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Awards, News & Book Clubs

The National Book Award finalists are announced. NYT has coverage, as do LitHub and Washington Post. 

Banned Books Week coverage continues. NPR reports: “Michael Connelly, Nikki Grimes, Judy Blume and other authors unite against book bans.” OprahDaily shares “Banned Books We Just Can’t Live Without.”

NYPL launches nationwide Books for All campaign. NYPL and The Atlantic will partner for the event Banned: Censorship and Free Expression in America, to be held tomorrow. 

The 2023 Financial Times Business Book of the Year shortlist is announced.

The Harvey Awards will induct six new Hall of Fame members at the New York Comic Con next week. NYT reports.

Jenna Bush Hager picks Safiya Sinclair’s memoir How To Say Babylon (S. & S.) for her October book club.

GMA selects The List by Yomi Adegoke (Morrow; LJ starred review). 

Reese Witherspoon picks Starling House by Alix E. Harrow (Tor; LJ starred review) for her book club. 

B&N’s new book club pick is The Prospectors by Ariel Djanikian (Morrow).

Vulture releases “The Best Books of 2023 (So Far).”

Reviews

NYT reviews The Halt During the Chase by Rosemary Tonks (New Directions): “But whatever it was in Tonks that led to her own spiritual seeking is alive and well in Sophie in this bubbly, empathetic and ultimately lovely novel of a belated coming-of-age”; The Hank Show: How a House-Painting, Drug-Running DEA Informant Built the Machine That Rules Our Lives by McKenzie Funk (St. Martin’s): “Traces the origins of the industry from its inception—a small-use case allowing local insurance agencies to run searches on driving records more quickly—to the behemoth that quietly touches all of us today”; and Our Strangers: Stories by Lydia Davis (Bookshop Editions): “As the collection builds, a quiet statement begins to form: Davis seems to be providing a vision of how we might relate to the people who exist around us, of what an actual community might look like.”

Washington Post reviews How To Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair (S. & S.): “The book grabs the reader because of the beauty of its words, but it sticks because of the thorniness and complexity of its ideas”; and Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon by Michael Lewis (Norton): “Lewis is known for giving readers such deep, emotionally driven stories that they often end up as Hollywood films, such as Moneyball and The Blind Side. Plenty of that is on display in Going Infinite.” LA Times also reviews: “Too often, though, Going Infinite is labyrinthine and downright arcane. Lewis doesn’t do his usual stellar job of explanatory journalism when it comes to the intricacies of cryptocurrencies—code-protected digital assets, most famously Bitcoin, that sub for conventional money—or the exchanges on which they are traded.”

LA Times reviews Death Valley by Melissa Broder (Scribner): “Death Valley is never, ever boring. This is high praise considering that our heroine spends 85% of the book in the desert and the rest at a Best Western.”

The Guardian reviews Madonna: A Rebel Life by Mary Gabriel (Little, Brown; LJ starred review): “It’s a mark of Gabriel’s skill that she has managed to wrestle this complex, sprawling, eventful life into a book that rarely flags and conveys its subject’s wider significance without tipping into hagiography.”

LJ shares October’s starred reviews. 

Briefly Noted

LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for Wildfire by Hannah Grace (Atria), the top holds title of the week.

LJ has the complete March 2024 Prepub Alert list and new Prepub Alerts for April.

USA Today chats with Patrick Stewart about the key takeaways from his memoir, Making It So (Gallery). 

Amy Schneider talks about her memoir, In the Form of a Question: The Joys and Rewards of a Curious Life (Avid Reader: S. & S.), with USA Today.

Geri Halliwell-Horner, Rosie Frost and the Falcon Queen (Philomel), discusses her husband's reaction to her new book, at People.

Time celebrates “The Enduring Charm of John Grisham.”

Debra Magpie Earling leads a literary tour of Missoula, at NYT.

Meg Cabot, Enchanted To Meet You (Avon), shares her favorite must-reads for spooky season, at Entertainment Weekly. 

Washington Post announces a new group of contributors to the paper’s “Book World” coverage, including Ayana Mathis, Jane Hu, and Margo Jefferson. 

Acclaimed illustrator Ed Young dies at age 91. NYT has more on his legacy. 

Authors On Air

Patrick Stewart discusses his memoir, Making It So (Gallery), and playing Captain Picard, with NPR’s All Things Considered.

NPR’s Fresh Air talks with Cat Bohannon about her book, Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution (Knopf).

NPR has an interview with Taylor Lorenz about mommy bloggers and her new book, Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet (S. & S.). Lorenz also is a guest on Vulture’s Into It podcast.

Nancy Jones shares memories of George Jones in her new book, Playin’ Possum, written with Ken Abraham (Forefront), on Fox&Friends.

Jeanann Verlee offers her “brief but spectacular” take on “destigmatizing mental illness through poetry,” at PBS Canvas.

Paolo Coelho’s novel The Alchemist will be adapted for feature film. Deadline reports. 

All The Light We Cannot See, based on the novel by Anthony Doerr, gets a trailer.

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