By Sophie
– Awards! The Eisner Awards for best comics and graphic novels were announced at the San Diego Comic Con last month. There are approximately 12 million categories, but one to highlight is Best Single Issue, won by Joe Sacco for The War on Gaza. Another recently-awarded prize with a ton of categories is the Crime Writers Association Daggers. Fun to highlight here is its Gold Dagger winner (for best thriller): The Book of Secrets by Anna Mazzola, which is about that 17-century Italian village where a certain kind of man kept getting poisoned… Remember that you can also always check the latest prizewinning books on our highlights list.
– Awards II! The Booker Prize Longlist was just announced; see the separate post for all the details. But I also want to draw your attention to these 10 Genre-Bending Booker Nominees of years past, as several of them have now made my TBR list. There are more cracking lists over on the Booker Prize website (scroll down a bit to the Reading Recommendations).
– The catalogue with new titles for October came in a few days ago, and as a bookseller you’re always looking ahead so much that it’s easy to forget that we’re still smack in the middle of summer! Thankfully the Guardian has The 50 Hottest Books to Read Right Now to keep us all firmly in the season, and NPR also has 17 books their critics can’t wait to dig into this summer. :-)
– Our colleagues at Powell’s Books have started a limited-series podcast called Open Book, where your favorite authors recommend their favorite books!
– Substacks: what are they and who writes the best of them? The Guardian delves into this ever-more-popular way of writing newsletters and has an extensive list of authors that offer substacks and why they are worth signing up for.
– There has been a bit of a brouhaha over The Salt Path this past month. Claims the author made large parts up and that she defrauded her previous employer were made by The Observer, and Winn has tried to rebutt most of them. The Independent has a nice article about the attraction of the nature memoir as well as the attraction to the scandal. In the meantime, Winn’s new book has been delayed by the publisher.
– I’ll admit, this clickbait got me: “AI Doesn’t Know What an Orgasm Sounds Like“.
– And finally, a new short story in the Murderbot universe, free to read over on ReactorSFF. With Perihelion, aka ART (short for Asshole Research Transport), one of my personal favorite characters, in a starring role. You’re welcome.
