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Book Clubs & Awards

Jenna Bush Hager picks Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt (Ecco; LJ starred review), for her May book club.

B&N selects Elektra by Jennifer Saint (Flatiron) for its May book club. Saint will discuss her book at a live virtual event on June 7th.

The Change by Kirsten Miller (Morrow), is the Good Morning America pick.

Target selects the enemies-to-lovers romance, The Stand-In by Lily Chu (Sourcebooks Casablanca), for its May book club pick.

NYT’s "Group Text" suggests Love Marriage by Monica Ali (Scribner) for book clubs, and offers read-alikes and discussion questions.

Audiofile announces the May 2022 Earphones Award winners.

The 2022 ReLit Awards shortlist is out. CBC has coverage. 

Reviews

NPR reviews The Premonitions Bureau: A True Account of Death Foretold by Sam Knight (Penguin Pr.): “ultimately, it's a thought-provoking and deeply researched book that presents readers with the oddity of realized premonitions but allows us to come to our own conclusions about what to believe." NYT also reviews: “It is a story both elegant and eccentric, cleanly capturing that brief moment in the 1960s when extrasensory perception verged on mainstream acceptance. It is also quietly terrifying, a reminder that even those who can see the future have no hope of getting out of its way.” The Guardian also weighs in: “His flair for synthesis and compression keeps the reader riveted, yet ultimately these strengths are also the source of faint niggles; the abrupt, rather too convenient ending supplied by Barker’s death from an aneurysm in 1968 makes it tricky to gauge the overall impact of a book that isn’t a biography, exactly, yet doesn’t propose any kind of thesis to stand it up as intellectual or social history.”

NYT reviews Liarmouth: A Feel-Bad Romance by John Waters (Farrar): “For real strangeness in novels, you usually have to voyage to lands that still tolerate the obdurate, the sleazy, the resentful, the offline and any other attributes presently considered unmarketable. “Liarmouth” is a good novel. It is a better gateway drug.” And, William Blake vs. the World by John Higgs (Pegasus): “Higgs’s Blake is not the tripped-out proto-hippie of some renderings, nor is he a Blake for everyone — although Higgs, despite his book’s pugilistic title and his close examination of many of the major quarrels in Blake’s life, sometimes presents a suspiciously conciliatory portrait of a poet who, he says, “accepts all sides.” And, Last Letter to a Reader by Gerald Murnane (And Other Stories): “Reading his self-appraisals in Last Letter to a Reader resembles a kind of overhearing, as when we listen to a figure on a stage reveal some contrary stance or enigmatic conviction.” Also, My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song by Emily Bingham (Knopf): “Her book offers its readers the same choice, between understanding and sweet nostalgia, between the splinters and thorns of history and about the worst thing people can do to one another, and a smooth, thin, polished veneer.”  Plus, Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have To Offer by Rax King (Vintage; LJ starred review): “Tacky was published last fall. I’m writing about it now because a) the women I’m closest to have been swapping heavily underlined copies for weeks, b) The Times didn’t review it and c) I’m late to discover that it reads like sequential shots of Fireball Cinnamon Whisky.”

The Washington Post reviews One-Shot Harry by Gary Phillips (Soho Crime): “is fast-paced, tough, wry and smart, but what makes this novel a singular sensation is the diverse cityscape of mid-century L.A. that Phillips summons up.”

Briefly Noted

People features Ronnie Spector’s posthumous memoir, Be My Baby, written with Vince Waldron (Henry Holt), which arrives today.

OprahDaily chats with Lauren Groff about her new standalone story, Junket (Scribd Originals), and literary privilege.

The Rumpus talks with Ben Shattuck about his book, Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau (Tin House). 

USA Today highlights Anna: The Biography by Amy Odell (Gallery), and features Speak: Find Your Voice, Trust Your Gut, and Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Tunde Oyeneyin (Avid Reader Press: S. & S.). 

Elizabeth Day, Magpie (S. & S.), explores “the fine art of incredible plot twists,” at CrimeReads.

Hamnet author Maggie O’Farrell secures memorial to Shakespeare’s twin children Hamnet and Judith. The Bookseller reports. 

BookPage has suggestions for Romance, Mysteries, Horror, and Lifestyle.

LA Times suggests 10 books for May.

Bustle has "The Most Anticipated Books of May 2022."

LitHub recommends 25 books for the week.

The Millions shares noteworthy new releases.

Gizmodo has 52 sci-fi and fantasy books for May.

BookRiot lists 10 books for Mental Health Awareness Month, and the most popular YA reads on BookTok.

ElectricLit has “7 Books That Will Change the Way You Think About the Road Trip Story.”

Vogue suggests "What to Read and Watch After Netflix’s The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe."

Authors On Air

NPR’s Fresh Air talks with Mark Follman about his new book, Trigger Points: Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings in America (Dey Street Books), and using behavioral assessment to prevent mass shootings.

Oprah debuts on the inaugural episode of ABC News' literary podcast The Book Case. Entertainment Weekly reports.

Jennifer Grey discusses her new memoir, Out of the Corner (Ballantine), on Good Morning America. Grey also teases "dancing, music, romance" in upcoming Dirty Dancing sequel. 

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