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Awards & Buzzy Book News

The official biography of Terry Pratchett, A Life in Footnotes, will be published in September. The Guardian has details. The Bookseller also has coverage.

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) announces the 2022 PROSE Award finalists and category winners.Publishing Perspectives has details.

The Guardian has a feature on Newbery Medal Winner Donna Barba Higuera.

People talks with Isabel Allende about the inspiration for her latest novel, Violeta (Ballantine). PBS Canvas also has an feature about Allende’s new book.

Reviews

USA Today reviews Violeta by Isabel Allende (Ballantine), giving it 2.5 out of 4 stars: “Allende's writing still stands out, her voice beautifully lyrical. Her storytelling talent is front and center – the fatal flaw is that there are too many stories to tell, especially in the space of only a few hundred pages.”

The NYT reviews South to America by Imani Perry (Ecco): “This work — and I use the term for both Perry’s labor and its fruit — is determined to provoke a return to the other legacy of the South, the ever-urgent struggle toward freedom.” And, Seven Games: A Human History by Oliver Roeder (Norton): “He begins with the long history of games, going back 5,000 years to prehistoric Mesoamerican settlements, and asks: Why does almost every society engage in games and why have certain games survived for centuries?” Also, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning by Ben Raines (S. & S.; LJ starred revew): “What distinguishes Raines’s book is not only the story of that discovery, but also his perspective as a river guide in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, the subject of his previous book, Saving America’s Amazon.” Plus, God: An Anatomy by Francesca Stavrakopoulou (Knopf): “In a long, detailed and scrupulously researched book, God: An Anatomy, Francesca Stavrakopoulou digs into this dilemma; as corporeal creatures, she argues, we must somehow reincarnate this arcane deity, see him as our ancestors did and bring him down to earth.”

The Washington Post reviews Lorraine Hansberry: The Life Behind A Raisin in the Sun by Charles J. Shields (Henry Holt; LJ starred review): “The chapters on A Raisin in the Sun are Shields’s best, detailing an engrossing narrative of the creation and production of an American classic.”

NPR reviews Honor by Thrity Umrigar (Algonquin; LJ starred review): “for all its structural weakness, the earnestness of Umrigar's intention is unquestionable: She convinces us that to read is to comprehend and to comprehend is to act.” And, Devil House by John Darnielle (MCD): “It is a portrait — sometimes direct, sometimes refracted — of a man realizing that his career, combined with his powerful imagination, has taken him far from his morals. In many such narratives, the career wins. Refreshingly, in Devil House, the morals do.” Slate also reviews: “Devil House can be read as an indictment of the true crime genre, specifically of the way stories are concocted to explain often-unfathomable tragedies, and of how some stories take precedence over others regardless of their truth.”

Briefly Noted

LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for The Magnolia Palace by Fiona Davis (Dutton; LJ starred review), the buzziest book of the week.

LA Times talks with environmental journalist Ben Raines about his book, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning (S.&S.; LJ starred review).

LitHub interviews Sequoia Nagamatsu about community, grief, and resilience in How High We Go in the Dark (Morrow; LJ starred review). 

Lan Samantha Chang talks to The Millions about writing her new novel, The Family Chao (Norton), and channeling Dostoyevsky.

Charmaine Wilkerson pens an essay for Elle about how a family recipe inspired her debut novel, Black Cake (Ballantine; LJ starred review), which publishes next week. The book is also in development for series treatment at Hulu. 

Vulture explores James Dean’s reputation for copying in an excerpt from the forthcoming, The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act by Isaac Butler (Bloomsbury; LJ starred review).

Entertainment Weekly excerpts the new twisty thriller Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner (Gallery).

The Atlantic considers the “Redemption of the Bad Mother,” through The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan (S. & S.; LJ starred review) and The Lost Daughter, based on the novel by Elena Ferrante.

Bitch writes about Joan Didion and how she “taught us how to embrace complication.”

Vox looks at the themes of suffering and human pain in Hanya Yanagihara’s novels.

LitHub reports "Edith Wharton’s groundbreaking Pulitzer was originally meant for Sinclair Lewis."

Katie Kitamura, Zakiya Dalila Harris, and more authors preview their most anticipated reads of 2022 for Entertainment Weekly.

Heather Gudenkauf, The Overnight Guest (Park Row), recommends 5 snowbound thrillers at CrimeReads.

Time has 5 books to read after watching The Gilded Age.

Bustle has 10 must-reads for the week.

Authors On Air

NPR’s Fresh Air talks with professor of African American studies at Princeton, Imani Perry about her new book, South to America (Ecco).

Rachel Lindsay talks with GMA about her new memoir, Miss Me with That: Hot Takes, Helpful Tidbits, and a Few Hard Truths (Ballantine). GMA provides an excerpt featuring Lindsay’s recollections of her first Bachelor audition.

Disney+ officially picks up 'Percy Jackson and the Olympians' series, based on the Rick Riordan books. Variety reports.

Marisa Meyer's 'Lunar Chronicles' series and Joan Bauer's Hope Was Here (Puffin) will be adapted into feature films. Deadline reports. 

Jason Reynolds, Stuntboy, in the Meantime, illus. by Raúl the Third (Atheneum/Caitlyn Dloughy Books) will be on with Tamron Hall tomorrow and Lindsey Vonn, Rise (Dey Street), will visit The Daily Show.

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