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Awards & Book News

The shortlist is announced for the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing. The Bookseller reports.

The shortlist is announced for the Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize for nonfiction. The Bookseller has coverage.

The longlist for the U.S. and Canada Republic of Consciousness Prize is released, honoring the best books from independent presses. CBC has the news.

Worldcon Intellectual Property, which owns the trademarks of the World Science Fiction Society and the Hugo Awards, has censured the administrators of the 2023 Chengdu Worldcon Hugos and announced several resignations. Reactor and Locus have coverage.

The American Booksellers Association is donating archives to Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Shelf Awareness has the news.

The Academy of American Poets receives its largest-ever donation, from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, NPR reports.

Publishing Perspectives and Publishers Weekly report on Simon & Schuster’s centennial celebration, which will be accompanied by special programming and a curated selection of 100 books from its 100 years.

Anne Edwards, the “Queen of Biography” who profiled Vivien Leigh, Katharine Hepburn, Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, and Ronald Reagan, has died at 96. NYT has an obituary.

Horror writer Brian Lumley has died at 86. Reactor has an obituary.

New Title Best Sellers

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

Fiction

Gothikana by RuNyx (Bramble) scares up No. 3 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list and No. 4 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best-Seller List.

Random in Death by J.D. Robb (St. Martin’s) kills at No. 3 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best-Seller List and No. 5 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar (Knopf; LJ starred review) takes No. 11 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best-Seller List.

Nonfiction

Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum by Antonia Hylton (Legacy Lit) achieves No. 4 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best-Seller List.

One in a Millennial: On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting In by Kate Kennedy (St. Martin’s) reaches No. 5 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best-Seller List.

Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine by Uché Blackstock (Viking) holds No. 7 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best-Seller List.

5 Ingredients Mediterranean: Simple Incredible Food by Jamie Oliver (Flatiron) serves up No. 7 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Big Bites: Wholesome, Comforting Recipes That Are Big on Flavor, Nourishment, and Fun by Kat Ashmore cooks up No. 14 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself by Crystal Hefner (Grand Central) grabs No. 14 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best-Seller List, though some retailers report receiving bulk orders.

The Showman: Inside the Invasion That Shook the World and Made a Leader of Volodymyr Zelensky by Simon Shuster (Morrow; LJ starred review) shows up No. 15 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best-Seller List.

Reviews

LA Times reviews Hard by a Great Forest by Leo Vardiashvili (Riverhead; LJ starred review): “For a novel with such a gloomy setup, Great Forest has a commercial-fiction spring in its step. Some of that derives from the fact that Saba narrates in the present tense…giving the novel some forward thrust.”

Vox reviews Come and Get It by Kiley Reid (Putnam): “This is a darker, more ambitious project [than Such a Fun Age]. It aims to withhold easy satisfactions, to frustrate, to condemn. It’s only partially successful.”

Washington Post reviews the Penguin Classics re-release of The Need for Roots by Simone Weil, tr. by Ros Schwartz (LJ starred review): “[Weil’s] last work is certainly a classic, but a coherent and convincing argument it is not.”

NYT reviews The Women by Kristin Hannah (St. Martin’s): “Hannah’s real superpower is her ability to hook you along from catastrophe to catastrophe, sometimes peering between your fingers, because you simply cannot give up on her characters.” 

Briefly Noted

The Millions talks to Kiley Reid, author of Come and Get It (Putnam).

Washington Post interviews Sarah Ditum about her book Toxic: Women, Fame, and the Tabloid 2000s (Abrams).

Diana Khoi Nguyen, author of Root Fractures: Poems (Scribner), takes LitHub’s “The Annotated Nightstand” survey.

NYT goes “Inside the Best-Seller List” with Michele Norris, author of Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity (S. & S.).

LitHub has an interview with Alexandra Auder, Don’t Call Me Home: A Memoir (Viking).

Vogue speaks with Dolly Alderton, author of Good Material (Knopf), the February Read with Jenna pick.

Locus releases its annual Recommended Reading List of the best SF, fantasy, and horror books published in 2023.

LitHub rounds up “January’s Best Reviewed Fiction,” “January’s Best Reviewed Nonfiction,” and “AudioFile’s Best Audiobooks of January.”

CBC has a reading list of works by Black writers who were featured in the CBC documentary series For the Culture with Amanda Parris.

The Guardian shares “What we’re reading: writers and readers on the books they enjoyed in January” and five of the best books about gossip.

LitHub recommends “The Literary Film & TV You Need to Stream in February.”

NYT digs up “The Long and Bloody History of True Crime Lit.”

NYT makes the case that Mary McCarthy’s 1952 novel The Groves of Academe “explains the crisis in higher education.”

Bustle argues that “‘Lives of the Wives’ Books Won’t Save Us.”

NYT has an essay on “What Murder Mysteries Solve.”

Authors on Air

Publishers Weekly goes “Behind Elin Hilderbrand and Tim Ehrenberg’s Bookish Podcast with Local Flavor.”

PBS Canvas covers the romantasy trend, including an interview with Rebecca Yarros.

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