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Awards & Buzzy Book News

The winners of the 2021 National Books Awards are announced, including Jason Mott for Hell of a Book (Dutton: Penguin Random House) and Tiya Miles for All That She Carried (Penguin Random House; LJ starred review). NYT  covers this news, featured also on USA Today.

Stephen Graham Jones wins the 2021 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award (MTAVL) for The Only Good Indians (Gallery/Saga: S. & S.; LJ starred review). 

The 2021 Mabati-Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Literature announces the Nyabola Prize shortlist.

New Title Bestsellers

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

Fiction

The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown, & Co.) shines at No. 1 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list and No. 2 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list.

Never by Ken Follett (Viking) debuts at No. 4 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list and No. 5 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list.

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich (Harper) starts at No. 9 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list.

Dark Tarot (Dark, Bk. 1) by Christine Feehan (Berkley) scores No. 13 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Nonfiction

Will by Will Smith (Penguin Random House) debuts at No. 1 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list and No. 3 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow (Farrar) rises to No. 2 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list and No. 9 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

My Body by Emily Ratajkowski (Metropolitan: Macmillan) starts at No. 7 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list.

Reviews

The Washington Post reviews O Beautiful by Jung Yun (St. Martin’s; LJ starred review): "This is not a novel about a woman who learns the meaning of home, but rather, about one who realizes how much she already knows about who she is and where she belongs."

NYT reviews The 9.9%: The New Aristocracy That is Entrenching Inequality and Warping Our Culture by Matthew Stewart (S. & S.): "A former partner at a management consulting firm, Stewart is interested in tracing how the “thoughts and desires” of his own professional class exacerbate inequality, a welcome if not entirely original idea (in his 2017 book “Dream Hoarders,” the economist Richard Reeves made a similar argument about the upper middle class). Unfortunately, Stewart’s portrait of the 9.9 percent draws on few firsthand interviews with members of this class."

Book Marks shares "5 Reviews You Need to Read This Week."

Briefly Noted

Bomb Magazine chats with Farah Ali about the evolution of People Want to Live (McSweeney’s) and how the collection took shape from the earliest story to completion.

The Millions speaks with Randon Billings Noble, editor of A Harp in the Stars: An Anthology of Lyric Essays (University of Nebraska) about the power of the lyric essay.

The Kirkus Review features Jonathan Lee, The Great Mistake (Knopf), as part of a profile on the “Best Fiction of 2021.”

Diana Gabaldon, author of Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (Delacorte), talks to NYT By the Book about avoiding "books where bad things happen to children" and more.

Jeffrey Cranor and Janina Matthewson, co-authors of You Feel It Just Below the Ribs (Harper Perennial) discuss “how a fiction podcast empire spawned a deeply weird dystopian novel” with the Los Angeles Times.

Emily Ratajkowski, My Body (Metropolitan: Macmillan), critiques "capitalism, the commodification of one's image, and much more" in an interview with The Nation.

NYT Roving Eye features the work of Rutu Modan, the Israeli graphic novelist who writes about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through comics including the upcoming Tunnels (Macmillan).

NYT's Inside the Best-Seller List explores cookbooks including The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Super Easy! by Ree Drummond (William Morrow: HarperCollins) and Feeding the Soul (Because It's My Business): Finding Our Way to Joy, Love, and Freedom by Tabitha Brown (Morrow).

Anton Hur writes about translating Sang Young Park’s Love in the Big City (Grove Press) and “the importance of feeling fully seen” for Lit Hub. 

Dave Eggers, The Every (McSweeney’s), answers the Book Marks Questionnaire.

Haruki Murakami discusses his travel t-shirt collection in an upcoming book of essays Murakami T: The T-Shirts I Love (Knopf). NYT talks to the author.

Oprah Daily has a cover reveal for Douglas Stuart’s Young Mungo (Grove Press). Tor.com reveals the cover for Speaking Bones by Ken Liu (S. & S.). 

Fox News announces Amalia, a biography about Netherlands’ Princess Catharina-Amalia to be released before her birthday.

Tor.com lists “Five Stories About Living to See Another Day.”

The November GalleyChat spreadsheet is posted at Earlyword.

NYT has “What to Listen To: Audiobooks." 

Authors on Air

NPR’s Fresh Air has an interview with journalist and author Nikole Hannah-Jones, editor of The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story with the New York Times Magazine (One World; LJ starred review), about why “Black people shouldn’t be an asterisk in U.S. history.”

NPR’s Code Switch discusses new books whose “characters are the light” including The Sentence by Louise Erdrich (Harper), Hunting by Stars by Cherie Dimaline (Abrams), and The Barren Grounds by David A. Robertson (Puffin Canada: Penguin Random House).

Larissa Pham, Pop Song (Catapult: Penguin Random House), talks about "the memoirist's project of self-excavation" with Brad Listi on the Otherppl podcast.

Hermione Hoby discusses "balancing pleasure and politics" in her new book Virtue (Riverhead) with The Maris Review podcast.

Adaptive rights to the Mind’s Eye book series by Douglas E. Richards is purchased by Kodiak Pictures for a franchise of films. Variety has the exclusive.

TKO Studios, a graphic novel publisher, has signed a television deal with New Regency for adaptations, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

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