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Awards & News

The Booker Prize 2024 longlist is announced. The list includes three debut novels and six writers previously nominated for the prize. NYT, Washington Post, and The Guardian have coverage.

The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards are announced. Locus has details. 

The man who attacked author Salman Rushdie with a knife in 2022 will be charged with new counts of terrorism. Time reports. 

Hollywood Reporter shares news from Comic-Con. 

Francine Pascal, creator of the “Sweet Valley High Book” series, has died at the age of 92. NYT has an obituary. 

Reviews

NYT reviews They Dream in Gold by Mai Sennaar (Zando: SJP Lit): “This book moves like the storm Sennaar begins it with, revealing how we are all interlinked in a global community, just as these characters, timelines and narratives are entangled”; Someone Like Us by Dinaw Mengestu (Knopf): “This might not be the novel that earns him broad popular acclaim—your aunt’s book club might wish for a more straightforward narrative, a more forthright narrator—but it’s the book that ought to cement Mengestu’s reputation as a major literary force”; Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics by Elle Reeve (Atria): “Reeve chronicles the alt-right’s rise in Black Pill, a chilling and insightful account of the throughline from dopey internet memes to Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, the seductions of QAnon and the storming of the Capitol”; Misrecognition by Madison Newbound (S. & S.): “Misrecognition is a quietly commanding debut by a writer of intense precision and restraint. Like a Kelly Reichardt film or an Adrianne Lenker album, Newbound’s novel conjures a spare, hushed world from which much has been elided, yet what remains is finely crafted and deeply felt”; and A Complicated Passion: The Life and Work of Agnès Varda by Carrie Rickey (Norton): “The best parts of this book are the early to middle chapters, as they are in most biographies. We witness how Varda became Varda.”

Washington Post reviews The Horse by Willy Vlautin (Harper): “Mythical yet inventive, a struggle between man and beast, The Horse follows the playbook of The Old Man and the Sea or Julia Phillips’s recent Bear, weighing the totemic natural world against the frailties of the human condition”; and Ayn Rand: Writing a Gospel of Success by Alexandra Popoff (Yale Univ.): “The life traced out in Popoff’s retelling (also discernible between the lines of Rand’s own novels and public pronouncements) conforms in broad outlines to what literary critic Parul Sehgal dubbed ‘the trauma plot,’ when violence a long way back is revealed at the end to account for a person’s least likable, least explicable traits and actions.”

CrimeReads highlights the best reviewed books of July. 

Briefly Noted

LitHub highlights 20 new books for the week. 

BookRiot shares notable new releases for the week.

Good Housekeeping suggests 30 inspirational books. 

The July LoanStars list features top pick The Briar Club by Kate Quinn (Morrow; LJ starred review). 

ElectricLit lists “8 Books About Americans in Italy.”

Washington Post explores the work of the Poison Book Project, which examines antique books for heavy metal pigments, including arsenic, lead, and mercury. 

FoxNews highlights congressman and retired colonel Mike Waltz’s forthcoming book, Hard Truths: Think and Lead Like a Green Beret, due out from Macmillan on October 22. 

Jon M. Chu discusses his new book, Viewfinder: A Memoir of Seeing and Being Seen (Random), and how he hopes to inspire young filmmakers, with People.

ElectricLit talks with Dinaw Mengestu about his new book, Someone Like Us (Knopf), and the “anxiety of being an immigrant and writing minority stories ethically.”

Authors on Air

Author Min Jin Lee reflects on her novel, Pachinko (Grand Central; LJ starred review), with the NYT Book Review podcast. 

Hollywood Reporter previews “22 New and Upcoming Book Adaptations in 2024.”

USA Today compares Neon’s Mothers’ Instinct to the novel by Barbara Abel it is based on. 

The showrunner for A Court of Thorns and Roses series adaptation, based on the books by Sarah J. Maas, has exited the project. People reports. 

Drew Afualo, Loud: Accept Nothing Less Than the Life You Deserve (AUWA), will visit GMA today. 

Jon M. Chu, Viewfinder: A Memoir of Seeing and Being Seen (Random), will appear on the Daily Show.

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