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Awards, News & Booklists

CrimeReads has “The Best Crime Novels of 2023.”

ElectricLit names the "Best Novels of 2023."

Slate picks "The 10 Best Literary Rediscoveries of 2023."

Vulture lists “The Best Memoirs of 2023.”

Locus shares the Hugo Award voting statistics. 

The virtual Penguin Random House Winter Book & Author Festival 2023 is today. 

Earlyword's GalleyChat will also be held today from 4p.m-5p.m. EST.

"Congress Introduces New Bill to Fight Book Bans in Schools," Publishers Weekly reports.

Simon & Schuster announces a new board of directors. NYT reports.

Influential writer, director and producer Norman Lear dies at 101. NYT has an obituary. PBS Newshour also remembers Lear.

New Title Bestsellers

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

Fiction

Unnatural Death by Patricia Cornwell (Grand Central) turns up No. 9 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list and No. 23 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Heaven Official's Blessing: Tian Guan Ci Fu Vol. 8 by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, illus. by ZeldaCW (Seven Seas) opens at No. 14 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Nonfiction: 

Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy’s Fight for Survival by Omid Scobie (Dey Street) checks No. 12 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list. 

How to Be the Love You Seek: Break Cycles, Find Peace, and Heal Your Relationships by Dr. Nicole LePera finds No. 21 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Reviews

NYT reviews Falling Rocket: James Whistler, John Ruskin, and the Battle for Modern Art by Paul Thomas Murphy (Pegasus; LJ starred review): “But this is an unashamedly approachable ‘good read’ (as befits an author with several advanced degrees in Victorian studies), with only the slightest whiff of the cut-and-paste potboiler, deploying the sort of prose in which a painting is described as “a stunner” and declaring that Gandhi read Ruskin with ‘earth-shattering consequences’.”; Into Siberia: George Kennan's Epic Journey Through the Brutal, Frozen Heart of Russia by Gregory J. Wallance (St. Martin’s): “In Wallance’s bracing narrative, Kennan emerges as a cheerful, deeply decent companion, an uncompromising observer whose greatest strength was his ability to change his mind. He’s a welcome change from the callous imperialists who people most Victorian travelogues, and his humanity allows Into Siberia to delve into horror without succumbing to despair.”

Washington Post reviews The Manuscripts Club: The People Behind a Thousand Years of Medieval Manuscripts by Christopher de Hamel (Penguin Pr.; LJ starred review): “Anyone interested in medieval illumination, intellectual history, book collecting or the evolution of the art market should obviously seek out The Manuscripts Club, but so should readers who simply enjoy New Yorker-style profiles of the learned, colorful and obsessive.”; Founding Partisans: Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams and the Brawling Birth of American Politics by H. W. Brands (Doubleday): “Brands ably guides the reader through the distinctions between these movements and their leaders. The quirks distinguishing complex men such as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Madison and Hamilton are convincingly depicted — as are the differences in their ideologies.”; The Book at War: How Reading Shaped Conflict and Conflict Shaped Reading by Andrew Pettegree (Basic Books): “Books and war, he argues, are closely intertwined. Books have conditioned readers to expect and subsequently support war. They have been vectors of ideology and plunder for victors. Yet they have also represented great solace and solidarity in times of combat, for civilians taking cover and for soldiers on the front lines.”

Bookmarks shares “The Best Reviewed Nonfiction of 2023.”

Briefly Noted

LJ has new prepub alerts.

The Millions continues its “Year in Reading” series with recommendations from James Frankie Thomas, Kristen R. Ghodsee, and Taylor Byas. 

A California book club read James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake for 28 years. NYT reports on them starting it again.

Liz Cheney, Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning (Little, Brown), tells People that her father feared for her safety on January 6th.

FoxNews talks with Martin Bennett, author of Wounded Tiger (Brown Books), about the Japanese pilot who led the surprise attack on United States forces at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

BBC talks with author Ken Follett on "understanding the present through history."

CBC has 14 books for the holiday spirit.

USA Today shows readers where to start with Stephen King.

BookRiot answers: "Which Octavia Butler Books Should You Read First?"

Sigrid Nunez, author of The Vulnerables (Riverhead), answers NYT’s “By the Book” questionnaire.

NYT’s “Inside the Best-Seller List” focuses on Geddy Lee’s memoir, My Effin Life (Harper). 

Authors On Air

NPR’s Code Switch features Kai Cheng Thom’s Falling Back in Love with Being Human : Letters to Lost Souls (Dial). 

Megan Follows directs an all-star Canadian cast in a new Audible Original of L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, read as a radio play. CBC has the story.

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