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Awards, News & Events

The 2024 Philip K. Dick Award nominees are announced.

Bobby Finger wins Crook’s Corner Book Prize for The Old Place (Putnam).

Finalists for the Story Prize are announced. Winners will be named on March 26. 

LitHub announces the 2024 class of Periplus fellows.

Luke Leafgren wins the 2023 Banipal Prize for his translation of Najwa Barakat’s Mister N (And Other Stories). Publishing Perspectives reports. 

Shortlists for the 2024 German Audiobook Prize are announced. Publishing Perspectives reports.

The latest AAP Stat Shot report shows “US Industry Was Up 1.8 Percent in October.” Publishing Perspectives has details.

PBS Books will present “What to Read in 2024 with Booklist Reader” tonight at 8 p.m. EST.

Tor.com will rebrand as Reactor on January 23, 2024, with the launch of a completely redesigned website.

PEN America reports on more than 1,600 books banned in Escambia County, FL, including five dictionaries and The Guinness Book of World Records.

Reviews

Washington Post reviews My Friends by Hisham Matar (Random): “But sorrowful as this novel often is, it’s not a Shakespearean tragedy nor an elegy in the spirit of In Memoriam. It’s a profound celebration of the sustaining power of friendship, of the ways we mold ourselves against the indentations of those few people whom fate presses against us”; and You Only Call When You're in Trouble by Stephen McCauley (Holt): “Whatever your politics and predilections, McCauley’s gifts for prose, plot and provocation are likely to offer you a few fast-flying hours in his sunny, slightly futuristic world.”

The Guardian reviews Wild Houses by Colin Barrett (Grove): “Wild Houses is a book that critics and readers will inevitably end up praising on ‘a sentence level.’ The fact that Barrett is so often hailed specifically for his mastery of the sentence is worth dwelling on”; and There Is No Blue by Martha Baillie (Coach House): “She knows she’ll never find out why a shared childhood should have had such different outcomes; the only truth she arrives at will be variable and of her own making. Still, the ‘disobedient tale’ she tells is tough, tender and compelling.”

Star Tribune reviews Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are by Rebecca Boyle (Random): “If you, like me, find sleep fleeting or futile whenever the gleaming face of the full moon peeps obtrusively into your window, you’ll already know that our nearest neighbor can exert some truly powerful effects. Boyle’s book reveals just how genuinely earth-shattering our moon has been.”

Autostraddle reviews Alice Sadie Celine by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright (S. & S.): “An age gap novel that’s simultaneously convincing and critical of why its central affair happens, Alice Sadie Celine is sharp in its musings on the sometimes boring predictability of horny human impulses.”

The Atlantic reviews Andrey Platonov’s recently re-released 1929 novel Chevengur, tr. by Robert Chandler & Elizabeth Chandler (NYRB Classics): “Chevengur shows how an embrace of violence destroys the soul of a nation, and lays bare humanity’s inexhaustible capacity for carnage in the search for a better future.”

Briefly Noted

LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins (St. Martin’s), the top holds title of the week.

PW rounds up January’s book club picks.

Poet Cynthia Zarin discusses her new novel, Inverno (Farrar), with LA Times. 

USA Today shares revelations from Boy George’s new book, Karma: My Autobiography (Mango). People also has details from the new memoir.

Entertainment Weekly shares an excerpt from So Fetch: The Making of Mean Girls (And Why We’re Still So Obsessed with It) by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong (Dey Street; LJ starred review), which publishes next week. 

Wired reports on a glut of AI-generated books on Amazon. 

CBC explores book challenges and the gamification of reading. 

Keanu Reeves is collaborating with author China Miéville on a new novel. Del Rey will publish The Book of Elsewhere, inspired by the actor’s comic book series BRZRKR, in July. GMA has the announcement.

NYT highlights 5 novels about plagiarism.

Bustle suggests 6 new books to start the year.

Salon previews 9 celebrity memoirs arriving in 2024.

Tor previews new science fiction titles for January. 

ElectricLit lists 7 books set in Turkey.

CrimeReads shares “5 Great Thrillers That Deliver the Social Commentary.”

Authors on Air

NPR’s Fresh Air talks with Annie Liontas about their new book, Sex with a Brain Injury: On Concussion and Recovery (Scribner). 

LitHub shares its “2024 Literary Film & TV Preview.”

The Guardian reviews Queen Camilla’s books podcast. 

The Atlantic considers “American Fiction and the ‘Just Literature’ Problem.”

A new Star Wars movie, The Mandalorian and Grogu (with assoc. titles), is headed to the big screen. GMA shares the announcement. 

Netflix’s 3 Body Problem, based on the novel by Cixin Liu, gets a new trailer.

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