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Bryan Washington wins the 2020 Young Lions Fiction Award for Lot: Stories. The National Book Awards longlists are announced for nonfiction and poetry. The longlist is also announced for the CBC Nonfiction Prize. Lit Hub releases its Fall Preview list. Fantasy author Terry Goodkind has died.

Barack Obama’s memoir will publish on Nov. 17 and will be titled A Promised Land. The National Book Foundation announces the longlists for the Translated Literature category and the Young People’s Literature category. Anxious People by Fredrik Backman and Disloyal by Michael Cohen top the bestseller lists. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke remains buzzy.

Notre Dame Library curators and conservators have collaborated on Compendium Animalium, a facsimile of an early modern book combining images from several volumes featured in a recent exhibition, complete with engravings, wooden boards, and leather bindings, that students can hold and investigate.

From The New York Times: John Sargent, Macmillan’s longtime chief executive, will leave the publishing company in January because of disagreements over its direction, according to an announcement from its parent company, Holtzbrinck, on Thursday.

The Booker Prize shortlist is announced. It is a diverse and notably new gathering of authors. The Justice Department has opened a criminal inquiry into John Bolton and has subpoenaed his publisher and literary agent. The National Book Festival takes place online and on TV this year. The controversy over J.K. Rowling continues to grow. The October LibraryReads list arrives. A new adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion is on the way and Black Widow gets moved due to the pandemic.

Could librarian-curated Little Free Libraries be the next great outreach tool to help improve youth reading scores and strengthen community connections to libraries? University of North Carolina (UNC)–Greensboro Library and Information Science Associate Professor Anthony Chow thinks so.

Barack Obama’s next memoir could publish in mid-November; a release date might be announced this Thursday. Nina Stibbe wins the Comedy Women in Print Prize for Reasons to Be Cheerful. The American Book Award winners are announced. BookPage picks their most anticipated books for the fall and EarlyWord posts the September GalleyChat Roundup. Ken Liu announces that the last book in The Dandelion Dynasty trilogy will actually be two books. Next April, PBS will air a film about Ernest Hemingway by Ken Burns.

Central Technology (Cen-Tec), developers of the i-circ line of self-check stations, created Point 2 Click, a patent-pending adapter that enables library patrons to use public touchscreen interfaces without ever physically touching the screens. The adapters were developed in response to heightened cleaning protocols as libraries reopen branches during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rage by Bob Woodward leads holds this week. People’s "Book of the Week" is Anxious People by Fredrik Backman. Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World by Fareed Zakaria (W.W. Norton) and One Vote Away: How a Single Supreme Court Seat Can Change History by Ted Cruz (Regnery: S. & S.) see strong sales bumps. There are new booklists for the fall and much award news. Also, an ode to mail-order book clubs and a look at Space Cat.

Walter Mosley will be honored with the 2020 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation. The New York Public Library celebrates the 20th Anniversary of the Young Lions Fiction Awards on September 13. Three adaptations arrive for the week ahead and new TV series based on books are in the works. Monsterland and The Spanish Princess, part 2 get trailers. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has an essay entitled "Notes on Grief." Sarah Perry has one about risk. Rage by Bob Woodward continues to dominate TV news coverage.

The "What We're Reading & Watching" staffers are watching Michael Jordan and Gene Kelly dance; reading about the lack of honor among mafiosi; experiencing displacement and alienation in wartime Hungary; mingling with British couples; and discovering the humor in Balzac.

Maggie O'Farrell wins the Women's Prize for Fiction for Hamnet. Isabel Wilkerson, Elena Ferrante, James McBride, Raven Leilani, Ibram X, Kendi, and Jason Reynolds headline the nominees for the Kirkus Prize. After co-winning the Wainwright prize, Dara McAnulty is now the youngest finalist ever for the Baillie Gifford prize, the UK’s highest nonfiction award. There are sixteen new bestsellers this week. Rage by Bob Woodward is topping the news.

California’s 2020 wildfire season is one of the worst on record, with fires causing extensive damage to homes, businesses, and forestland. Libraries across the state have largely escaped severe fire or smoke damage. However, harsh smoke conditions have curtailed many libraries’ curbside or front-door pickup services, and the resources they have offered patrons in past wildfire seasons, such as assistance filing claims and in-library computer use, are impossible to provide safely because of COVID-19 related library closures.

There is much award news, including the winners of the Wainwright prize for nature writing and the longlist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Viet Thanh Nguyen has joined the Pulitzer Prize Board. Carolyn Reidy, the late President and CEO of Simon & Schuster, will be honored with the Literarian Award. Ayad Akhtar, Homeland Elegies, is tapped as the next president of PEN America. The Frankfurt Book Fair goes virtual and now includes a free, global book festival day. Oprah is turning her book club into an Apple Podcast, to discuss Isabel Wilkerson's Caste over eight different episodes. Three forthcoming books get sales bumps.

One by One by Ruth Ware leads holds this week. The October Indie Next List is out. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab is the No. 1 pick. Two of the big fall political books arrive today, Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump by Michael Cohen and Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump by Peter Strzok. On top of those buzzy titles, Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine and Everything Beautiful in Its Time: Seasons of Love and Loss by Jenna Bush Hager are also getting focused coverage. The 2020 Dragon Awards are announced.

The Dublin Literary Award shortlist is out and The National Translation Awards longlists are announced. Mulan comes to Disney+ and Get Organized With the Home Edit debuts on Netflix. Debut author Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé gets a seven-figure deal for two YA novels with Feiwel and Friends. Disloyal by Michael Cohen, NRA: A Tell-All Account of Corruption, Greed, and Paranoia within the Most Powerful Political Group in America by Joshua L. Powell, What Can I Do? My Path from Climate Despair to Action by Jane Fonda, and Melania and Me by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff are in the spotlight.

COVID-19 is accelerating the move to digital amid budget pressures; library vendors share what they hear from customers and how they're meeting rapidly evolving needs.

Thick as Thieves by Sandra Brown leads nine new books onto the bestseller lists. The NYT celebrates the 100th week Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates has remained on the bestseller list. The Washington Post reports on their survey of what readers are turning to during the pandemic. More Fall and September booklists arrive.

While exact demographics are hard to come by, the informal consensus seems to be that members of most public libraries’ board of trustees or directors are largely white, well-off, and older. Meanwhile, the communities they represent are often far more diverse.

Love was in the air the weekend of August 28–30, despite the turmoil rocking the romance industry for the better part of 2020. Following the May cancellation of the prestigious RITA Awards, now retired and replaced by the Vivian, the Romance Writers of America (RWA) forged ahead to produce a memorable annual virtual conference.

When the university moved to virtual instruction in March, Cornell University Library's Virtual Reference Response Team focused on building capacity in the ways we already connected with our remote users. Leveraging our Ask a Librarian suite of email, chat, and in-depth research consultations options became our primary concern.

The Last Story of Mina Lee by Nancy Jooyoun Kim and Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi top September book club picks. Jesmyn Ward writes an essay for Vanity Fair about the death of her husband. Elena Ferrante and The Lying Life of Adults gets the spotlight. Vulture calls Susanna Clarke, Piranesi, “one of our greatest living writers.” Game of Thrones showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff, along with Alexander Woo, are adapting The Three-Body Problem trilogy by Liu Cixin for Netflix. Emma Roberts has a first-look deal with Hulu to adapt books for television. Her first project is Carola Lovering’s Tell Me Lies.

NPR’s Summer Reading Poll has produced “100 Favorite Books For Young Readers.” September book picks arrive, as do fall favorites. The NYT writes about the flood of political books and Michael S. Schmidt proves he has good timing with Donald Trump v. The United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President (Random House). The Sunburst Awards for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic are announced.

New Libraries open at Anne Arundel County, Edmonton, and East Baton Rouge Parish; work is almost finished at the Joseph Anderson Cook Library on the University of Southern Mississippi’s (USM) Hattiesburg campus; Bayport is transforming a convent into a "world-class" library; and Michael Bloomberg has given a large gift to help build a new Medford PL.

No matter how conscientiously libraries stick to protocol, many have had to roll back reopening operations recently as employees fall ill or report positive COVID-19 tests or contact with others who test positive—or in some cases, as case counts in their areas rise or patrons refuse to comply with masking or social distancing regulations. 

Typewriters may be a thing of the past, but a new documentary shows how they meay actually hold the kewys to the future.

John King, Boston's playwright in residence

Excerpt making the Most of Our Time