Want to get the latest book news delivered to your inbox each day? Sign up for our daily Book Pulse newsletter.

Book Clubs, Awards, & News

November's Read with Jenna book club pick is The Cloisters by Katy Hays (Atria; LJ starred review). It is also B&N’s November book club pick. 

GMA selects Someday, Maybe by Onyi Nwabineli (Graydon House).  

Reese Witherspoon chooses the 10th anniversary edition of Tiny Beautiful Things : Advice from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed (Vintage). 

Amazon’s "Sarah Selects" is reading Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro (Knopf). 

Audiofile announces the November Earphones Award Winners.

CBC features the finalists for $60K Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and the 5 Canadian books shortlisted for $60K Weston Prize for nonfiction, both of which will be announced later today. 

BookRiot has a writeup about this year's third quarter Panorama Picks.

Food writer Julie Powell, who wrote Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously (Hachette), dies at age 49. NYT has an obituary. USA Today, and Entertainment Weekly have more on her life. 

Reviews

USA Today reviews The World We Make by N. K. Jemisin (Orbit; LJ starred review), giving it 3.5 out of 4 stars: “Jemisin, in this book as much as the first, lays bare the racism, sexism, inequities and unfairness of our world, but also uplifts so many cultures and communities.”The Washington Post also reviews: “is the kind of book you lose an entire day to, hour after hour going by unnoticed, and emerge shaken and dazzled on the other end.”

The Washington Post reviews The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka (Norton): “The novel’s deeper themes reach beyond politics to the problem of evil that threads through every theology and moral code.” And, Cheap Land Colorado: Off-Gridders at America's Edge by Ted Conover (Knopf): “With his thorough and compassionate reportage, Conover conjures a vivid, mysterious subculture populated by men and women with riveting stories to tell.” Plus, The Third Reconstruction: America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century by Peniel E. Joseph (Basic Books): “Joseph’s consistent focus on racial inequities hidden in plain sight makes this book searingly relevant.”

NYT reviews Vigilance: The Life of William Still, Father of the Underground Railroad by Andrew K. Diemer (Knopf): “Still’s archive is, as he intended, a vibrant legacy, an essential reminder that freedom is often won rather than granted. Diemer’s book, meanwhile, is a tribute to the record keepers.” And, Magic To Do: Pippin's Fantastic, Fraught Journey to Broadway and Beyond by Elysa Gardner (Applause): “Through her cultural anthropology and extensive interviews, Gardner provides singular insight into the creation of this arresting, weird and somewhat nonsensical piece of theater.” Plus, It's Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO by Felix Gillette and John Koblin (Viking): “The profitability — and cost — of male fantasies is a running theme in Felix Gillette and John Koblin’s new book…Both veteran media reporters, Gillette (Bloomberg) and Koblin (The New York Times) provide an exhaustive and only occasionally tedious account of how HBO’s executives, producers and creators built an indelible brand.”

NPR reviews The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams by Stacy Schiff (Little, Brown): “The Revolutionary is not merely a dutiful exhumation of a poorly remembered Founding Father, it's a thrilling, timely account of how the American Revolution happened; how the colonists were radicalized and came to think of themselves not as Bostonians or Virginians, but as ‘Americans’." And, Foster by Claire Keegan (Grove): “More than most books four times its size, Foster does several of the things we ask of great literature: It expands our world, diverting our attention outward, and it opens up our hearts and minds. This is a small book with a miraculously outsized impact.” LA Times also reviews: “While the scale of her story is modest — this one small girl, this short stretch of time — the scope of what Keegan can hold inside of it — the ache of living, the flash of seeing finally what we don’t have, the mourning for all we’ll never be — is as big, brash and ambitious as a story might be.”

LA Times reviews Heretic: A Memoir by Jeanna Kadlec (Harper): “Kadlec has a PhD and it shows, with copious footnotes and citations, but she is also a friendly narrator, sharing revelations in the tone of a close friend, so that the points of her argument seem to emerge organically alongside the research.”

Briefly Noted

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

LJ's Barbara Hoffert's Prepub Alert: Complete List for April 2023 is released. 

NYT suggests newly published books this week. 

NYT shares “8 Great Books to Read About the Decline of Democracy.”

Shondaland talks with Blair Braverman, Small Game (Ecco: HarperCollins; LJ starred review), about “her move into fiction, the line between survival and entertainment, and the way visibility changes a challenge.”

ElectricLit interviews Kyung-Sook Shin, author the novel, Violets tr. by Anton Hur (Feminist Pr. at CUNY).

T&C highlights a new centennial edition of Emily Post's Etiquette by Lizzie Post and Daniel Post Senning (Ten Speed Pr.). Seattle Times also explores the new edition.

Zosia Mamet, My First Popsicle: An Anthology of Food and Feelings (Penguin), takes Elle’s "Shelf Life" literary survey. 

Shondaland suggests the Best Books for November 2022.

LitHub has "7 Sumptuous SF and Fantasy Books for November." 

PopSugar shares the Best New Books of 2022, 143 Thriller and Mystery Books, and 157 Romance Novels.

Authors on Air

NPR's All Things Considered talks with actress Zosia Mamet, My First Popsicle: An Anthology of Food and Feelings (Penguin), about "food and feelings through tales of love, loss and chicken."  Also on ATC,  Louise Kennedy discusses her book, Trespasses (Riverhead). 

NPR's Code Switch introduces the It's Been a Minute podcast's new host, Brittany Luse. 

Andrew Sean Greer discusses the "benefits of winning the Pulitzer Prize," on the Otherppl podcast. 

Want to get the latest book news delivered to your inbox each day? Sign up for our daily Book Pulse newsletter.