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Awards & Book News

Temple Folk by Aaliyah Bilal (S. & S.) wins the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, which is given to an emerging Black American fiction writer.

Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu, tr. by Sean Cotter (Deep Vellum), wins the Dublin Literary Award.

Ali Bryan’s Coq (Freehand), Patrick deWitt’s The Librarianist (Ecco), and Deborah Willis’s Girlfriend on Mars (Norton) are shortlisted for the Leacock Medal for Canadian humor writing. CBC has the news.

The shortlists for Britain’s Society of Authors Awards are announced, The Bookseller reports.

New Title Bestsellers

Links for the week: NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers | NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers | USA Today Bestselling Books

Fiction

Think Twice by Harlan Coben (Grand Central) hits No. 3 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list and No. 13 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren (Gallery; LJ starred review) travels to No. 5 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list.

All Fours by Miranda July (Riverhead) reaches No. 10 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list and No. 15 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

Nonfiction

The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis by George Stephanopoulos with Lisa Dickey (Grand Central) seizes No. 1 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list.

Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk by Kathleen Hanna (Ecco: HarperCollins; LJ starred review) grabs No. 5 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list and No. 12 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

Down with the System: A Memoir (of Sorts) by Serj Tankian (Hachette) takes down No. 8 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list.

Fire in the Hole!: The Untold Story of My Traumatic Life and Explosive Success by Bob Parsons with Laura Morton (Forefront) gets No. 9 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list and No. 12 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list, though some retailers report receiving bulk orders.

Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health by Casey Means with Calley Means (Avery) burns up No. 10 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History by Nellie Bowles (Thesis) dispatches No. 13 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list.

Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space by Adam Higginbotham (Avid Reader/S. & S.) achieves No. 14 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list.

Inspire Greatness: How To Motivate Employees with a Simple, Repeatable, Scalable Process by Matt Tenney (Matt Holt: BenBella) is spurred to No. 14 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

Quanta and Fields: The Biggest Ideas in the Universe by Sean Caroll (Dutton) blows up No. 15 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list.

Reviews

NYT reviews The Silence of the Choir by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, tr. by Alison Anderson (Europa): “It’s only fitting that a novel so concerned with how we read, interpret and respond resists easy attachment (or aversion) to its characters.”

Washington Post reviews a new edition of Sentimental Education: The Story of a Young Man by Gustave Flaubert, tr. by Raymond N. MacKenzie (Univ. of Minnesota): “The story of a young man’s lifelong infatuation with a married woman, now newly and superbly translated, introduced and annotated by Raymond N. MacKenzie, a professor of English…. While aspects of the book call to mind a male version of Madame Bovary (1857), it is far more ambitious in every way.”

The Guardian reviews The Road to the Country by Chigozie Obioma (Hogarth): “The Road to the Country is a literary quest, the hope being that fictional invention will be more convincing than any history book, a vital part of the attempt to keep the past as living memory. In this, Obioma has succeeded masterfully”; and Hey, Zoey by Sarah Crossan (Little, Brown): “Crossan is undercutting the ‘journey’ plot trope by circling round the secret at the plot’s core…. The astute reader may well guess this secret within the first 50 pages, but piecing together the events that formed Dolores’s ultra-avoidant character is still fairly enjoyable.”

LitHub brings together “5 Book Reviews You Need To Read This Week.”

Briefly Noted

NYT discusses University of Chicago Press’s new edition of John Swanson Jacobs’s 1855 book The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots: A True Story of Slavery, ed. by Jonathan D.S. Schroeder.

People shares revelations from Seinfeld actor Michael Richards’s memoir Entrances and Exits, due out June 4 from Permuted.

In LitHub, Maris Kreizman probes “the problem with comp titles.”

Paul Yamazaki, author of Reading the Room: A Bookseller’s Tale (Ode), answers NYT’s “By the Book” questionnaire.

Zoë Bossiere, author of Cactus Country: A Boyhood Memoir (Abrams), shares their “Annotated Nightstand” with LitHub.

LitHub has a Q&A with Anna Noyes, author of The Blue Maiden (Grove), and another with Miranda July, author of All Fours (Riverhead).

The Guardian recommends five of the best books about West African cities.

To celebrate May’s Graphic Novel Month, CBC gathers “14 cool Canadian illustrated books to read right now.”

Authors on Air

NPR’s Code Switch interviews Kaliane Bradley, author of The Ministry of Time (Avid Reader/S. & S.).

PBS Newshour talks to Amy Tan about her new book, The Backyard Bird Chronicles (Knopf).

LitHub’s Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast speaks with Monica Youn, author of From From: Poems (Graywolf; an LJ Best Book of 2023).

Today, NPR’s Fresh Air will host Craig Whitlock, author of Fat Leonard: How One Man Bribed, Bilked, and Seduced the U.S. Navy (S. & S.).

Tomorrow, James Dyson, author of Invention: A Life of Learning Through Failure (S. & S.), will visit The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Shelf Awareness rounds up the schedule for this weekend’s Book TV on C-SPAN 2.

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