National Book Awards longlists! (This week in books)

This week! Books!

The highly anticipated National Book Award longlists have been released, and congrats to the deserving nominees. I’m rather struck by the short titles in the nominees for fiction. None more than two words!

Fiction

• ’Pemi Aguda, Ghostroots
• Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!
• Jessica Anthony, The Most
• Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, Catalina
• Percival Everett, James
• Miranda July, All Fours
• Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake
• Hisham Matar, My Friends
• Sam Sax, Yr Dead
• Tony Tulathimutte, Rejection

Nonfiction

• Hanif Abdurraqib, There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension
• Rebecca Boyle, Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are
• Jason De León, Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling
• Eliza Griswold, Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church
• Kate Manne, Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia
• Salman Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder
• Ernest Scheyder, The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives
• Richard Slotkin, A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America
• Deborah Jackson Taffa, Whiskey Tender
• Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders

Young People’s Literature

• Olivia A. Cole, Ariel Crashes a Train
• Violet Duncan, Buffalo Dreamer
• Margarita Engle, Wild Dreamers
• Josh Galarza, The Great Cool Ranch Dorito in the Sky
• Erin Entrada Kelly, The First State of Being
• Randy Ribay, Everything We Never Had
• Shifa Saltagi Safadi, Kareem Between
• Angela Shanté, The Unboxing of a Black Girl
• Ali Terese, Free Period
• Alicia D. Williams, Mid-Air

Translated Literature

• Nasser Abu Srour, The Tale of a Wall: Reflections on the Meaning of Hope and Freedom, Translated from the Arabic by Luke Leafgren
• Bothayna Al-Essa, The Book Censor’s Library, Translated from the Arabic by Sawad Hussain and Ranya Abdelrahman
• Linnea Axelsson, Ædnan, Translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel
• Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume (Book I), Translated from the Danish by Barbara J. Haveland
• Layla Martínez, Woodworm, Translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott
• Fiston Mwanza Mujila, The Villain’s Dance, Translated from the French by Roland Glasser
• Fernanda Trías, Pink Slime, Translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary
• Fernando Vallejo, The Abyss, Translated from the Spanish by Yvette Siegert
• Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, Taiwan Travelogue, Translated from the Mandarin Chinese by Lin King
• Samar Yazbek, Where the Wind Calls Home, Translated from the Arabic by Leri Price

Poetry

• Anne Carson, Wrong Norma
• Fady Joudah, […]
• Dorianne Laux, Life on Earth
• Gregory Pardlo, Spectral Evidence
• Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Silver
• Octavio Quintanilla, The Book of Wounded Sparrows
• m.s. RedCherries, mother
• Diane Seuss, Modern Poetry
• Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Something About Living
• Elizabeth Willis, Liontaming in America

Gen Z is into both reading and accessorizing, so I was pleased to see this article about how Gen Z readers have discovered The Folio Society, the publisher who’s devoted to creating beautiful physical copies of classic books.

Liane Moriarty is a massively bestselling author to the tune of 20 million books, whose hits include Big Little Lies. She also abhors publicity, particularly the moment after she starts enjoying it. Relatable!

Anonymous publishing blogs and social media accounts have long been a place for beleaguered publishing employees to carve out a bit of breathing room for solidarity. I enjoyed Maris Kreizman’s look at the current crop.

Do you want to publish your books while maintaining some privacy? Agent Kate McKean has a great post on how possible that may be these days. Essentially: fine to use a pen name and you don’t have to be on social media, but publishers will still expect you to do what you can to promote your books.

This week in bestsellers

Here are the top five NY Times bestsellers in a few key categories. (All links are affiliate links):

Adult print and e-book fiction:

1. Passions in Death by J.D. Robb
2. Vince Flynn: Capture or Kill by Don Bentley
3. It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover
4. It Starts With Us by Colleen Hoover
5. Wild Eyes by Elsie Silver

Adult print and e-book nonfiction:

1. Lovely One by Ketanji Brown Jackson
2. The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
3. Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
4. The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
5. Imminent by Luis Elizondo

Young adult hardcover:

1. Immortal Dark by Tigest Girma
2. Celestial Monsters by Aiden Thomas
3. The Grandest Game by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
4. Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White
5. The Reappearance of Rachel Price by Holly Jackson

Middle grade hardcover:

1. Wonder by R.J. Palacio
2. The Sherlock Society by James Ponti
3. Refugee by Alan Gratz
4. Heroes by Alan Gratz
5. Odder by Katherine Applegate

This week on the blog

In case you missed them, here are this week’s posts:

• If your protagonist is bored, you can bet your reader will be too
• Has your ambition changed in the past few years?

And keep up with the discussion in all the places!

• Follow me on Threads and Bluesky
• Follow my page on Facebook
• Join the Facebook Group
• Check out the Bransforums

And finally, a good way to cure what ails you is to zoom out your mind to the timescales of geology. I really enjoyed Kathryn Schulz’s look at geologist Marcia Bjornerud’s new memoir.

Have a great weekend!

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