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Awards & Book News

John Vaillant wins the Baillie Gifford Prize for Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World (Knopf). The Guardian has coverage, as do NPR and Publishing Perspectives.

Kim Stanley Robinson wins the Hans Carl von Carlowitz Sustainability Award for the German translation of his novel The Ministry for the Future (Orbit).

The winners and runner ups in the 10 categories of the National Outdoor Book Awards are announced.

The Bookseller of Inverness by S.G. MacLean (Quercus) is the Waterstones Book of the Year for Scotland, and Sarn Helen: A Journey Through Wales, Past, Present, and Future by Tom Bullough (Granta) is the Book of the Year for Wales. The Bookseller has coverage.

In Ascension by Martin MacInnes (Grove) and Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient Roman World by Mary Beard (Liveright: Norton) are Blackwell’s Books of the Year. The Bookseller has coverage.

The shortlist for the CBC Poetry Prize is announced.

Washington Post names its 10 best books of 2023.

Book Riot shares its list of the best books of 2023.

Page to Screen

November 17

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, based on the series by Suzanne Collins. Lionsgate. Reviews | Trailer

November 22

I Don't Expect Anyone To Believe Me, based on the novel by Juan Pablo Villalobos, tr. by Daniel Hahn. Netflix. Reviews | Trailer

Leave the World Behind, based on the novel by Rumaan Alam. Netflix. Reviews | Trailer

The Velveteen Rabbit, based on the children’s book by Margery Williams. Apple TV+. Reviews | Trailer

Reviews

Washington Post reviews Up Late: Poems by Nick Laird (Norton): “Laird has grown from a poet of brainy Seamus Heaney-esque control to a wild poet-soul attentive to everything in poetic omniscience, challenging readers to see what he sees in the double witnessing of art’s power”; The Upcycled Self: A Memoir on the Art of Becoming Who We Are by Tariq Trotter (One World): “Trotter does not discuss a single Roots song. Instead, he’s out to reconstruct his ‘communally built self,’ honoring the many family members who strove to nurture a young man with artistic promise”; and Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art by Lauren Elkin (Farrar): “She’s inspired by her subjects but not a cheerleader; this book is devoted to the qualities of the Art Monster, but not uncritical of the persona.”

NYT has a joint review of short story collections by Yiyun Li, Claire Keegan, Alexandra Chang and Lore Segal.

LitHub rounds up the best-reviewed books of the week.

Briefly Noted

The Rumpus has a Q&A with Susan Kiyo Ito, author of I Would Meet You Anywhere: A Memoir (Mad Creek; LJ starred review).

Electric Lit interviews Salar Abdoh, author of A Nearby Country Called Love (Viking).

LA Times talks to California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick.

Vanity Fair speaks with Garrett M. Graff, author of UFO: The Inside Story of the U.S. Government’s Search for Alien Life Here—and Out There (Avid Reader).

Vogue talks to curator Helen Molesworth about her book Open Questions: Thirty Years of Writing About Art (Phaidon).

Shondaland interviews audiobook narrator Natalie Naudus and makes a list of the best celebrity memoir audiobooks read by the authors.

CrimeReads has a conversation with Max Marshall, author of Among the Bros: A Fraternity Crime Story (Harper).

BBC has a feature on Radicals and Rogues: The Women Who Made New York Modern by Lottie Whalen (Reaktion).

Electric Lit lists “7 Novels About Characters Driven by Their Cravings.”

NYT selects “9 New Books We Recommend This Week” and “6 New Paperbacks To Read This Week.”

Book Riot rounds up 8 absurdist fiction books.

Entertainment Weekly recommends three fall 2023 romance novels.

Vulture tries to uncover “What’s So Controversial About the National Book Awards?,” while Publishing Perspectives summarizes the National Book Awards ceremony as “Unity in a Season of Division.”

Vanity Fair investigates the “literary smear campaign” that led to novelist “Jerzy Kosinski’s fall from grace.”

Authors on Air

PBS NewsHour interviews Keegan-Michael Key and Elle Key, authors of The History of Sketch Comedy: A Journey Through the Art and Craft of Humor (Chronicle).

Darrin M. McMahon, author of Equality: The History of an Elusive Idea (Basic), talks to LitHub’s Keen On podcast.

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