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News, Awards, & Best of the Year

Author, critic, and activist bell hooks has died at 69. NPR shares the news. PBS also covers the story. Writers pay tribune to hooks on The Cut. Oprah Daily shares “10 Powerful bell hooks Works on the Intersectionality of Race and Feminism.”

The 2022 Pen America Literary Awards Longlists are announced.

The 2021 Porchlight Business Book Awards Shortlist is announced.

Vulture shares “The Best Books of 2021.”

CrimeReads lists "The Best International Crime Novels of 2021."

Barack Obama shares his "favorite books of 2021" with USA Today.

Tor.com looks ahead to “The 30 Most Anticipated SFF Books of 2022.”

Lit Hub continues to share "The Biggest Literary Stories of the Year: 30 to 11."

New Title Bestsellers

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

Fiction

Call Us What We Carry: Poems by Amanda Gorman (Viking) rises to No. 1 on both the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list and on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Nonfiction

For Such a Time As This by Kayleigh McEnany (S. & S.) starts No. 6 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list and No. 7 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

There and Back by Jimmy Chin (Ten Speed: Penguin Random House) arrives at No. 7 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list.

Reviews

Oprah Daily reviews The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed (Knopf): “Her novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize this year, and it’s not hard to see why: It’s a riveting tale in which Mohamed brings to life a 1950s port city and the injustice that occurred there.”

USA Today reviews Cuba: An American History by Ada Ferrer (Scribner): "Historian Ada Ferrer’s new book offers a fresh look at the long and complicated relationship between Cuba and its larger neighbor to the north, upending long-held conceptions and untangling myth from reality."

NYT gives short reviews for Noble Ambitions by Adrian Tinniswood (Basic: Perseus), The Mountbattens by Andrew Lownie (Pegasus), and The Duchess Countess by Catherine Ostler (Atria).

Lit Hub has "The Best Reviewed Nonfiction of 2021."

Briefly Noted

Marlon James continues his Dark Star Trilogy with Moon Witch, Spider King (Riverhead). Entertainment Weekly gives a first look.

CrimeReads provides a first look, cover reveal, and interview with Amina Akhtar, author of upcoming Kismet. 

Tor.com shares an excerpt of Cassandra Rose Clarke’s The Beholden (Erewhon: Workman).

NYT shares Anne Rice's final interview. Plus, Percival Everett, author of The Trees (Graywolf), talks about "the classic novel that makes [him] cringe" and more. Also, a chat with Stephanie Land, Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive (Hachette), about the recent adaptation of her work and what she wanted to get right.

Tor.com features Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse (S. & S.) in a Spotlight on the 2021 Hugo Awards.

The Millions continues its series on A Year in Reading with Mina Seçkin, author of The Four Humors (Catapult) and also with the thoughts of Carribean Fragoza, Eat the Mouth that Feeds You (City Lights). 

Authors on Air

Amazon has purchased the rights to The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake (Tor: Macmillan). Also, Denis Villeneuve, director of the recent Dune film, will be adapting Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous With Rama (Mariner), according to Tor.com. Variety also reports on this adaptation news.

Alex McElroy, The Atmospherians (Atria; LJ starred review), discusses "how to make a better world without centering yourself" on The Maris Review podcast.

David F. Walker’s comic The Hated will be adapted by Netflix and Michael Starrbury. Deadline reports.

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