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Awards, News & Book Clubs

Reese Witherspoon selects The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year by Margaret Renkl (Spiegel & Grau) as her 100th book club pick. People has the story.

Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors (Ballantine) is September’s Read with Jenna book club pick.

The Anthony Awards winners are announced. Kirkus has coverage.

Sisters in Crime’s Davitt Awards winners are announced. 

The Washington State Book Award finalists are announced.

Rachael K. Jones wins the Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fiction. Locus has details. 

CBC reflects on this year’s winners of Canada's biggest literary awards. 

LJ offers a reading list for National Hispanic Heritage Month.

Publishers Weekly reports on the return of the Harlem Book Fair.

LitHub explores the controversy around NaNoWriMo’s stance on AI writing.

Lerner Publishing Group has acquired Sundance Newbridge, Publishers Lunch reports.

The Guardian reports that more than 180 UK public libraries closed or turned volunteer-run since 2016, hurting the poorest communities. BBC looks into the data behind the closures. 

Reviews

Washington Post reviews Lovely One by Ketanji Brown Jackson (Random): “More than most, she understands the ways in which racism still constrains American society. But more than most, she also understands that this is not the end of the story”; Colored Television by Danzy Senna (Riverhead): “What’s most rewarding about Colored Television, though, is how effortlessly Senna keeps the wings of this plot from getting clotted with bits of didactic wisdom or social reproof”; and Rethinking Rescue: Dog Lady and the Story of America’s Forgotten People and Pets by Carol Mithers (Counterpoint): “Mithers dives deep into contemporary American approaches to animal welfare—and finds them uncomfortably tethered to our attitudes toward human poverty.”

The Guardian reviews Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner (Scribner): “If shifts of register like this help construct a lively, timely, satisfyingly rough-grained novel of ideas, they also make for an excitingly complex and fascinating narrator.”

Datebook reviews Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout (Random): “Strout’s limpid, clear voice shows great love for her characters, even the tragic ones—maybe especially the tragic ones. She shows no judgment, just enormous empathy for the lives people live.”

Briefly Noted

LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for The Life Impossible by Matt Haig (Viking), the top holds title of the week. 

LJ has new prepub alerts. 

NPR previews 16 books for fall. 

BookRiot highlights the best new books of the month and 20 new queer books for September.

ElectricLit shares “8 Books About Youthful Mistakes That Come Back to Haunt You.”

NYT profiles librarian Amanda Jones and features her new book, That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America (Bloomsbury; LJ starred review). 

Elizabeth Strout’s new book, Tell Me Everything (Random), brings her most beloved characters together; Star Tribune examines the through-line in all of Strout’s novels.

People shares details from a new royal biography, Dancing With Diana: A Memoir by Princess Diana’s dance teacher, Anne Allan (Sutherland).

Samanta Schweblin leads a literary tour through Buenos Aires at NYT.

Ina Garten reveals childhood abuse in her fothcoming memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens (Crown), due out October 1, People reports.

Jay Baron Nicorvo, Best Copy Available: A True Crime Memoir (Univ. of Georgia), answers 10 questions at Poets & Writers.

LA Times highlights Elle Macpherson’s new memoir, elle: Life, Lessons, and Learning To Trust Yourself (BenBella). Already out in Australia, the book will publish in the U.S. on November 19. 

At People, Attica Locke discusses her new book, Guide Me Home (Mulholland), and how she balances screenwriting and writing novels. Locke also talks with CrimeReads about concluding her “Highway 59” series.

People has a preview and cover reveal for Emma Donoghue’s forthcoming novel, The Paris Express (Summit), due out March 18. 

Cree memoirist and novelist Darrel J. McLeod has died at the age of 67. CBC has an obituary. 

Authors on Air

Danzy Senna discusses her new book, Colored Television (Riverhead), with NPR’s Fresh Air.

Ketanji Brown Jackson discusses her new memoir, Lovely One (Random), and her path to the Supreme Court, with NPR’s Consider This.

Nightbitch, based on the novel by Rachel Yoder, gets a trailer. Entertainment Weekly has coverage.

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