NPR Announces 100 Favorite Books For Young Readers | Classic Returns

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Top Reads

NPR’s Summer Reading Poll has produced “100 Favorite Books For Young Readers.” Categories cover Picture Perfect, Baby's Bookshelf, Conversation Starters, Family Life, Animal (and Monster) Friends, Folktales and Fairy Tales, Fun to Read Out Loud, Nonfiction, Early Chapter Books, and Older Readers.

Vulture picks “19 Books We’re Excited to Read This Fall.”

Popsugar offers “35 Picks For the Fall's Most Exciting New Books” and also picks 25 books for September.

Shondaland has “10 Food Writing Books to Read This Fall.”

Food52 picks the best cookbooks of the year, thus far.

Amazon has September picks.

CrimeReads picks twelve books for the month.

Meg Cabot picks summer reads for Amazon.

Bustle picks the best books of the week.

The NYT’s “New & Noteworthy” column is out.

Reviews

The NYT reviews Donald Trump v. The United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President by Michael S. Schmidt (Random House): “a revelatory portrait of the events that led to the investigation of Trump for obstruction of justice, and his repeated attempts to control the Department of Justice … adds significantly to the public understanding of the Mueller investigation and Trump’s war against it.” Also, Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi (Knopf; LJ starred review): “trades the blazing brilliance of “Homegoing” for another type of glory, more granular and difficult to name.” The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante (Europa Editions): “What a relief it is when an author who has written a masterpiece returns to prove the gift intact.” A Girl is A Body of Water by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi (Tin House: W.W. Norton): “This powerful novel dwells in the universe of power as it relates to love and sisterhood.” The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War--a Tragedy in Three Acts by Scott Anderson (Doubleday: Random House): “enthralling.” Out of Mesopotamia by Salar Abdoh (Akashic Books; LJ starred review): “shining a brilliant, feverish light on the nature of not only modern war but all war, and even of life itself.” Red Pill by Hari Kunzru (Knopf): “clever but exasperating.” Self-Portrait with Russian Piano by Wolf Wondratschek, translated by Marshall Yarbrough (FSG: Macmillan): “An immense humility encompasses the novel. In a world that shouts, this book is a song played softly, and slowly.” Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas by Roberto Lovato (Harper): “groundbreaking.” Daddy: Stories by Emma Cline (Random House): “Cline has an unnerving narrative proprioception, and her stories have the clean, bright lines of modernist architecture.” Lastly, a dual review titled “Tested by Tragedy, Two Politicians Review Their Records — Mistakes Included” and a group review titled “Three New Novels Remind Us the Past Was No Picnic Either.”

The Washington Post reviews The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante (Europa Editions): “As in the Neapolitan novels, and in much of the best first-person fiction, the relationship between telling one’s life story and understanding oneself is central. As long as it is as well-told as Ferrante’s version, it is a story we never tire of.” Also, I Have Something to Tell You: A Memoir by Chasten Buttigieg (Atria: S. & S.): “Chasten Buttigieg’s story is powerful and inspiring, to those of us who once believed it unthinkable that an out gay man would be a serious candidate for the highest office in the land.” Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar (Little, Brown: Hachette; LJ starred review): “One of the most fascinating themes of this tour de force is the sustained tension between memoir and invention that runs through any creative person’s life.”

The L.A. Times reviews The Great Offshore Grounds by Vanessa Veselka (Knopf) “that merciless truth of the universe represents a sort of mercy, and it makes [this] a saga of acceptance, which is to say a book of life.”

Briefly Noted

The Sunburst Awards for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic are announced.

The NYT has a story about all the Trump books and how well they sell. The paper also writes that more are on the way. On that note, Salon features Donald Trump v. The United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President by Michael S. Schmidt (Random House).

USA Today features Every Night Is Pizza Night by J. Kenji López-Alt, Gianna Ruggiero (Norton Young Readers: W. W. Norton).

Entertainment Weekly interviews Alyssa Cole, When No One Is Watching (William Morrow: Harper; LJ starred review).

Amazon interviews Louise Penny, All the Devils Are Here (Minotaur: St. Martin’s: Macmillan; LJ starred review).

The NYT interviews Alyssa Cole, When No One Is Watching (William Morrow: Harper; LJ starred review).

Bustle interviews Stephanie Yeboah, Fattily Ever After: A Black Fat Girl's Guide to Living Life Unapologetically (Hardie Grant).

Electric Lit interviews Diane Cook, The New Wilderness (Harper).

Emma Cline, Daddy: Stories (Random House), answers the Book Marks Qustionnaire.

Entertainment Weekly excerpts White Fox by Sara Faring (Imprint: Macmillan).

Tor.com excerpts Fable by Adrienne Young (Wednesday Books: Macmillan).

Vulture features Mariah Carrey, The Meaning of Mariah Carey (Andy Cohen: Macmillan).

HuffPost showcases The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante (Europa Editions).

The NYT spotlights author Nick Flynn, This Is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire (W.W. Norton) and actress Lili Taylor. The paper also has a piece on “The Many Sides to Dan Brown” who has a children’s music album out for kids.

The NYT “Group Text” column features Fifty Words for Rain by Asha Lemmie (Dutton: Penguin).

Channing Tatum has written a children’s book, The One and Only Sparkella, illustrated by Kim Barnes (Feiwel & Friends: Macmillan, May 4, 2021). People has some details.

The Guardian reports that Dictionary.com is “making major changes to more than 15,000 of its definitions, from capitalising Black to updating entries about sexual orientation.”

Authors on Air

Netflix has a trailer for The Haunting of Bly Manor. It is based on the The Turn of the Screw by Henry James and starts on Oct. 9.

AMC’s NOS4A2 will not get another season. Tor.com has details.

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