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Awards & Buzzy Books News

2021 National Book Awards longlist nominees for translated literature are announced. NPR will be sharing the lists as each section is announced. Longlist announcements will continue through the week and the finalists will be announced on Oct. 5. The winners are announced on Nov. 17.

Author N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became (Orbit: Hachette), makes Time’s 100 Most Influential List of 2021.

Fable, a social reading app, announced via press release that LeVar Burton Book Club’s next book pick is Deacon King Kong by James McBride (Riverhead: Penguin).

Harper Collins announced further details on integrating Houghton Mifflin Harcourt into four imprints and “unspecified layoffs,” according to a newsletter by Publishers Lunch.

New Title Bestsellers

Links for the week: NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers | NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers | USA Today Best-Selling Books

Fiction

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney (Farrar; LJ starred review) debuts at No. 1 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list and No. 2 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Forgotten in Death by J. D. Robb (St. Martin’s) lives at No. 1 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list and No. 2 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list.

Matrix by Lauren Groff (Riverhead) debuts at No. 5 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list.

Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney (Flatiron) wins No. 6 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list.

The Hawthorne Legacy by Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Hachette) starts at No. 6 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell (Atria) shows up at No. 10 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list and No. 14 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Kristy and the Snobs by Ann M. Martin (Scholastic) rises to No. 11 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Chasing Serenity by Kristen Ashley (Blue Box Press) catches up to No. 12 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

L.A. Weather by María Amparo Escandón (Flatiron) shines at No. 14 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list.

The Heron’s Cry by Ann Cleeves (Macmillan) soars to No. 15 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list.

Nonfiction

Countdown bin Laden: The Untold Story of the 247-Day Hunt to Bring the Mastermind of 9/11 to Justice by Chris Wallace with Mitch Weiss (Avid Reader: S. & S.) starts at No. 2 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list and No. 7 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang (Doubleday) debuts at No. 3 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list.

This Bright Future by Bobby Hall (S. & S.) glows at No. 4 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list.

The American Experiment: Dialogues on a Dream by David M. Rubenstein (S. & S.) fancies No. 8 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list.

Forever Young: A Memoir by Hayley Mills (Grand Central) opens at No. 9 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list.

Ordinary Heroes: A Memoir of 9/11 by Joseph Pfeifer (Portfolio: Penguin) climbs to No. 13 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list.

Reviews

NYT reviews Bewilderment by Richard Powers (Norton; LJ starred review): “There are some books you want to give to your best friend; this is one to give to your distant aunt, for her reading group. It’s a James Taylor song when you require a buzz-saw guitar. There’s no impudence, no wit, no fire and little fluttering understanding, despite the ostentatious science, of how human minds really work.”

The Washington Post reviews The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway by Merve Emre (Liveright: W. W. Norton): “Like similar volumes, “The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway” provides a scholarly and biographical introduction, lots of illustrations and extensive marginal notes that explain obscurities, identify people and places, and provide interpretive comment. Emre, however, isn’t critically neutral; she draws mainly on the work of her teachers and contemporaries, while pretty much ignoring older Woolf scholarship.”

The Los Angeles Times reviews Competing with Idiots: Herman and Joe Mankiewicz, a Dual Portrait by Nick Davis (Knopf): “It’s a tragic story told with disarming brio, a fitting tribute to brothers who excelled at telling such tales, but not enough to avoid their own fatal flaws.”

Book Marks has "5 Reviews You Need to Read This Week."

Briefly Noted

Cai Emmons, Sinking Islands (Red Hen Press), writes a piece for Lit Hub describing “her ALS diagnosis and writing as a reflection of health.” 

T. C. Boyle answers the Lit Hub questionnaire. Leif Enger fills out the Book Marks questionnaire.

Anderson Cooper talks to People about his new book Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty co-written with Katherine Howe (HarperCollins) and how it was a “letter to [his] son.” Also, NYT has an interview with Cooper about his reading habits. Plus, Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land (Scribner; LJ starred review), and his new book telling "a sprawling story linking past, present, and future."

Spoilers and an examination of The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (Viking: Penguin) are in The Washington Post.

NYT explores the best-seller list featuring: Forever Young: A Memoir by Hayley Mills (Grand Central), Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney (Farrar; LJ starred review), and This Bright Future by Bobby Hall (S. & S.). Also, a review of audiobooks highlighting A Slow Fire Burning by Paula Hawkins (Riverhead), Fuzz by Mary Roach (Norton; LJ starred review), and Conquering the Pacific by Andrés Reséndez (Houghton Harcourt; LJ starred review).

A shortlist for NYT presents The Night the Lights Went Out: A Memoir of Life After Brain Damage by Drew Magary (Harmony), Smile: The Story of a Face by Sarah Ruhl (S. & S.), and Running is a Kind of Dreaming by J. M. Thompson (HarperCollins). 

Louis Nealon, Snowflake (HarperCollins), discusses "the importance of how we write mental illness in fiction." Lit Hub has more.

Lit Hub shares an excerpt of The Girls in the Wild Fig Tree: How I Fought to Save Myself, My Sister, and Thousands of Girls Worldwide by Nice Leng'ete (Little, Brown, & Co.). Also, an excerpt from Survival of the City: Living and Thriving in the Age of Isolation by Edward Glaeser and David Cutler (Penguin).

Vince Passaro recommends “Great Books About the Big Apple” for Lit Hub. Also, Snigdha Koirala has “7 book recommendations for Rory Gilmore.” Plus, "50 Great Literary Cameos in Terrible* Easrly 2000s Movies."

CrimeReads lists "10 Novels Set in the High Country of the American West."

Community of Literary Magazines and Presses shares “A Reading List for National Hispanic Heritage Month 2021.”

Tor.com has acquired a trilogy of books by Vajra Chandrasekera, a South Asian fantasy writer, starting with The Saint of Bright Doors. 

Authors on Air

Leila Slimani talks to NPR Code Switch about her new novel In the Country of Others (Penguin) and “how people behave when they’re not amongst their own.”

Malachi Kirby will play dual lead roles for the Amazon adaption of Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys (Morrow). Shadow and Act has more.

Don Yaeger’s Turning of the Tide: How One Game Changed the South will be adapted into a feature film by Village Roadside Pictures. Deadline breaks the news. Also, LeVar Burton and Aja Naomi King will narrate the audiobook for My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson (Henry Holt: Macmillan). Plus, Colin Meloy’s Wildwood series (Balzer + Bray: HarperCollins) will be adapted into a film with Travis Knight as the director for Laika studio. Lit Hub also reported on this news.

Maggie Nelson, On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint (Graywolf Press), talks about “climate change and hopelessness” with Jordan Kisner on the Thresholds podcast.

Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle (Doubleday; LJ starred review), speaks to NPR Fresh Air about the “extensive background research” he did for all of his books, including his latest.

The Reading Women podcast features two books on “when incarceration comes home”: Incarceration Nations: A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around the World by Baz Dreisinger (Other Press) and Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms by Maya Schenwar, et al. (The New Press).

Andrew Keen chats with Giulio Boccaletti, author of Water: A Biography (Pantheon), about “how water shapes society” on the Keen On podcast.

Sanjena Sathian, Gold Diggers (Penguin), discusses "the downfalls of ambition" on the Book Dreams podcast.

Lauren Groff discusses her new book Matrix (Riverhead) and how she knows that people will get her book title wrong on The Maris Review podcast.

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