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BOOK MARKS BULLETIN 1/7 In literary land this week: The mysterious manuscript thief who captured the book world’s imagination has been arrested by the F.B.I., Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh are among the classic works that have entered the public domain, the staff at famed DC bookstore Politics and Prose have successfully unionized, and Norman Mailer has had quite a week.
Here at Book Marks, we rounded up 17 Sci-Fi and Fantasy books to look forward to in 2022, and looked back at a classic review of Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead.
The Best Reviewed Books of the Week 
FICTION 1. Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan 9 RAVE • 1 POSITIVE • 1 MIXED “Filled with blistering social critique, Luckenbooth is an ambitious and ravishing novel that will haunt me long after.” –Lauren Beukes (The New York Times Book Review)
2. Fiona and Jane by Jean Chen Ho 6 RAVE • 3 POSITIVE “The world Ho creates between the two women feels like one friend reading the other’s story, wishing she were there.” –Tammy Tarng (The New York Times Book Review)
3. The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan 5 RAVE • 1 POSITIVE “It’s a powerful story, made more so by its empathetic and complicated heroine.” –Publishers Weekly
4. Phenotypes by Paulo Scott, tr. Daniel Hahn 4 RAVE • 2 POSITIVE “[A] rather brisk novel that punctures the country’s fantasy of being a post-racial state and leaves readers scrambling for a sense of closure that it cannot possibly provide.” –Omari Weekes (The New York Times Book Review)
5. Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez 3 RAVE • 3 POSITIVE “Rarely does a novel, particularly a debut novel, contend so powerfully and so delightfully with such a vast web of personal, cultural, political and even international imperatives.” –Ron Charles (The Washington Post)
NONFICTION 1. George V: Never a Dull Moment by Jane Ridley 3 RAVE • 1 POSITIVE • 1 MIXED “She has produced an evocative and touching portrait of a surprisingly impressive man.” –Philip Hensher (The Spectator)
2. The Steal by Mark Bowden & Matthew Teague 2 RAVE • 2 POSITIVE • 1 MIXED “The authors have used a stethoscope to examine the minutia of the American election process. The result is a thrilling and suspenseful celebration of the survival of democracy.” –Charles Kaiser (The Guardian)
3. 41-Love by Scarlett Thomas 2 RAVE • 1 POSITIVE • 2 MIXED “With Thomas serving as narrator for the multi-layered, no-holds-barred odyssey of her ascent into middle age, she emerges as a top seed and the very best of them all.” –Kathleen Gerard (Shelf Awareness)
4. Emotional: How Feelings Shape Our Thinking by Leonard Mlodinow 1 RAVE • 3 POSITIVE “Mlodinow successfully shows how emotions can be assessed, regulated, and controlled, and powerfully concludes that understanding them is a lifelong project.” –Publishers Weekly
5. Dante: A Life by Alessandro Barbero 1 RAVE • 1 POSITIVE • 4 MIXED “It is difficult to imagine anyone seriously interested in Dante who will not want to own this book, because it weighs all the sources, checking Boccaccio and other early writers against the archives and the documents.” –AN Wilson (The Times)
Books Making the News This Week Book Deals: NYT-bestselling author Lisa Unger's next two thrillers have been sold to Park Row Books; Karen Valby's The Swans of Harlem, written with the full participation of five pioneering Black ballerinas who helped found the Dance Theatre of Harlem and traveled the world as highly celebrated stars in their field, to Pantheon; author of We Came Here to Forget Andrea Dunlop's Women Are the Fiercest Creatures, a novel set in Seattle's rarefied and fast-growing tech world, about the ex-wife and ex-lover of a magnetic tech mogul who fight to reclaim what's theirs, to Zibby Books; Lindsay Lynch's Do Tell, a novel set in the golden age of Hollywood, following an unsuccessful character actress as she reinvents herself as a gossip columnist in order to stay afloat, to Doubleday; James McAuley's Black Milk of Dawn, a narrative history of the decades-long battle over Holocaust remembrance, to Knopf; and author of One of the Boys Daniel Magariel's Walk the Darkness Down, a novel about a deep-sea fisherman and his wife trying to rebuild their lives after the loss of their daughter, to Bloomsbury.
Adaptation Announcements: Keanu Reeves is in talks to star in Hulu’s upcoming series adaptation of Erik Larson’s 2003 historical true crime bestseller, The Devil In The White City. • Jessica Chastain has optioned the TV rights to Jessamine Chan's debut novel, The School for Good Mothers.
Awards Circuit: The winners of this year’s Costa Book Awards have been announced, as have the winners of the inaugural Silvers-Dudley Prizes for criticism and journalism.
The Most Viewed Books of the Week According to traffic data from Book Mark's widget and website 1. ↑ 5.19% The Dawn of Everything DAVID WENGROW & DAVID GRAEBER 2. ↑ 156.14% To Paradise HANYA YANAGIHARA 3. ↑ NEW The School for Good Mothers JESSAMINE CHAN 4. ↑ 28.70% Crying in H Mart MICHELLE ZAUNER 5. ↓ 3.45% Braiding Sweetgrass ROBIN WALL KIMMERER 6. ↑ 7,060.00% Money JACOB GOLDSTEIN 7. ↓ 17.85% The 1619 Project NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES 8. ↑ 201.94% Anxious People FREDRIK BACKMAN 9. ↑ 606.82% Crossing the River CAROL SMITH 10. ↑ 125.19% How the Word Is Passed CLINT SMITH
(*Percentages based on week-to-week change in total views.)
The First Readers' Club Book GiveawayManifesto BERNARDINE EVARISTO "A beautiful ode to determination and daring and an intimate look at one of our finest writers." |
