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Awards, November Book Clubs & News

Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire by Nandini Das (Pegasus) wins the 11th British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding. LitHub has details. 

Two winners are announced for this year’s Columbia University Press Distinguished Book Award: Antagonistic Cooperation: Jazz, Collage, Fiction, and the Shaping of African American Culture by Robert G. O’Meally and Not Exactly Lying: Fake News and Fake Journalism in American History by Andie Tucher.

Jenna Bush Hager chooses The Sun Sets in Singapore by Kehinde Fadipe (Grand Central) as her November book club pick.

Reese Witherspoon’s book club picks Maybe Next Time by Cesca Major (Morrow).

B&N’s new book club pick is Absolution by Alice McDermott (Farrar).

Target’s November book club pick is Blood Sisters by Vanessa Lillie (Berkley; LJ starred review).

Amazon sues scammers offering fake publishing services. Publishers Lunch reports. 

Publishers Lunch reports on a You.gov online poll that shows that nearly half of Americans haven’t tried ebooks. 

Reviews

NPR reviews White Holes by Carlo Rovelli (Riverhead): “Taking the journey with Rovelli is more than worth the price of the book. Dante gave us his tour of the underworld. We could not do better than having Rovelli as a guide into the dark world of black holes.”

NYT reviews How To Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney (Biblioasis): “Feeney’s prose is both careful and relaxed—detailed in its description of place and character and of the effortful human urge to find order in the natural world; casual in its approach to storytelling, the point of view shifting throughout scenes”; The Genius of Israel: The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World by Dan Senor & Saul Singer (Avid Reader/S. & S.): “The optimism that propels The Genius of Israel seems, just now, like a distant memory”; and Fierce Ambition: The Life and Legend of War Correspondent Maggie Higgins by Jennet Conant (Norton): “Conant’s story is strongest when her focus moves away from the muddle that is Higgins to encompass the broader stakes and rivalries of the midcentury media business.” Washington Post also reviews: “Though Conant’s prose is plain and straightforward, her subject is so full of life that it makes up for any lack of literary flourish.”

Washington Post reviews Absolution by Alice McDermott (Farrar): “Beautifully conceived and executed, Absolution stares down the assumptions and loyalties that cage us all”; The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez (Riverhead): “You’ll just have to read it. Or ask the parrot”; The Last Language by Jennifer duBois (Milkweed Editions): “The Last Language unravels at the pace of a thriller, as Angela stumbles out of the sterility of theoretical linguistics and into this unexpected love story”; and The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman’s Narrative by Gregg Hecimovich (Ecco; LJ starred review): “We live in our own treacherous moment for literature, as powerful ideologues target books that don’t align with their personal values, but books like Hecimovich’s are a vital resource for readers who wish to engage with themselves and the wider world.”

LA Times reviews Baumgartner by Paul Auster (Atlantic Monthly): “It may not be vintage Auster, but it is moving and compelling enough to qualify as a late-career triumph.”

CrimeReads shares the best reviewed books of the month.

WSJ highlights its best reviews of October.

Briefly Noted

LibraryReads and LJ offer read-alikes for Dirty Thirty by Janet Evanovich (Atria), the top holds title of the week.

LJ has new prepub alerts for May.

Augusto Higa Oshiro leads a literary tour through Lima for NYT.

Collector’s Edge is selling the rare original Spider-Man comic book, which could fetch up to $35K. FoxNews has the story. 

People shares the latest known photo of John Lennon and Paul McCartney from a new book, Living the Beatles Legend: The Untold Story of Mal Evans by Kenneth Womack (Dey Street).

Amazon’s editors recommend the best books of November.

T&C lists the best books to read this month.

Time shares 9 new books for November.

NYT recommends romance novels.

LA Times has “18 best nonfiction books for fans of Madonna, memoirs or cultural histories.”

LA Times suggests 10 books for November and a nonfiction book gift-giving guide.

Authors on Air

PBS Canvas talks with Viet Thanh Nguyen about his memoir, A Man of Two Faces (Grove), with themes of war, refugees and exile.

Jesmyn Ward reads an excerpt from her new book, Let Us Descend (Scribner; LJ starred review), which is also Oprah’s 103rd book club pick, on CBS Mornings.

According to Playbill, Neil Gaiman will present a dramatic reading of A Christmas Carol as Charles Dickens in NYC on December 18 and 19.

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