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Awards News & Book Bans

Kazuo Ishiguro has won the Tähtivaeltaja Award for Klara and the Sun (Knopf: Random House; LJ starred review).

Patricia Lockwood wins the 2022 Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize with No One Is Talking About This (Riverhead). 

Author Lev AC Rosen writes a piece for Lit Hub about book banning. 

Page to Screen

May 13:

Firestarter, based on the book by Stephen King. Universal Pictures. No reviews | Trailer

The Essex Serpent, based on the book by Sarah Perry. Apple TV+. No reviews | Trailer

The Lincoln Lawyer, based on the book The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly. Netflix. No reviews | Trailer

Sneakerella, based on the Cinderella folk tale. Disney+. No reviews | Trailer

May 15:

Conversations with Friends, based on the book by Sally Rooney. Hulu. No reviews | Trailer

The Time Traveler’s Wife, based on the book by Audrey Niffenegger. HBO. No reviews | Trailer

May 19:

The Boss Baby: Back in the Crib, based on the book The Boss Baby by Marla Frazee. Netflix. No reviews | Trailer

Dragons Rescue Riders: Heroes of the Sky, based on the book series How To Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell. Peacock. No reviews | Trailer

Heartland, based on the book series by Lauren Brooke. UP. Reviews | Trailer

The Ipcress File, based on the book by Len Deighton. AMC+. Reviews | Trailer

Reviews

NYT shares two short reviews on books about democracy: Liberalism and Its Discontents by Francis Fukuyama (Farrar; LJ starred review) and The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure by Yascha Mounk (Penguin).

The Washington Post reviews Shelter: A Black Tale of Homeland, Baltimore by Lawrence Jackson (Greywolf): “by turns searing, informative and funny, as Jackson explores both serious issues and absurdities of his life and his city.” Also, His Name is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Robert Samuel and Toluse Olorunnipa (Viking): “detailed, vivid and moving.” Plus, Healing: When a Nurse Becomes a Patient by Theresa Brown (Algonquin): “an unflinching look by a former nurse at the lack of compassion in our health-care system and the harms that patients suffer because of it. A longtime contributor to the New York Times Times on health-care issues, Brown writes with a winning combination of passion, humor and medical knowledge.” And, The Listeners: A History of Wiretapping in the United States by Brian Hochman (Harvard): “does a wonderful job evoking a world shaped by intense distaste for surveillance, even if the sharp emotions that once energized the battle now seem lost to history.”

NPR reviews Trust by Hernan Diaz (Riverhead): “an ingeniously constructed historical novel with a postmodern point. Throughout, Diaz makes a connection between the realms of fiction and finance.” Also, Nasty, Brutish, and Short: Adventures in Philosophy With My Kids by Scott Hershovitz (Penguin Pr.): “Hershovitz reminds parents to embrace our children’s ‘strangeness’ as long as we can, and maybe in the process find our way back to the questing child-philosopher within us.”

Locus Magazine reviews Light Years From Home by Mike Chen (MIRA): “Chen uses an interesting form of literary pastiche to drive the book: a frustrating, moving portrait of a broken family forced to heal old wounds.”

Electric Lit reviews and shares an excerpt of You Have a Friend in 10A: Stories by Maggie Shipstead (Knopf; LJ starred review): “Though there are voyeuristic pleasures in this story, pleasure doesn’t always equal pathos. Shipstead succeeds because while not every reader feels the tug of fanaticism within them, most of us want to heal, whether we admit it publicly or not.”

Tor.com reviews The Void Ascendant by Premee Mohamed (Solaris): “a maximalist narrative, with Mohamed throwing both knowing pop culture references and thematically-resonant explorations of trust, forgiveness, and justice into the mix.”

Datebook reviews Who Killed Jane Stanford?: A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits, and the Birth of a University by Richard White (Norton): “a true-crime thriller, revivifying a very cold case and portraying the early decades of the university, founded in 1885 by Jane and Leland Stanford to honor their deceased son, as more tenuous than one might imagine.” Also, Razzmatazz by Christopher Moore (Morrow): “The language Moore uses contributes to the fun of this novel, but it’s truly the characters and the shifts between story lines that give the most life to the narrative.”

The Seattle Times reviews When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill (Doubleday; LJ starred review): “reminds us how difficult it is to put the knowledge of freedom back into the bottle and the cost to a society that tries.”

The Atlantic reviews Daddy’s Gone a-Hunting by Penelope Mortimer (McNally): “Mortimer doesn’t theorize or expound; she lacerates, instead, with description. Her 64-year-old novel is, through its atmosphere and circumstance, one of the most compelling arguments for freedom of reproductive choice that I’ve ever encountered.”

Book Marks shares “The Best Reviewed Books of the Week.”

Briefly Noted

Entertainment Weekly has a first look, cover reveal, and interview with Kennedy Ryan, the author of Before I Let Go (Forever: Hachette).

Bud Smith, Teenager (Vintage), talks to The Millions about his “philosophy of language” and more.

Norman Reedus discusses putting “a fictional twist on personal experiences and elements from his past” in his book The Ravaged (Blackstone) through an interview with People.

The Rumpus interviews Chloe Caldwell, author of The Red Zone: A Love Story (Soft Skull), about “her latest work, evolving identities, and the power of free bleeding.” Electric Lit also talks to Caldwell about her work as a “shame-free period story we need right now.”

Jokha Alharthi and translator Marilyn Booth, Bitter Orange Tree (Catapult), discuss how an “Omani novel gets translated from Arabic into English” in an interview with Electric Lit.

Popsugar interviews Jill Gutowitz, Girls Can Kiss Now (Atria), about her “love letter to lesbian pop culture history.”

The Los Angeles Times profiles the new work of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips in the form of a graphic novel series that “reinvent pulp fiction and 1980s L.A.”

Tor.com shares a cover reveal for The Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose Utomi (Tor: Macmillan). 

CrimeReads provides “May’s Best Psychological Thrillers.”

AV Club explores what people are reading in May.

Datebook has “The Best Books To Read During Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.”

Electric Lit shares “7 Short Story Collections That Feel Psychedelic.”

Tor.com has “Five SFF Books About Warring Families” and “Five Small Books Packed With Big Ideas.”

BBC lists “Eight Nature Books To Change Your Life.”

NYPL Blog gives “Nine New Inspiring (and Tea-Spilling) Celebrity Memoirs.”

Entertainment Weekly shares lists of “12 sizzling summer reads” and “the best comics to read right now.”

CBC provides “50 great books to read this season.”

USA Today shares their critics’ “best books of 2022" and “juicy revelations from celeb tell-alls.”

NYT recommends 11 new books this week and shares what is “New in Paperback.”

Authors on Air

Viola Davis, Finding Me (HarperOne), talks to Brené Brown about “being brave and speaking truth” on her Unlocking Us podcast.

Vulture’s Good One podcast features Matt Sienkiewicz and Nick Marx discussing their book That’s Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them (Univ. of California).

Omarion talks to Ebony about fatherhood and his book, Unbothered: the Power of Choosing Joy (HarperOne) in an interview.

Lan Samantha Chang, author of The Family Chao (Norton), chats about “food, family, and new ways of imagining Asian American narratives” on the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast.

Colleen Hoover’s Maybe Someday (Atria) has been acquired for a television adaptation by eOne, according to The Hollywood Reporter. 

Gizmodo shares “10 Stephen King Remakes, Ranked” and “15 Stephen King novels that are just screaming to be adapted (or re-adapted).”

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