By Sophie If these Bookbits appear a little disjointed, please forgive me: I've been counting books for the past 3 days on account of inventory and may still have little flashbacks (2-15-3 times). - Perhaps a little unsurprisingly, Publishers Weekly reports a spike in US sales of dystopian novels in January 2025, [...]
By Sophie Happy 2025! I hope it will be a gentle year for you, filled with literary treasures. -- Can't start the year without rounding out the old one of course! Besides all of our Staff Top 5s to fluff up your TBRs, here are the best books of 2024 according [...]
By Sophie. Congratulations to Samantha Harvey, who won this year's Booker Prize for Orbital! Chair of the this year's judging panel, Edmund de Waal, had this to say about the book: "[...] Sometimes you encounter a book and cannot work out how this miraculous event has happened. As judges we were determined [...]
Congratulations to Han Kang, who is this year's Nobel Prize laureate for the Literature category! We all probably know her from her International Booker Prize winning The Vegetarian, and thankfully since then quite a few of her other works have been translated into English as well. The Nobel Prize jury lauded [...]
By Sophie. AAAaaand the Bookbits are back, after my vacation last month. ^^ - Let's start off with a great interview by Booker Prize shortlisted Rachel Kushner which immediately made me want to read Creation Lake. - If you like to discover new writing talent, check out these 10 Promising New [...]
By Sophie. Hey there folks! I hope you're enjoying the summer as much as I am, now that it's finally here. :-) First off, awards. The Women's Prize for Fiction was handed out to Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshanathan. This year also saw the inaugural Women's Prize for Non-Fiction, which [...]
R.I.P. Alice Munro, who died on May 13th. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. For Independent Bookstore Day in the US (sadly no longer celebrated here on account of King's Day/Memorial Day/Liberation Day all happening then too), the president of children's book publisher Nosy Crow decided to visit [...]
R.I.P. Paul Auster, who died on 30 April of complications from lung cancer. NPR is one of the many sites with an obituary, and The Guardian gathered tributes by fellow authors. Awards! The Pulitzer Prizes were awarded last night, and the honorees are: Nightwatch (Fiction), Primary Trust (Drama), No Right to [...]
I hope everyone who celebrates had a lovely Easter and Holi, and a wonderful Eid al-Fitr to come next week to all who celebrate that! What do South Africa's former first couple, Black inexpression, and Uyghur poets have in common? Books about or by them were all National Book Critics Circle Award [...]
Let's start with bookish events in the country: Natali Simmonds hosts a resilience in writing workshop at ABC Amsterdam on 8 March, our Book Chats book club meets in Amsterdam on 22 March to discuss Scorched Grace, Emily Hund presents her book The Influencer Industry at the John Adams Institute on 18 [...]
