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LIT HUB'S HOME FOR BOOK REVIEWS

BOOK MARKS BULLETIN 9/17

In literary land this week: Amanda Gorman became the first poet to host the Met Gala, a new study suggests that backlash against critical race theory is linked to white fear, the New York Times has hired Molly Young and Alexandra Jacobs as book critics, and a New Yorker editor called out her own magazine for its woeful record on diversity.

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The Best Reviewed Books of the Week

FICTION

1. Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

 16 RAVE • 4 POSITIVE

“Harlem Shuffle has dialogue that crackles, a final third that nearly explodes, hangouts that invite even if they’re Chock Full o’ Nuts and characters you won’t forget even if they don’t stick around for more than a few pages.”  –Janet Maslin (The New York Times)  

2. Harrow by Joy Williams

10 RAVE • 2 POSITIVE • 1 MIXED

“Williams’ tone is caustic and discomfiting; it brings to mind the moment in which we are living, when matters of science and public health are regularly ridiculed or redirected in favor of political or economic platitudes.”  –David L. Ulin (The Los Angeles Times)  

3. Assembly by Natasha Brown

7 RAVE • 6 POSITIVE

“Though impactful, the skeleton story line of Assembly isn’t what makes the book so unshakable. It’s the way Brown expertly captures the narrator’s mental state through an internal dialogue that’s alternately plagued and disgusted by how others perceive her.”  –Alexis Burling (The Washington Post)  

=4. Snowflake by Louise Nealon

3 RAVE • 4 POSITIVE

“[A] warm-hearted book: several degrees warmer, in fact, than the work of Sally Rooney, to which it has already been compared.”  –Kevin Power (The Sunday Times)  

=4. The Spectacular by Zoe Whittall

3 RAVE • 4 POSITIVE

“Zoe Whittall’s taut novel The Spectacular has all the trappings to become the season’s dishiest read. It’s also a gem of literary fiction.”  –Jessica Wakeman (BookPage)  

NONFICTION

1. Graceland, at Last by Margaret Renkl

7 RAVE • 3 POSITIVE

“Renkl’s sense of joyful belonging to the South, a region too often dismissed on both coasts in crude stereotypes and bad jokes, co-exists with her intense desire for Southerners who face prejudice or poverty finally to be embraced and supported.”  –Barbara J. King (NPR)  

2. Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach

8 RAVE • 1 POSITIVE

“Mary Roach is the Deborah Vance of science writing … you’re hooked, and for good reason. Roach has a sure sense of drama, and she crafts sentences that crackle and pop.”  –Peter Fish (The San Francisco Chronicle)  

3. Travels with George by Nathaniel Philbrick

1 RAVE • 6 POSITIVE • 2 MIXED

“Washington emerges as the complicated, flawed but no less heroic leader that his newborn country desperately needed. The quantity and quality of the details Philbrick gathers as he straddles past and present make this an extraordinary read.”  –Priscilla Kipp (BookPage)  

4. Conquistadores by Fernando Cervantes

4 RAVE • 1 POSITIVE • 1 MIXED

“...masterful ... Cervantes marshals an enormous array of primary and secondary sources to tell the story of the decades that followed Christopher Columbus’ arrival on an island off what is now Cuba.”  –Jim Zarroli (NPR)  

5. Things I Have Withheld by Kei Miller

4 RAVE • 1 POSITIVE

“In 15 thoughtful and impassioned essays, prizewinning Jamaican novelist, poet, and essayist Miller reflects on race, gender, family, language, and, most pointedly, the body.”  –Kirkus

Books Making the News This Week

Biggest New Books: Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle, Joy Williams’ Harrow, Mary Roach’s Fuzz, and Nathaniel Philbrick’s Travels with George are some of the biggest new titles hitting shelves this week.

Book Deals: Author of A Lucky Man Jamel Brinkley's Witness, a new collection of stories set in contemporary New York City, and Another Life, a novel following a family in the many years after their mother's departure, have been sold to FSG in a two-book deal; journalist John Glatt's untitled true crime book, about the still-unraveling case of the Murdaugh family murders, to St. Martin's; author of Moby-Duck Donovan Hohn's Lost in the Garden, delving into the historical and ecological mysteries hidden within—and beneath, and above—the author's sprawling garden, to Norton; author of The Dog Stars Peter Heller's The Ranger, a lyrical wilderness thriller about love, grief, tourism, science, and a poacher whose view of what he deserves to take from the land threatens the delicate peace of Yellowstone National Park, to Knopf; explorer and author of the The Third Pole Mark Synnott's Into the Ice, a chronicle of the author's upcoming adventure sailing through the Northwest Passage, to Dutton; and Jhumpa Lahiri’s new book on translation will be published next spring by Princeton University Press.

Adaptation Announcements: Don DeLillo’s 1997 opus Underworld is set to become a Netflix movie, a series adaptation of Norman Mailer’s 1000-page 1991 spy thriller Harlot’s Ghost is in development, and Mahershala Ali will star opposite Julia Roberts in the upcoming movie adaptation of Rumaan Alam’s 2020 novel, Leave The World Behind.

Awards Circuit: Patricia Smith has won the $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement. The shortlist for the Booker Prize and the longlists for the National Book Awards have been announced. As have the finalists for the Kirkus Prize and the BBC National Short Story Award. And Noʻu Revilla became the first native Hawaiian to win the National Poetry Series Competition.

The Most Viewed Books of the Week

According to traffic data from Book Mark's widget and website

1. ↓ 44.95% Beautiful World, Where Are You  SALLY ROONEY

2. NEW Beautiful Country  QIAN JULIE WANG

3. ↑ 42.97% Harlem Shuffle  COLSON WHITEHEAD

4. ↓ 55.90% Matrix  LAUREN GROFF

5. ↓ 33.12% The Magician  COLM TÓIBÍN

6. ↓ 14.17% Second Place  RACHEL CUSK

7. ↓ 13.95% L.A. Weather  MARÍA AMPARO ESCANDÓN

8. ↑ 264.66% Harrow  JOY WILLIAMS

9. ↑ 90.72% Bewilderment  RICHARD POWERS

10. ↓ 24.69% Braiding Sweetgrass  ROBIN WALL KIMMERER

(*Percentages based on week-to-week change in total views.)

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