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Awards & News

Pacific Northwest Book Awards shortlist is announced.

Luis Mateo Díez wins Cervantes Prize. USA Today has the story.

The Nature Writing Prize shortlist is announced. Books+Publishing reports.

The Foyles Books of the Year shortlists are announced. 

The shortlist for the DRF Writers Award is announced. 

The German Nonfiction Prize names its 2024 jury. Publishing Perspectives has details. 

HarperCollins will globally publish a new book by Pope Francis, Life: My Story Through History, in spring 2024.

An academic researcher uncovers new work believed to be by Louisa May Alcott, written under the name EH Gould. The Guardian reports.

Earlyword’s November GalleyChat spreadsheet is out now. December’s GalleyChat is looking for another date, so as not to conflict with PRH’s Winter Book & Author Festival. 

Spotify will give premium members in the U.S. 15 free hours of audiobook listening beginning today, speeding up a previously announced rollout. Hollywood Reporter has details. 

PLA is fielding the 2023 Public Library Technology Survey through December 16. 

Naples Daily News reports on Collier County schools’  plan to  ban or restrict nearly 400 books from libraries.

Reviews

Washington Post reviews Again and Again by Jonathan Evison (Dutton): “Moving erratically between several different times and settings puts enormous pressure on the quality of these various tales”; Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation: Why Physicists Are Studying Human Consciousness and AI to Unravel the Mysteries of the Universe by George Musser (Farrar): “One does not come away from the book with a clear sense of what is plausible and what outlandish, what is or isn’t supported by evidence, and what the scientific consensus is on the relationship between quantum mechanics and consciousness.”

NYT reviews two books which explore the resiliency of San Francisco: The Longest Minute: The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906 by Matthew J. Davenport (St. Martin’s) and Portal: San Francisco’s Ferry Building and the Reinvention of American Cities by John King (Norton).

LA Times reviews The Future by Naomi Alderman (S. & S.): “The Future is so pleasing and page-turning a read, so full of intrigue, emotional depth and a delicious conclusion that I didn’t want it to end.”

LJ shares November’s starred reviews.

Briefly Noted

LibraryReads and LJ offer read-alikes for Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros (Entangled: Red Tower), the top holds title of the week.

Time explores how Rebecca Yarros’s novels became a “Romantasy Booktok Phenomenon.”

LJ has new prepub alerts.

Public Books shares “What 35 years of data can tell us about who will win the National Book Award.”

LitHub conducts rapid-fire interviews with the 2023 National Book Award finalists.

Washington Post appreciates two new books by and about American poet Anthony Hecht: Collected Poems of Anthony Hecht: Including Late and Uncollected Work by Anthony Hecht, ed. by Philip Hoy (Knopf), and Late Romance: Anthony Hecht—A Poet’s Life by David Yezzi (St. Martin’s).

Stephanie Land talks with Shondaland about her new book, Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education (Atria: One Signal), and Jazmina Barrera discusses her new novel, Cross-Stitch, tr. by Christina MacSweeney (Two Lines Pr.). Plus, Sigrid Nunez, The Vulnerables (Riverhead), talks about “lockdown creativity, hope, the word vulnerable as a noun, friendship, and animals.”

Salman Rushdie writes “The good guys don’t always win,” in an essay for The Guardian.

The Millions reflects on 400 years of Shakespeare’s Folio. 

Barbra Streisand’s memoir, My Name Is Barbra (Viking), gets coverage at USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, People, LA Times, and Time.

Henry Winkler, Being Henry: The Fonz…and Beyond (Celadon), talks with People about his relationship with his father-in-law, Ed Furstman.

Alice McDermott talks about her new book, Absolution (Farrar), with LA Times. 

Entertainment Weekly shares details from Megan Fox’s new book of poetry, Pretty Boys Are Poisonous (Gallery). 

CrimeReads suggests 6 mysteries set in hotels. 

OprahDaily highlights Jesmyn Ward’s body of work. 

Authors on Air

Tariq Trotter talks about his new book, The Upcycled Self: A Memoir on the Art of Becoming Who We Are (OneWorld), on NPR’s Fresh Air.

E.J. Koh discusses her new book, The Liberators (Tin House), with NPR’s Main Character of the Day. 

Time writes “The Buccaneers Is Trying So Hard to Be the Next Bridgerton.”

Apple TV+’s Slow Horses, adapted from Mick Herron’s Real Tigers (Soho Crime), gets a new trailer.

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