The critics of Kirkus Reviews have delivered their verdicts on today's bestselling books (Critics' Takes on Bestsellers) and for each book it comes down to one recommendation: buy, borrow, or skip.
And what final judgment hath the Kirkus jury passed upon the bestselling Macmillan titles? Buy and borrow, baby!
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John Scalzi's swashbuckling space adventure with a twist, REDSHIRTS: A Novel with Three Codas, is a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Novel! And debut novelist Max Gladstone is shortlisted for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer! Woohoo! See the full list of Hugo finalists here.
Woohoos are also in order for Tor editors Liz Gorinsky and Patrick Nielsen Hayden who are Hugo finalists in the category of Best Editor–Long Form.
And might I add it's fantastic to see the Writing Excuses podcast (Season 7) on the list of finalists in the Best Related Work category since so many of our excellent writers are a part of it.
Finalists for the Prometheus Award for libertarian science fiction novels in the Best Novel category include ARCTIC RISING by Tobias Buckell and THE UNINCORPORATED FUTURE and Dani Kollin and Eytan Kollin! Previous Tor winners include Jo Walton and Cory Doctorow.
See the full list of five finalists here.
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Happy day, librarians! The weather has taken a turn for the sunny here in NYC and we hope it's doing the same in your neighborhood.
- TxLA 2013 is fast approaching! Don't forget to take a look at our full conference schedule under Conference Info above.
- Two great sunny day reads, THE BAKER STREET TRANSLATION and THE PINK HOTEL, are on Los Angeles Magazine's April Reading List.
- Lauren Willig, author of THE ASHFORD AFFAIR, wrote an article for HeroesandHeartbreakers.com on the art of putting the right characters together at the wrong time in their lives to maximize romantic tension. Read 'Author Lauren Willig on Romantic Timing' now! And get whitelisted to download a copy of the e-galley from Edelweiss:
- In pretty things news, Hollie Chastain made some gorgeous book art featured on the Picador Book Room tumblr and Flavorwire. We ♥ it!
- And finally, a complicated flow chart answering an age-old question:
A small chart to help with over- purchases of books... twitter.com/justrena/statu…
— RenaMaguire (@justrena) March 31, 2013
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Happy Friday, party librarians! It's that time of the week in which we like to share with you what we're currently reading.
Talia's loving THE FAITHFUL EXECUTIONER: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century by Joel F. Harrington. In fact, she selected a passage from the beginning of the book for her excerpt pick in our newsletter last week:
"Ultimately he intended to become, like his father, a master in the practice of 'special interrogation' (i.e., torture) and in the art of efficiently dispatching a condemned soul in the manner prescribed by law, using methods that ranged from the common execution with the rope, to the less frequent death by fire or by drowning, to the infamous and exceptionally rare drawing and quartering.
"Today Meister Heinrich was testing Frantz on the most difficult-and most honorable-of all forms of execution, death by the sword, or beheading."
I just started UFO HUNTERS: Book One by William J. Birnes. I've never actually seen the UFO Hunters TV show on HISTORY, but I looove reading about everyday people encountering the unexplainable or, even better, the suspiciously explained. Get whitelisted and download the e-galley of UFO HUNTERS now so we can talk about it.
On Monday I offered to hook up any librarians with a pre-approved NetGalley download link for ALL OUR PRETTY SONGS (one of my Uncharted Pages picks) and the offer still stands! Just e-mail me 1. your title and 2. the e-mail address you use to sign into NetGalley.
What are your #FridayReads? [...]
A.C. Grayling, professor of philosophy and master of the New College of the Humanities London and author of THE GOD ARGUMENT: The Case against Religion and for Humanism, was on The Colbert Report last night. He had a great, albeit brief, discussion with host Stephen Colbert about, oh, let's see—the nature of God, humanity, and the universe.
Watch the full episode on ColbertNation.com and read the book now!
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We have THRILLING news. (Good one, Fisher!)
The International Thriller Writers have selected their finalists for the 2013 Thriller Awards (yay!) and two very thrill-tastic Macmillan novels already on your shelves are in the running for Best Hardcover Novel and Best First Novel. We have our fingers crossed!
THE SURVIVOR
by Gregg Hurwitz
DON’T EVER GET OLD
by Daniel Friedman
We're also excited to see CJ Lyons' BLIND FAITH on the list for the 2013 Best E-Book Original Novel category. See the full list of finalists at Mystery Fanfare.
Congratulations to all of the thrill-ful finalists! [...]
It won't surprise you to hear I was immediately drawn to THE BOOK OF MY LIVES, Aleksander Hemon's memoir in essays, because of that charming blue alien fellow on the cover. Despite the harsh disappointment I experienced when I found out this was not, in fact, science fiction, I've come back to this book again and again because of the glowing praise it gets from readers with hearts both warmed and broken.
Here are a few quotes from reviews:
"Amuses, informs and inspires—then, finally, rips open the heart." —Kirkus Reviews
"The book culminates with 'The Aquarium,' 28 heart-wrenching pages of powerful prose originally published in the New Yorker, about his infant daughter’s battle with cancer that is nothing short of a tour de force; its terrible beauty demonstrates Hemon’s transformation as a writer and a man." —Publishers Weekly
Barbara Hoffert of Library Journal selected it for her March 2013 picks list and said, "Folded within this narrative, though, is a tale of two cities—Sarajevo and Chicago—and his love for them both, for his family, and for soccer."
And we just found out it will be on the April Indie Next List!
FSG posted a vine of Hemon signing copies of THE BOOK OF MY LIVES in the office. Lookie.
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Happy April, librarians!
- First of all, we're excited to see THE ASHFORD AFFAIR on the April Indie Next List!
"With this standalone, new readers will have the opportunity to enjoy Willig's talent for balancing multiple, connected storylines without the added pressure of a long-standing series." -Library Journal (starred review)
Get whitelisted and download the e-galley from Edelweiss now!
- Second, I'm just going to come right out and say it: I want you to read ALL OUR PRETTY SONGS. I'm making a lot of noise about this YA debut (see the most recent Uncharted Pages) because it's a very special story. Unfortunately it's not available to download from Edelweiss yet, but it is up on NetGalley. Send me an e-mail this week with 1. your title and 2. the e-mail address you use to sign into NetGalley. I'll hook you up with a pre-approved download link so you can start reading it now!
- Third, Carrie Vaughn, New York Times bestselling author of the Kitty Norville werewolf books, wrote a great article for the Tor/Forge blog, "How I Learned to Stop Grumbling and Love Vampires."
"Plenty of people were writing about vampires; I didn’t feel a need to throw my hat into that ring. I didn’t have anything to say about vampires that hadn’t already been said. They were, in a word, kinda boring. [...] But in creating my vampire characters, Alette and Roman and especially Rick, I discovered something. Something that vampires bring to the table that other supernatural creatures don’t: history."
- And finally, watch the book trailer for LOST CAT:
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Okay, okay; "Women's Fiction Friday" isn't actually a regular series on this blog, but we have so many excellent women's fiction titles on our list—both backlist and forthcoming—that it should be! Look forward to more posts like this on upcoming Fridays... if I remember.
Today we're celebrating all of the great novelists that Rebecca Vnuk, author of READ ON... WOMEN'S FICTION and WOMEN'S FICTION AUTHORS, highlighted in "Rebecca’s Rules: Defining Women’s Fiction" over on BooklistOnline.com. So how exactly do we categorize women's fiction? Vnuk says,
"These are novels that explore the lives of female protagonists, focusing on all kinds of relationships, be it lovers, spouses, parents, children, friends, or members of a community. The common thread is that the central character is female, and the main thrust of the story is something happening in the life of that woman (as opposed to the overall theme being a romance or a mystery of some sort). Emotions and relationships are the common thread between books that belong in this category. A woman is the star of the story, and her emotional development drives the plot."
She goes on to offer a few guidelines on categorizing a book as women's fiction, but admits that "for most casual readers, it makes no difference whether we call it a romance or we call it women’s fiction, they just want something good to read about women."
On her list of "10 authors that reader’s-advisory librarians should be familiar with in order to best serve their women’s fiction fans" are:
Barbara Taylor Bradford
Barbara Delinsky
Emily Giffin
Jane Green
and Kristin Hannah
All of whom are published by St. Martin's Press! See the full list here. [...]
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