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Awards & Buzzy Books News

Finalists for the 44th Los Angeles Times Book Prizes are announced. Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jane Smiley will receive the Robert Kirsch Award for Lifetime Achievement, and Claire Dederer will recieve the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose for her book  Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma (Knopf). Here is the full list of finalists.

Youngsuk “YS” Chi is wins the London Book Fair‘s Lifetime Achievement Award, Publishing Perspectives reports.

Richard Osman will publish the first novel in a new crime series, We Solve Murders, after the success of his “Thursday Murder Club” mystery series. The new title will arrive in September. The Guardian has the story. 

Sales of Matthew Perry’s memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing (Flatiron), have doubled since the actor’s death. People has the story and highlights the Matthew Perry Foundation.

ALA’s Unite Against Book Bans announces a free book résumé resource.

USA Today has coverage on West Virginia HB 4654, which “would allow librarians and teachers to be criminally liable if minors obtain books with 'obscene material.”

Reviews

NYT reviews This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life by Lyz Lenz (Crown): “This American Ex-Wife is a clever, well-argued and thoroughly joyless examination of what Lenz calls the ‘commonplace horror’ of marriage”; The Bloodied Nightgown and Other Essays: And Other Essays by Joan Acocella (Farrar): “I can’t help feeling we didn’t appreciate Acocella enough when we had her. We thought she would always be there—and at least on our shelf she can be”; and Strong Passions: A Scandalous Divorce in Old New York by Barbara Weisberg (Norton): “In Strong Passions, by letting public and private records reanimate this vivid chapter of the past, Weisberg tells a story that fiction could not touch.”

NPR reviews Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story by Leslie Jamison (Little, Brown): “Those who take the book's subtitle seriously, however, will find much to admire and enjoy in its pages, which are, more than anything else, a tribute to the rapturous love Jamison has for her daughter, as well as her attempts to love, or at least accept, the parts of herself that thrive in intensity and turmoil.”

Washington Post reviews Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class by Rob Henderson (Gallery): “It’s unclear if Troubled is intended for fans of inspirational ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ memoirs or readers who turn to nonfiction to understand how larger circumstances shape a life. Ultimately, the book confounds both audiences.”

Datebook reviews Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes by Chantha Nguon, written with Kim Green (Algonquin): “The book is not only an impactful memoir of an extraordinary woman but a human-centered take on an era that has largely been defined by a lack of humanity.”

Briefly Noted

LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for End of Story by A.J. Finn (Morrow), the top holds title of the week. 

LJ has new prepub alerts. 

LA Times has an interview with Eric Klinenberg about his new book, 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed (Knopf; LJ starred review). 

Lyz Lenz talks with Esquire about This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life (Crown).

People previews a forthcoming essay collection from Jenny Slate. Life Form (Little, Brown) will publish in October. 

Tony Award–winning actress Kelly Bishop will publish a memoir, The Third Gilmore Girl (Gallery), in September. People has the announcement. 

The Rumpus talks with Linnea Axelsson, Aednan: An Epic, tr. by Saskia Vogel (Knopf), about using “verse to write this story, and what made her decide to write this novel-in-verse.”

NYT examines the readership of Poor Things by Alasdair Gray (Mariner), the novel on which the film starring Emma Stone is based. 

People talks with Savannah Guthrie about her new book, Mostly What God Does: Reflections on Seeking and Finding His Love Everywhere (Thomas Nelson), including details about her father. Parade also has an interview with Guthrie, about how her Today colleagues supported her new book.

ElectricLit highlights 20 novels in translation. 

BookRiot has 8 horror books in translation. 

AARP lists 9 titles for Black History Month. 

Reactor shares “Five SFF Books About Healers and Medicine.”

ElectricLit shares “7 Books That Celebrate the Healing Magic of Birds” and “7 Novels Inspired by South Asian Mythology and Folklore.”

Authors on Air

AV Club has a primer for the new live action Avatar: The Last Airbender series, with assoc. titles, on Netflix.

FoxNews highlights the case of Johnny Stompanato in the new book, A Murder in Hollywood: The Untold Story of Tinseltown’s Most Shocking Crime by Casey Sherman (Sourcebooks).

Lisa Damour, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers: Raising Connected, Capable, and Compassionate Adolescents (Ballantine; LJ starred review), visits CBS Mornings today.

Actress Jenny Slate, author of the forthcoming Life Form (Little, Brown), visits CBS Mornings and Today tomorrow.

Kat Ashmore, Big Bites: Wholesome, Comforting Recipes That Are Big on Flavor, Nourishment, and Fun (Rodale), visits Live with Kelly and Mark tomorrow.

Dulcé Sloan, Hello, Friends!: Stories of Dating, Destiny, and Day Jobs (Andscape), will appear on Tamron Hall tomorrow.

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