Bookbits for 2 July 2025
By Sophie Apparently today marks the exact mid-point of the half-century: from tomorrow, we will officially be closer to 2050 than to 2000. Hope that factoid helps cool your brains in this warm weather! - Awards! Dutch author Yael van der Wouden won this year's Women's Prize for Fiction with The Safekeep. Amazing! The Women's Prize for Non-Fiction went to The Story of a Heart by Rachel Clarke. - LitHub has an interesting take on the relevance, to this day, of John le Carré's books. "He is not an idealist - he knows these men and women are doomed -
ABC Summer Bingo
By Sophie Summer's here! And nothing is so quintessentially summer as reading - in a hammock, on the beach, in the shade of a glorious tree... We decided to make reading even more fun and colorful by making not one, but two ABC Summer Bingo cards, one for kids and one for adults. (Click on each image to embiggen and save.) Can you get a Bingo this summer? Feel free to fill it in as you see fit: you can go Old Skool and use one book per square, you can use one book to mark off
Topical Tips: NATO
By Sophie In case you have been absent from the local news the past few months: next week The Hague will host the NATO Summit. A multitude of international leaders will descend on our City of Peace and Justice, and the amount of security measures are, quite frankly, astounding. Good luck to everyone living anywhere near the World Forum trying to get in and out of their streets, and everyone else be sure to check which highways will be closed and which public transport will be rerouted how during the coming two weeks. And good luck, of course, to
Bookbits for 4 June 2025
By Sophie Happy Pride Month everyone! - And if you think "why do we still need Pride Month?" read the story of what happened to our Amsterdam store's window display. Also, for example, this crackdown on LGBTQIA+ books in Russia. - Awards! May was awards-heavy, as you can check out in this separate post including the International Booker Prize winner as well as the Pulitzers. Not included in that post was the winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize (for young writers), The Coin by Yasmin Zaher, and all the Edgar Awards winners (for mystery fiction). - Events: ABC has
Literary Prize Bonanza: International Booker, Pulitzers, and Nibbies
By Sophie It's May, and that means a trio of big literary prizes has been announced! First off, the International Booker Prize was announced this past Tuesday. Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq was the winner. These 12 stories were translated into English from Kannada (a language spoken in South India) by Deepa Bhasthi. Author and translator share the prize, and the prize money. Max Porter, chair of the judges this year, stated: "Heart Lamp is something genuinely new for English readers. A radical translation which ruffles language, to create new textures in a plurality of Englishes. It challenges and
Book review: The Names
The Names by Florence Knapp It is 1987, and in the aftermath of a great storm, Cora sets out with her nine-year-old daughter to register the birth of her son. Her husband intends her to follow a long-standing family tradition and call the boy after him. But faced with the decision, Cora hesitates, questioning whether it is right for her child to share his name with generations of domineering men. Her choice in this moment will shape the course of their lives. This is the story of three names, three versions of a life and the infinite possibilities
Bookbits for 1 May 2025
By Sophie How are we in May already?! It seems this past April's literary scene has followed what we do when this country has a spell of glorious weather: enjoyed the sun and take it east. Still, here are a few fun tidbits for you. - Summer reads! Well, since we're this close to summer, let's dive in to some highly anticipated books to be published over the coming months with PW, from a James Baldwin biography to the new V. E Schwab to a new look at Plato. The list doesn't include one of the ABC staff's most
ABC’s 100 Top Tips, part 5
By Sophie ABC's 100 Top Tips, part 5: Robinson - Zusak To celebrate our birthday this year (officially on 21 April but we're celebrating it on the weekend of 12 and 13 April) we decided to ask all of the ABC staff what their most memorable books were of the past 25 years - and they, of course, delivered! I'm very happy to present ABC's 100 Top Tips, from A-Z by author's last name, in 5 posts of 20 books this week. There are of course a few rules, some provisos, a couple of quid pro quos... First of
ABC’s 100 Top Tips, part 4
By Sophie ABC's 100 Top Tips, part 4: McCarthy - Reid To celebrate our birthday this year (officially on 21 April but we're celebrating it on the weekend of 12 and 13 April) we decided to ask all of the ABC staff what their most memorable books were of the past 25 years - and they, of course, delivered! I'm very happy to present ABC's 100 Top Tips, from A-Z by author's last name, in 5 posts of 20 books this week. There are of course a few rules, some provisos, a couple of quid pro quos... First of
ABC’s 100 Top Tips, part 3
By Sophie ABC's 100 Top Tips, part 3: Jimenez - Martine To celebrate our birthday this year (officially on 21 April but we're celebrating it on the weekend of 12 and 13 April) we decided to ask all of the ABC staff what their most memorable books were of the past 25 years - and they, of course, delivered! I'm very happy to present ABC's 100 Top Tips, from A-Z by author's last name, in 5 posts of 20 books this week. There are of course a few rules, some provisos, a couple of quid pro quos... First of
