U.S. judge sets Aug. 1 trial date for DOJ antitrust suit over PRH acquisition of Simon & Schuster.  Reuters reports. 

Big Books of the Week

The Defense Lawyer : The Barry Slotnick Story by James Patterson and Benjamin Wallace (Little, Brown, & Co.) leads holds this week.

Other titles in demand include:

The Power of Fun : How to Feel Alive Again by Catherine Price (Dial; LJ starred review)

Sapiens: A Graphic History, Volume 2 : The Pillars of Civilization by Yuval Noah Harari (Harper)

Bread Book : Ideas and Innovations from the Future of Grain, Flour, and Fermentation by Chad Robertson and Jennifer Latham (Lorena Jones Books: PRH)

Observations by Gaslight: Stories from the World of Sherlock Holmes by Lyndsay Faye (Mysterious: Penzler; LJ starred review)

These books and others publishing the week of Dec 20th, 2021 are listed in a downloadable spreadsheet.

Librarians and Booksellers Suggest

There are no LibraryReads or Indie Next picks publishing this week.

In the Media

The January 2022 issue of Entertainment Weekly is out now with a close-up on The Lost Daughter, based on the book by Elena Ferrante, featuring an interview with director Maggie Gyllenhaal. There is a conversation with Jami Attenberg, I Came All This Way To Meet You (Ecco; LJ starred review), and Bernardine Evaristo, Manifesto (Ingram), about their rise to literary fame. There is a recipe from 1,000 Spanish Recipes by Penelope Casas (Mariner). The “Must List” includes Not All Diamonds and Rosé: The Inside Story of The Real Housewives from the People Who Lived It by Dave Quinn (Andy Cohen Books), and The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan (S. & S.; LJ starred review).

The Year’s Best Books feature includes: Infinite Country by Patricia Engel (Avid Reader: S. & S.), Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead (Knopf; LJ starred review), Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner (Knopf), The Prophets by Robert Jones, Jr. (Penguin Random House), Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (Scribner; LJ starred review), Milk Fed by Melissa Broder (Scribner: S. & S.), Intimacies by Katie Kitamura (Riverhead), Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters (One World: Random House), No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood (Riverhead), and Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe (Doubleday; LJ starred review).  The year’s worst nods go to Philip Roth : The Biography by Blake Bailey (Skyhorse), The Tyranny of Big Tech by Josh Hawley (Regnery), and At Love's Command by Karen Witemeyer (Bethany House). 

Other titles of note are Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Ballantine), Hell of a Book by Jason Mott (Dutton), You Got Anything Stronger? by Gabrielle Union (Dey Street Books), Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney (Farrar; LJ starred review), Ghosts by Dolly Alderton (Knopf), Smile: The Story of a Face by Sarah Ruhl (S. & S.), and Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan (Little, Brown & Co.).  Readers’ favorite celebrity memoir was Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s Unfinished: A Memoir (Ballantine: Random House). Plus, twisty office dramas like Mateo Askaripour's Black Buck (HMH), Alexandra Andrews’s Who is Maud Dixon? (Little, Brown & Co.), and Zakiya Dalila Harris's The Other Black Girl (Atria; LJ starred review), were popular this year.  EW online also shares The 20 most anticipated books of 2022.

This week’s People highlights And Just Like That…, on HBO Max, based on the book Sex and the City by Candace Bushnell, The Lost Daughter, based on the book by Elena Ferrante on Netflix, Nightmare Alley, based on the book by William Lindsay Gresham, The King’s Man, based on the comic book The Secret Service by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons. The magazine also has a feature on the year’s best books for kids. 

Reviews

The Washington Post reviews Our First Civil War: Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution by H. W Brands (Doubleday; LJ starred review): “Brands does his readers a service by reminding them that division, as much as unity, is central to the founding of our nation. One wishes he had limned that division with a sharper pen.” And, The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III by Andrew Roberts (Viking): “Although denying that the king was a tyrant, Roberts acknowledges that George’s American policies achieved a ‘colossal disaster’ that left Britain with ‘vast debts, powerful enemies, no allies and even neutral powers united in hostility’.” Also, Washington at the Plow : The Founding Farmer and the Question of Slavery by Bruce A. Ragsdale (Kelknap Pr.): “reminds us of the importance of agriculture and its enlightened improvement to America’s founding. In doing so, it illuminates much for early-American specialists and general readers alike.” And, Flying Blind: The 737 Max Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing by Peter Robison (Doubleday; LJ starred review): “Robison’s book is a page-turner. What’s more, it demonstrates that the problems leading to the Boeing crashes may not yet be solved.” And, Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages by Dan Jones (Viking): “If you’ve never thought about the Middle Ages, or assumed it was too distant to be relevant, this book is a good place to start. Jones has a knack for gripping detail and vivid evocation.” Also, The First Shots: The Epic Rivalries and Heroic Science Behind the Race to the Coronavirus Vaccine by Brendan Borrell (Mariner: Houghton Harcourt): “Borrell deftly contrasts the sincerity that career public health servants bring to their duty to protect the public’s well-being with the cynicism of some Trump administration officials who rejected the experts’ advice if it risked political damage to the president.” Plus, I'm Possible : A Story of Survival, a Tuba, and the Small Miracle of a Big Dream by Richard Antoine White (Flatiron): “White’s story is equal parts heartwarming and heart-wrenching. He tells of how he overcame circumstances — a family plagued by substance abuse, domestic violence and poverty, and became the first Black American to earn a doctorate of music in tuba performance.”

Briefly Noted

Barack Obama shares his favorite pop culture of 2021. Entertainment Weekly has more. People also has coverage.

Kris Maher reveals “5 things about” his book, Desperate : An Epic Battle for Clean Water and Justice in Appalachia in an interview with The NYT.

Larry Strauss, Light Man (BookBaby) talks to FoxNews about his mother, Facts of Life star Charlotte Rae, and her legacy. 

Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Lavie Tidhar discuss space operas in the tradition of Dune, at The Washington Post.

Entertainment Weekly previews the forthcoming memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras (Doubleday), due out in July 2022. EW also has an excerpt from Emily St. John Mandel’s highly anticipated new novel, Sea of Tranquility (Knopf), due out in April. 

The ‘Year in Reading’ feature at The Millions continues with picks from Ruth Ozeki, Lydia Kiesling, Bill Morris, and more. 

Tom Bissell, Creative Types : and Other Stories (Pantheon), implores you not to write a pandemic novel at LA Times.

The Atlantic's "Books Briefing" considers "The Quiet Skill of Mass-Market Novels."

NYT’s Molly Young recommends “old and new books.” Plus, NYT considers “Black Bard of the South, Randall Kenan.” 

Critic Bethanne Patrick shares her “5 best novels of 2021,” at LA Times. 

USA Today picks “20 winter books we can't wait to read”.

CrimeReads has “The best psychological thrillers of 2021.”

Buzzfeed recommends 15 chef memoirs, 16 African romance novels, and 15 books by trans, genderqueer, and non-binary authors.

Vogue previews "The Best Books of 2022."

LA Times offers an appreciation for bell hooks. 

“Eve Babitz, a Hedonist With a Notebook, Is Dead at 78.” The NYT, The Washington Post, and USA Today have obituaries. 

Authors On Air

NPR’s Book of the Day discusses reinventing the epic with Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois (Harper: HarperCollins), and How the Post Office Created America : A History with author Winifred Gallagher (Penguin).

NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday shares “picks for 2021 books on current events."  Weekend Edition Sunday also talks with Anne Louise Avery who is tweeting her hashtag series #OldFoxAdventCalendar.  Plus, NPR shares 13 favorite romances from 2021.

Entertainment Weekly interviews Steven Moffat about his adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger's best-selling 2003 novel, The Time Traveler's Wife.

Popsugar rounds up "Everything We Know So Far About the Film Adaptation" Where the Crawdads Sing.  

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