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Awards & Best of the Best

2019 and 2020 Sidewise Awards Winners were announced at DisCon III, along with Fan Awards. Locus has details. Adrian Tchaikovsky wins best longform 2020 for The Doors of Eden (Orbit), and Annalee Newitz wins the 2019 award for The Future of Another Timeline (Tor; LJ starred review).

Farview by Kim Fielding wins the 2021 BookLife Prize Fiction contest. PW reports. 

“2021 Governor General's Literary Award winners write about connection” at the CBC.

LitHub releases “The Ultimate Best Books of 2021 List”, collating results from 49 lists. Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe (Doubleday; LJ starred review) makes the most lists at 19. 

The RWA Board sees even more turnover as board memebers resign. 

Reviews

NPR reviews Mothers, Fathers, and Others by Siri Hustvedt (S. & S): “sifts a wide range of memory, experience and disciplinary perspectives into essays that bring into focus the profound contradictions of motherhood. These contradictions, Hustvedt asserts, are eclipsed by the cultural idealization of mothers as the model of self-sacrificing nurturance.” And, Sea State: A Memoir by Tabitha Lasley (Ecco): “As it turns out, Sea State has more than enough calming introspection and roiling antagonisms to make it well worth the ride."

NYT reviews Let's Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World by Danielle Friedman (Putnam): “Her book is very much “pro” exercise, but for the right reasons: not slimming down but mood management, community, spirituality in the corporal.”

The Washington Post reviews Vivian Maier Developed: The Untold Story of the Photographer Nanny by Ann Marks (Atria): “Now there’s another thing she would likely love — the astounding work Marks herself has done in creating this biography. You will surely close this excellent book feeling inspired.”

Briefly Noted

Buzzfeed talks with Holly Black about her forthcoming adult debut fantasy, Book of Night (Tor), and why she made the genre leap. 

Patti Callahan, Once Upon a Wardrobe (Harper Muse; LJ starred review) reflects on Christmas traditions for Parade.

Audible.com enlists top audiobook narrators to read the classic tale, "The Night Before Christmas." USA Today has the story.

Vulture has a photo feature on The Unseen Photos of Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street by Trevor Crafts (Harry N. Abrams).

The Seattle Times shares book lovers’ favorite literary holiday traditions.

BBC explores the rise of “impact narratives”, a long running genre about threats from space. 

The San Francisco Chronicle asks of great literary characters, “What’s in a name?”

USA Today shares the best rom-coms reads of 2021.

LA Times has “The 20 best books of 2021.”

People picks the “best children’s books of 2021.”

CrimeReads selects the best horror fiction of 2021, and the best speculative thrillers and mysteries of 2021.

BookNet Canada has Canada’s bestselling books of 2021.

NYPL offers read-alikes for its top checkouts of 2021.

The Chicago Tribune’s Biblioracle picks his favorite fiction books of 2021.

LA Times offers an appreciation for Eve Babitz, who died last week.

Authors On Air

NPR’s Morning Edition talks with Pamela Paul, editor of The New York Times Book Review, about her book, 100 Things We've Lost to the Internet (Crown).

NPR’s Fresh Air has an interview with Alan Cumming about his memoir, Baggage: Tales from a Fully Packed Life (Dey St.; LJ starred review).

NPR’s Book of the Day talks with Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted (Random House; LJ starred review), about the creative practices that “helped her regain a narrative control of her own life” after a leukemia diagnosis.  

The official trailer for Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts TV special is released. Good Morning America has a preview.

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