The National Book Foundation and the Sloan Foundation announce 2025 selections for the Science + Literature program: The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong, and Meltwater: Poems by Claire Wahmanholm. Chimwemwe Undi is selected as Canada’s parliamentary poet laureate. Wole Soyinka receives the Sharjah Lifetime Achievement in Literature Award. The future of libraries and arts agencies is unclear amid a federal funding freeze (that has been halted for now). NYPL releases a study on public libraries’ connection to their patrons’ well-being. Plus, new title bestsellers.
The National Book Foundation and the Sloan Foundation announce 2025 selections for the Science + Literature program, which awards fiction, nonfiction, and poetry about science and technology. The selected titles are The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel (Riverhead), An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong (Random; an LJ Best Book), and Meltwater: Poems by Claire Wahmanholm (Milkweed).
Chimwemwe Undi, author of Scientific Marvel: Poems (House of Anansi), is selected as Canada’s parliamentary poet laureate, CBC reports.
Novelist Wole Soyinka receives the Sharjah Lifetime Achievement in Literature Award at the UAE’s new Sharjah Festival of African Literature, Publishing Perspectives reports.
The future of libraries and arts agencies is unclear amid a federal funding freeze (that has been halted for now), Publishers Weekly reports. LitHub also explores how the administrative action affects library funding.
Washington Post reports on the rule banning students in Utah from bringing banned books to school, which Info Docket covered last week.
NYPL releases a study on public libraries’ connection to their patrons’ well-being. LitHub has a summary of the findings.
FSG launches a science imprint, Quanta Books, Publishers Weekly reports.
Links for the week: NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers | NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers | USA Today Bestselling Books
Fiction
Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros (Entangled: Red Tower) rushes to No. 1 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list and on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.
We Do Not Part by Han Kang, tr. by e. yaewon & Paige Aniyah Morris (Hogarth; LJ starred review) reaches No. 13 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list.
Nonfiction
Dare I Say It: Everything I Wish I’d Known About Menopause by Naomi Watts (Crown) gets No. 5 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list.
Washington Post reviews This Beautiful, Ridiculous City: A Graphic Memoir by Kay Sohini (Ten Speed Graphic): “This is not to say that Sohini’s autobiographical narrative—which reads, at times, as a series of interrelated personal essays rather than a chronological coming-of-age or immigration story—treats its central subject uncritically. Sohini is clear-eyed about the complex global machinery that makes New York so alluring”; Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood (Riverhead): “Given the monastic pacing of Charlotte Wood’s Stone Yard Devotional, I suppose it’s appropriate that we’ve had to wait patiently for it. Wood’s fellow Australians have been praising this story about a small abbey of nuns since the novel was published in 2023…. It’s just as extraordinary as the whispers from abroad suggested. But don’t recommend it to your book club, because if some of your members don’t like it—and some certainly won’t—you may not have the stamina to tolerate them any longer”;
NYT reviews Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart by Nicholas Carr (Norton) & The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource by Chris Hayes (Penguin Pr.): “Both authors argue that something fundamental to us, as humans, is being exploited for inhuman ends. We are primed to seek out new information; yet our relentless curiosity makes us ill equipped for the infinite scroll of the information age, which we indulge in to our detriment”; The Suicides by Antonio Di Benedetto, tr. by Esther Allen (NYRB): “All three [of Di Benedetto’s] books have now been masterfully translated by Esther Allen, who has managed to capture the humor, the sobriety and the oscillations between realism and mental fragmentation that constitute the essence of Di Benedetto’s fiction”; and three new romances: A Bloomy Head by J. Winifred Butterworth (High Flying Poultry), Les Normaux: A Graphic Novel by Janine Janssen with S. Al Sabado (Avon), and Make Room for Love by Darcy Liao (self-published).
The Guardian reviews Thank You for Calling the Lesbian Line by Elizabeth Lovatt (Legacy Lit): “A compelling, funny, intelligent read that any queer woman (or reader) will be lucky to come across, it recounts the stories of lesbians and the queer community from the late ’70s all the way through to the ’00s with warmth, rigorous research and a touching earnestness in striving to be inclusive—which feels very fitting for this project.”
LA Times reviews Louis B. Mayer & Irving Thalberg: The Whole Equation by Kenneth Turan (Yale Univ.): “Turan is well paired with his subject. He grew up with Jewish immigrant parents going to thriving Brooklyn movie palaces. He’s written about how the ‘tradition of Talmudic exegesis; prepared him for life as a critic. Decades of it—including more than 30 years writing for The Times—has equipped him with a breadth of reading that enables him to pepper his historical canvas with a dazzling range of perspectives.”
LitHub has “5 Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week.”
The Guardian interviews Gill Hornby, author of the novel Miss Austen, which has been adapted as a BBC series.
Hanif Kureishi, author of Shattered: A Memoir (Ecco), answers NYT’s “By the Book” questionnaire.
Dan Brown announces a new novel featuring Robert Langdon; The Secret of Secrets is due out from Doubleday on Sept. 9, People reports.
Comedians Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers, host of the Las Culturistas podcast, are writing a book, The Rules of Culture, Vol. 1, due out from Andy Cohen’s imprint at Crown in 2026, according to Hollywood Reporter.
NPR shares Lunar New Year romances.
CrimeReads identifies the best debut novels of the month.
NYT gathers 20 books coming in February.
LitHub selects the 14 best books covers of January.
Vulture has a feature on Sarah McNally (owner of the NYC bookstore McNally Jackson) and her impact on the city’s reading habits.
William E. Leuchtenburg, scholar of F.D.R. and the presidency and author most recently of Patriot Presidents: From George Washington to John Quincy Adams (Oxford Univ.), has died at 102; NYT has an obituary and reflections of his life by his friend Ken Burns.
Kirkus’s Fully Booked podcast talks to Edmund White, author of The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir (Bloomsbury).
On The Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast, André Alexis, author of Other Worlds: Stories (FSG Originals), discusses Martha Baillie’s There Is No Blue (Coach House).
Today, NPR’s Fresh Air will interview Ricky Riccardi, author of Stomp Off, Let’s Go: The Early Years of Louis Armstrong (Oxford Univ.).
Shelf Awareness rounds up the schedule for this weekend’s Book TV on C-SPAN 2.
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