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Awards, News & Best Books

Samantha Harvey’s Orbital (Atlantic Monthly; LJ starred review) wins the Booker Prize. NYT, Washington Post,  BBC, The Guardian and LA Times have coverage. Judge Sara Collins wrote in The Guardian: “Orbital is such a small book, but it seemed as though all of life was in it.”

Time Releases “The 100 Must-Read Books of 2024.”

Arthur Sze will receive the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry.

The Ignyte Awards winners are announced. Reactor has the story. 

LitHub has short Q&As with the 2024 National Book Award finalists. 

Voting has opened for the Goodreads Choice Awards, BookRiot reports. 

The Florida Department of Education released new data about books removed by local school districts, AP reports.

FoxNews highlights the economic benefit of borrowing books from the library.

Reviews

The Guardian reviews Didion and Babitz by Lili Anolik (Scribner): “This is vivid, entertaining stuff and often gallops along as if it’s been up all night at one of Didion and Dunne’s notorious Franklin Avenue gatherings, but it is, perhaps, more provocative than entirely convincing.”

Star Tribune reviews The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer, illus. by John Burgoyne (Scribner): “It’s her main message, that caring for the world is a win for all of us because it means ‘we have joy and justice on our side.’”

Slate reviews Lazarus Man by Richard Price (Farrar): “Some might call Lazarus Man gritty—especially when Price clocks the ‘cooked-diaper-smelling stairs’ of an old tenement—but the novel has a surprisingly tender heart.” The Atlantic also reviews: “The currency that Lazarus Man—a patchwork of scenes from urban working-class life, set in the spring of 2008—trades in is the micro-epiphany.”

Briefly Noted

LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for To Die For by David Baldacci (Grand Central), the top holds title of the week. 

LJ has new prepub alerts. 

Electric Lit recaps Banned Books USA’s actions in Florida this year. The organization wound down its spending in October.

Sports Illustrated lists the 10 best sports books of the year.

LitHub shares 24 new books out this week. 

Parade highlights new releases for the week. 

ElectricLit has “7 Books of Speculative Feminism Written by Women.”

Popsugar has “48 of the Best Books by Women Authors to Read in Your Lifetime.”

Parade highlights the forthcoming book Invisible Strings: 113 Poets Respond to the Songs of Taylor Swift, ed. by Kristie Frederick Daugherty (Ballantine), due out December 3.

The Rumpus talks with torrin a. greathouse, author of DEED (Wesleyan Univ.), about her research and writing process. 

Bustle chats with Cat Cohen about her favorite books. 

BookRiot shares more of this year’s outstanding book covers. 

Weike Wang, Rental House (Riverhead), answers Elle’s “Shelf Life” questionnaire. 

Muriel Leung talks with Datebook about writing How To Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster (Norton).

Esquire argues “Why Men Should Read ‘Cool Girl’ Lit.”

Vox makes a case: “Why libraries need librarians.”

Authors on Air

Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, illus. by John Burgoyne (Scribner), is a guest on B&N’s Poured Over podcast. 

John Grisham and Jim McCloskey, Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions (Doubleday), discuss their book and the work of the Centurion organization, with PBS Newshour.

Chicago Tribune talks with three local librarians about their new podcast, Checked Out.

Lena Dunham will adapt Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon by Michael Lewis (Norton) for film, Variety reports.

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