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Buzzy Books & News

The July LibraryReads list is out, featuring top pick The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst (Bramble).

Amazon Editors announce the Best Books of 2024 So Far, including Percival Everett’s James (Doubleday; LJ starred review), the #1 book so far.

The Taste Canada Awards shortlist is announced.

Next fall, Macmillan will launch Saturday Books, an imprint with a new adult focus, Publishers Weekly reports. 

Barnes & Noble is buying Denver’s storied bookstore, Tattered Cover. Shelf Awareness has the story. 

Library Journal’s Galley Guide for the 2024 American Library Association conference  is available now.

According the most recent AAP Statshot, the "US Book Trade Was ‘High-Performing’ in April,"  Publishing Perspectives has details.

Reviews

NYT reviews Sandwich by Catherine Newman (Harper; LJ starred review): “If you want to laugh out loud, tear up and rush to pull out a book in the 35 seconds between subway stops, this sweet, savory, tenderhearted ‘Sandwich’ fits the bill, and goes down like (bread and) buttah”; A Place of Our Own: Six Spaces That Shaped Queer Women's Culture by June Thomas (Seal): “Historians will owe Thomas for the sprawling and rich record she’s created. But readers owe her most for grappling with the flaws and glories of protected spaces that feel like home. She weaves in her own story, and personal meditations, throughout: the crushes, the intellectual fulfillment at bookstores, the dykes with Alison Bechdel key rings”; The Language Puzzle: Piecing Together the Six-Million-Year Story of How Words Evolved by Steven Mithen (Basic; LJ starred review): “Mithen is especially good at describing humankind’s differentiation and migration over the last three million years, and this early chapter is a tour de force of terse, fascinating clarity”; The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage by Jonathan Turley (S. & S.): “Where he diverges from the consensus, and sharply, is in his portrayal of more than two centuries of free speech doctrine as a virtually unbroken betrayal of first principles”; Living Things by Munir Hachemi, tr. by Julia Sanches (Coach House): “That impetuous, upstart spirit infuses this short and spunky tale about young, would-be literary men who hit the road in search of adventure but find bleakness and exploitation”; and Same as It Ever Was by Claire Lombardo (Doubleday): “In less skillful hands, Same as It Ever Was would lose control over its transitions and veer toward soap opera; yet like Franzen’s Marion Hildebrandt, or Faye, the narrator of Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy, Lombardo gives us a woman whose inner life is knotted and revelatory.”

Washington Post reviews Caledonian Road by Andrew O'Hagan (Norton): “While O’Hagan’s novel has funny bits, it is fundamentally glum, befitting the time and place of its writing”; and Kissing Girls on Shabbat: A Memoir by Sara Glass (Atria: One Signal): “Readers interested in this subject might remember the landmark documentary Trembling Before G-d, about gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews, and Deborah Feldman’s memoir about leaving the faith, Unorthodox, which inspired a Netflix adaptation. Kissing Girls on Shabbat joins these brave works.”

The Guardian reviews The House of Beckham: Money, Sex and Power by Tom Bower (Harper): “With little fresh detail on show, this biography offers instead a masterclass in insinuation and class-coded curiosities.”

Briefly Noted

LitHub highlights 27 new books for the week.

NPR staff recommend their favorite fiction and nonfiction of the year.

BookRiot suggests “15 of the Best LGBTQ Beach Reads of 2024.”

CBS News shares readers’ favorite books of the year so far.

Priyanka Mattoo discusses her new memoir, Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones (Knopf), with LA Times. 

Author Alexis Hall shares book recommendations at People. 

ElectricLit has “7 Funny Essays Collections By and About Millennial Women.”

Writer-director Yulin Kuang, author of How To End a Love Story (Avon; LJ starred review), partners with French wine house Maison Louis Jadot to share book and wine pairing for the summer. People reports.

People shares an excerpt from Laurie Devore’s forthcoming novel, The Villain Edit (Avon), due out July 2.

Riley Sager, Middle of the Night (Dutton), discusses “the power of nostalgia and nerve-jangling suspense,” at CrimeReads.

Meg Gardiner talks about her latest thriller, Shadowheart (Blackstone), with People. 

The Rumpus talks with Juliet Escoria, You Are the Snake: Stories (Soft Skull), about “tarot, fistfights, and the pitfalls of publishing.”

Authors on Air

Anthony Bourdain’s graphic novel series Get Jiro! will be adapted as an animated TV series. IndieWire has the scoop.

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