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News, Awards & Best of the Year

LoanStars releases its Best of the Brightest 2021 list, featuring top pick The Strangers by Katherena Vermette. 

More "Best Of" lists arrive including NYT 's “The Best Cookbooks of 2021,” and  Critics' Choice. 

Book Page has “Reader’s choice: Your favorite books of 2021" 

The Guardian shares “Books that explain the world,” the best nonfiction of the year. 

CrimeReads reveals “The Best Espionage Novels of 2021,” 

ElectricLit lists its favorite  Short Story Collections and Nonfiction Books of 2021. 

The LA Times shares critic Mark Athitakis’s “5 best fiction books of 2021.” 

LitHub lists “The Best Reviewed Fiction of 2021.” 

Looking ahead, Bustle previews "The Most Anticipated Books Of 2022."

Leeor Ohayon wins £1,000 V S Pritchett Short Story Prize. The Bookseller has details. 

2021 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards (PMLA) have been announced. Books+Publishing has more. 

IPA Prix Voltaire Laureate Pham Doan Trang Sentenced to nine years for “disseminating anti-state propaganda.”  Publishing Perspectives reports. International humanitarian organizations have condemned the news. 

Public Ethics Commission wants Andrew Cuomo to return earnings from his memoir. NPR reports. LA Times also reports.

Reviews

NYT reviews ˛Sea State: A Memoir by Tabitha Lasley (Ecco): “The book’s hybrid of ethnography, journalism and disclosure might have been disastrous in the hands of someone without Lasley’s candor and style. Instead, Sea State accomplishes what many memoirs do not: It organizes a messy life with a clear vision.”  And, Making Darkness Light: A Life of John Milton by Joe Moshenska (Basic: Hachette): “chooses the ground it highlights, and comes alive in its alert close readings. However, Moshenska’s use of fictional elements in his discussion of Milton’s life is less effective.” Also, You Never Get It Back by Cara Blue Adams (Univ. of Iowa Pr.): “Cara Blue Adams’s evocative first book is described as a collection of interlinked short stories, though it could easily be classified as a novel without the padding.”  Plus, short reviews of three new romances. 

The Washington Post reviews The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed (Knopf): “We can’t, of course, ever know the historical figure Mahmood Hussein Mattan. But with The Fortune Men, Mohamed has given us a clear vision of so many victims caught in the maw of racist legal systems.”

The Guardian reviews Why Food Matters by Paul Freedman (Yale Univ. Pr.): “Freedman is as much in the business of bringing a food sensibility to intellectual inquiry as he is about bringing intellectual inquiry to food: he doesn’t attempt to resolve these questions for all time; instead he relishes their piquancy before moving on to the next course.”

Briefly Noted

LA Times interviews author David Treuer who becomes Editor at Large at Pantheon with a focus on Indigenous writers and emerging voices. Treuer recommends “five indigenous authors you should read right now.”

NYT explores what led up to Anthony Broadwater’s exoneration for the 1981 rape of Alice Sebold. 

Bitch talks with Juhea Kim Beasts of a Little Land (Ecco), about Korean colonial history and why "books should break us open."

Tarana Burke, Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement (Flatiron; LJ starred review), reflects on her "year of pushback" with Bustle.  

Claire Luchette, Agatha of Little Neon (FSG), discusses "how to write men in a story of sisterhood," with ElectricLit.

Tor has an excerpt from the forthcoming horror novel, Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin (Tor Nightfire), due out in February.Tor also recommends must-read speculative short fiction from November 2021 magazine issues.

Adele Stewart reflects on Netflix's Passing, based on the book by Nella Larsen, and "How I carry my racial ambiguity," for Popsugar.

Outlander fans rejoice! Diana Gabaldon tells T&C that she is already writing book 10, likely the last in the series.  

Mel Brooks, All About Me! My Remarkable Life in Show Business (Ballantine; LJ starred review), takes the Proust Questionnaire at Vanity Fair. Plus, Stacey Abrams takes the Shelf Life literary survey at Elle. 

Vox reexamines '90s toxic diet culture through the lens of Impeachment, Spencer, and Katie Couric.

The Washington Post asks: "Should celebrities narrate their audiobooks?" Plus, WP suggests 9 classic ghost stories and mysteries.  

The Guardian rates the top 10 cozy crime novels.

Popsugar suggests 14 Books set in the 1980s.  

Bustle has 10 books to read while waiting for Station Eleven.  

NYT commemorates “Notable Deaths 2021: Books.”

“Linda McAlister, Philosopher and Founder of Feminist Journal, Dies at 82.”  The NYT has an obituary.

Authors On Air

NPR’s Book of the Day talks with Jodi Picoult, Wish You Were Here (Ballantine), about her protagonist’s forced isolation on the Galapagos Islands.

NPR’s Fresh Air has an interview with Grace M. Cho about her new memoir,Tastes Like War: A Memoir (The Feminist Pr. at CUNY).

PBS Canvas explores The Korean Vegan Cookbook: Reflections and Recipes from Omma's Kitchen by Joanne Lee Molinaro (Avery), “an immigrant story told through food.” Audiofile’s Behind the Mic podcast also features Molinaro’s cookbook/memoir. LitHub has a clip.

Malinda Lo discusses winning the National Book Award for Last Night at the Telegraph Club (Dutton Books for Young Readers) with NPR’s Morning Edition.

Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Unfinished: A Memoir (Ballantine: Random House), will visit The View and Seth Meyers tomorrow.  

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