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Awards 

The 2021 Aurora Awards are announced, with Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey: Random House) winning the award for best fiction. 

Antje Rávik Strubel wins the 2021 German Book Prize. Publishing Perspectives has details. 

Rebecca Campbell wins the 2020 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for An Important Failure. Tor has the story. 

A new Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction award will launch in 2022. The annual $25,000 cash prize will be given to “a single book-length work of imaginative fiction.” The first prize will be awarded October 21, 2022, Le Guin’s birthday. Locus has details.

Reviews

The NYT reviews Orwell's Roses by Rebecca Solnit (Viking): "creates a frame large enough to contain both revolutionary brilliance and unwitting reactionary associations in the same person — large enough to contain life’s contradictions in a way that only the essay, that humble literary mouthpiece, can.” Also, The Book of Mother by Violaine Huisman, trans. by Leslie Camhi (Scribner): “a portrait in three parts, is also a study in perspective, a rummaging for the vantage from which its author, Violaine Huisman, might see her mother, Catherine, anew.” And, Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon by Mark McGurl (Verso): “Mark McGurl asks a narrower question: What does Amazon’s rise mean for literature? And conversely, what can literature reveal about the world that Amazon has made?” Also, Unprotected by Billy Porter (Abrams; LJ starred review): “This is not just a memoir, saints; this is a testimony. He is telling a story and he is spilling the tea and he is working through deep wounds in pursuit of a clearer path to a full experience of personhood” And, Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History by Alex von Tunzelmann (Harper): “If a book’s purpose is to tell you stories and leave you with an idea, this idea of better styles of commemoration will stay with me.” Plus, The Writing of the Gods: The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone by Edward Dolnick (Scribner): “Dolnick exuberantly captures the frustrations and triumphs of scholars as they puzzle out the meaning of long-dead runes, ‘seduced by tantalizing clues and then careening into dead ends and losing hope, but then spotting new markers and dashing off jubilantly once more’.” Lastly, Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World by Wil Haygood (Knopf): "This is sweeping history, but in Haygood’s hands it feels crisp, urgent and pared down. He doesn’t try to be encyclopedic. He takes a story he needs, tells it well, and ties it to the next one. He carries you along on dispassionate analysis and often novelistic detail."

NPR reviews Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout (Random): "You needn't have read Strout's previous books about Lucy Barton to appreciate this one — though, chances are, you'll want to." And, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times by Jane Goodall & Douglas Abrams (Celadon: Macmillan): "Last of Goodall's reasons to hope is what she calls the indomitable human spirit, the ability we have individually and collectively to wrest a victory from what appears to be an inevitable defeat."

The Washington Post reviews The Every by Dave Eggers (McSweeney’s): "For hundreds of pages, that’s The Every: Eggers presents one dystopian product after another, like an Orwellian version of QVC. But this emphasis on apps and services only exposes the novel’s static plot and increasingly hectoring thesis." And, Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout (Random): "Oh William! investigates those timely themes — loneliness, grief — in such a rich, mesmerizing narrative, I devoured it greedily." Also, My Sweet Girl by Amanda Jayatissa (Berkley): "a terrifying and twisty tale laced with secrets and otherworldly horror. Jayatissa incorporates elements of a classic Sri Lankan folk tale about a ghost named Mohini, a terrifying creature who stitches together the story’s double narrative and elevates the fright level." Plus, The Story of Marvel Studios: The Making of the Marvel Cinematic Universe by Tara Bennett, Paul Terry & Kevin Feige (Abrams): "documents events before and after the MCU’s Big Bang moment. The books (plural, there are two volumes), at more than 500 pages, feel like they could substitute for a kettlebell in a Chris Hemsworth-inspired weightlifting routine."

The Guardian reviews Orwell's Roses by Rebecca Solnit (Viking): “The green-fingered and the politically committed alike will want to curl up with this book as the gardening year draws to a close and we reflect on a time during which nature has been more of a solace than usual. It’s been a good year for the roses, at least."

Briefly Noted

USA Today  talks with Billy Porter about his new memoir, Unprotected (Abrams; LJ starred review).

USA Today also has a Q&A with Nikki Sixx about his memoir, The First 21: How I Became Nikki Sixx (Hachette), "fatherhood in his 60s, what he learned about his family history and why he’s stayed sober for 21 years."

Entertainment Weekly talks with Chibundu Onuzo, Sankofa (Catapult), about reading and writing life.

Electric Lit has an interview with Kalani Pickhart, I Will Die in a Foreign Land (Two Dollar Radio), about the political situation in the Ukraine and the ethics of writing about recent events.

Deesha Philyaw, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (West Virginia Univ.) chats with ElectricLit about elevating trans voices.

Tananarive Due shares her thoughts on the modern Black horror landscape at Essence.  

NYT profiles Iole Lucchese, new chairwoman at Scholastic.  

The LA Times shares reactions from East African novelists to Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Nobel Prize in literature.

People has more on the Carmen Mola controversy. 

Vulture has a piece on The Meaning of Mariah Carey by Mariah Carey (St. Martin's Griffin), due out in paperback November 2nd, and "the fiction of the color line."

BookRiot explores the resurgent popularity of backlist titles, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk (Viking; LJ starred review), and Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Milkweed Editions).

The San Francisco Chronicle has “Indigenous writers tell stories that honor, and upend, Native traditions,” citing works by Louise Erdrich, Tommy Orange, and more.

María Amparo Escandón L.A. Weather (Flatiron), shares “8 books about living in Los Angeles” at ElectricLit.

Shondaland has “14 Cozy Romantic Reads.”

Lifehacker has Squid Game read-alikes.

HipLatina has “10 Latinx Horror Films That’ll Give You Chills.”

NYT shares tips on “How to Recommend a Book.”

“Thomas Mann's magic piano, heart of 1940s L.A. intellectual life, comes home.” The LA Times reports.

Popular Irish Poet Brendan Kennelly has died at 85. The Irish Times has an obituary.  

Authors On Air

NPR’s Book of the Day features a 2012 interview with Colin Powell about his memoir, It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership (Harper), and his legacy. NPR’s Fresh Air also remembers Powell, and shares an excerpt from a 1995 interview with Terry Gross.

NPR’s Morning Edition speaks with Jane Goodall about her new book, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times written with Douglas Abrams (Celadon: Macmillan), about the nature of hope. Morning Edition also talks with Jane Wong about her new collection of poetry, How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (Alice James Bks.).

Good Morning America has an interview with Billy Porter about his new memoir, Unprotected (Abrams; LJ starred review), which he hopes helps others to 'release the shame and choose yourself’.”

Ron Howard & Clint Howard, The Boys: A Memoir of Hollywood and Family (Morrow; LJ starred review) visit Drew Barrymore and Shelly Tygielski,  Sit Down to Rise Up: How Radical Self-Care Can Change the World (New World Library) visits Tamron Hall tomorrow. 

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