Off the Shelf

Readers' Choice: The Top 10 Most Shelved Books in March March 30, 2018 By Off the Shelf Staff

 

Many of our longtime Off the Shelf subscribers have already discovered “Your Shelf” on our website. If you’re new here, you can create your own reading list from books you find on OfftheShelf.com with our “Your Shelf” feature. To start building “Your Shelf,” simply sign up for an Off the Shelf account. Then, when you see a book you want to add to your reading list, click “Add to Your Shelf” below the book cover, and we’ll save your favorites for you. These are the 10 “most shelved” books on Off the Shelf right now. READ MORE

The Roundup with PW

Anita Shreve Dies at 71: The author of 'The Pilot's Wife' and 'The Weight of Water' died of cancer Thursday in her home in southern New Hampshire.

'Fire and Fury' Show Gets Its Director: 'Game Change' director Jay Roach has been tapped to direct and executive produce the TV adaptation of Michael Wolff’s book.

Indie Bookstores Keep On Coming: Why the number of independent bookstores increased by 35% during the "retail apocalypse."

Barbershops Turning Kids Into Readers: Alvin Irby, founder of Barbershop Books, is on a mission to get kids reading in the barbershop.

Weird Habits of Famous Writers: If you have writer's block, maybe try wearing a hat like Dr. Seuss, or sharpening two dozen pencils like John Steinbeck.

VIEW ALL »

Publishers Lunch

 

Today's Meal

People, Etc.

Josh Zajdman has joined Picador as senior publicist. He was previously a publicist at Media Connect.

Lance Fensterman has been promoted to president of Global ReedPOP.

Anita Shreve, 71, author of 20 books included The Pilot's Wife and The Weight of Water, died of cancer Thursday at home in southern New Hampshire. She had announced her illness almost a year ago,writing on Facebook: "This is a hard post to write. I have so been looking forward to going on book tour for my new novel, The Stars are Fire, and had hoped to meet many of you on my travels." Her latest book was published by Knopf, but her longtime editor at Little, Brown Michael Pietsch (now ceo of Hachette Book Group) told the Boston Globe, "She wrote beautifully melodic and nuanced prose. I admired every book of hers. She brought a great mind to the observation of emotions."

Awards
The winners of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards for "literature that confronts racism and examines diversity" are:

Fiction: Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward
Nonfiction: Bunk, by Kevin Young
Poetry: In the Language of My Captor, by Shane McCrae,
Lifetime Achievement: N. Scott Momaday

Off the Shelf

6 Books to Read If You Loved "Lady Bird" March 28, 2018 By Elizabeth Breeden

 

My mother sent me a one-line text the other night: “I saw Lady Bird.” A little nervous and not sure what was being implied by her brevity, I immediately called for her take on the film that has been sweeping theaters around the country. Along with the varied themes on class, family, and teenage relationships, this story of a young woman’s coming-of-age seems to have struck a chord for its poignant, funny, and bittersweet depiction of a mother-daughter relationship. While fumbling with my phone I wondered if my own mother had the same reaction I did, that it somehow perfected the odd juxtaposition between parents and children, where you both know everything and nothing about one another, and it sometimes feels as though your whole life is spent evolving in relation to them. It’s clear why this relationship is mined so often in storytelling, but rarely does a novel or film capture this intersection of individuality, utter dependency, and the indelibly sweet, complex love within families so well. Luckily, there are a few authors who have mastered just that. READ MORE

Flash in Aotearoa: NFFD judges in conversation

  

The 2018 National Flash Fiction Day competition runs through April 30.

Send your best 300-word story * Cash prizes 

Three categories: Adult, Youth and a Te reo Māori Prize

 

 

We are pleased to share insights from this year’s judges.

Sue Wootton and Tracey Slaughter (Adult judges)

Tim Jones and Patrick Pink (Youth judges)

Vaughan Rapatahana (Te reo Māori Prize judge)

 

NFFD 2018 in Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin, Northland, Wellington

Meet the judges * share stories * celebrate the shortest form

Competition entry details here.

nationalflash.org

Off the Shelf

A Peek Behind Stu's Shelf March 29, 2018 By Off the Shelf Staff

 

Meet Stu! He’s a California native, raised on healthy doses of John Steinbeck and Jack London. When asked about his formative years, he is likely to respond “the only good things to ever come out of Sacramento were me and Joan Didion.” Now a proud resident of New York City, he can be found on warm days lounging in Central Park with his dog on his lap and a manuscript in his hand. READ MORE

Latest from The Bookseller

LATEST NEWS Quarto's children's sales grow but profits plunge in 'tough year' The Quarto Group's sales declined marginally by 1.4% to £152.5m last year, however, its operating profits plunged 58% to £7.2m. W H Smith and Blackwell's reveal gender pay gap Booksellers Blackwell’s and W H Smith have revealed their gender pay gap data, both beating the national median average. Rebuck, Calder, Gregory reflect on the impact of Women in Publishing Thirty high-profile former members of Women in Publishing reflect on how the group empowered women in the industry in the 1970s and '80s in an oral history being made available at the British Library. Four more academic publishers reveal gender pay gaps Academic publishers Taylor & Francis (T&F), Wiley, SAGE and Cambridge University Press have published their gender pay gap data, with all showing pay gaps in favour of men, particularly in bonus payments. Men at Bloomsbury paid 17.2% more than women Men earn a median average of 17.2% more than women at Bloomsbury, and a mean average of 23.3% more. Bologna Children's Book Fair in pictures A host of authors, illustrators and publishers feature on our pictures round-up of this year's Bologna Children's Book Fair, including Michael Morpurgo, Sarah McIntyre and Kori Song. Jay Bernard wins Ted Hughes Award Jay Bernard has won the £5,000 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry for Surge: Side A (Speaking Volumes). 'New era' as SoA moves to Bloomsbury The Society of Authors (SoA) is moving from South Kensington back to Bloomsbury in London, "to usher in a new era". Writer's Academy graduate's debut thriller snapped up by Transworld Transworld has acquired a debut thriller, Mind Games, by Penguin Random House Writer’s Academy graduate Leona Deakin.  Big Green Bookshop campaign sees nature title sent to Haringey schools The Big Green Bookshop has helped raise funds to get a copy of nature anthology The Lost Words (Hamish Hamilton) into every school in Haringey. Transworld pre-empts 'tense' debut Bad Apple Transworld has pre-empted a "tense" debut, Bad Apple by Zoje Stage, which the publisher says takes domestic suspense "to a whole new level". How do you feel about your company's gender pay gap? As more publishers and booksellers release their gender pay gap data, we are keen to hear your thoughts on the figures being revealed.

Publishers Lunch

Today's Meal

Awards: Wang Wins PEN/Hemingway; Indies Choice Finalists; and More

Weike Wang has won the PEN/Hemingway Award for her debut novel Chemistry. She will receive $25,000 at an awards ceremony in Boston on April 8. Lisa Ko's The Leavers and Adelia Saunders' Indelible were the runners-up, while The Graybar Hotel by Curtis Dawkins and Live from Cairo by Ian Bassingthwaighte received honorable mentions.

In other awards news, the James Tait Black Prizes announced their nominees in fiction and nonfiction, with the winners to be named on August 18.

The American Booksellers Association announced the finalists for the 2018 Indies Choice Awards and the E.B. White Read-Aloud Awards, with the winners to be announced May 2. The nominees include:

Adult Fiction
Exit West, by Mohsin Hamid (Riverhead)
Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders (Random House)
Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng (Penguin Press)
Mrs. Caliban, by Rachel Ingalls (New Directions)
Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee (Grand Central)
Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward (Scribner)

Adult Nonfiction
Hallelujah Anyway, by Anne Lamott (Riverhead)
Hunger, by Roxane Gay (Harper)
Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann (Doubleday)
Silence, by Erling Kagge (Pantheon)
Spineless, by Juli Berwald (Riverhead)
The Stranger in the Woods, by Michael Finkel (Knopf)

Adult Debut
Fen, by Daisy Johnson (Graywolf Press)
Her Body and Other Parties, by Carmen Maria Machado (Graywolf Press)
History of Wolves, by Emily Fridlund (Atlantic Monthly Press)
The Leavers, by Lisa Ko (Algonquin Books)
The Long Haul, by Finn Murphy (W.W. Norton & Company)
Stephen Florida, by Gabe Habash (Coffee House Press)

YA
All the Crooked Saints, by Maggie Stiefvater (Scholastic Press)
Dear Martin, by Nic Stone (Crown Books for Young Readers)
The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas (Balzer + Bray)
Long Way Down, by Jason Reynolds (Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books)
Turtles All the Way Down, by John Green (Dutton Books for Young Readers)
When Dimple Met Rishi, by Sandhya Menon (Simon Pulse)

Middle Grade
The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora, by Pablo Cartaya (Viking Books for Young Readers)
The First Rule of Punk, by Celia C. Perez (Viking Books for Young Readers)
One Last Word, by Nikki Grimes (Bloomsbury USA Children's Books)
Refugee, by Alan Gratz (Scholastic)
The Stars Beneath Our Feet, by David Barclay Moore (Knopf Books for Young Readers)
Wishtree, by Katherine Applegate (Feiwel & Friends)

Picture Book
After the Fall (How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again), by Dan Santat (Roaring Brook Press)
Alfie (The Turtle That Disappeared), by Thyra Heder (Harry N. Abrams)
Come With Me, by Holly M. McGhee and Pascal Lemaitre (G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers)
Dragons Love Tacos 2: The Sequel, by Adam Rubin, Daniel Salmieri (Illus.) (Dial Books)
Escargot, by Dashka Slater, Sydney Hanson (Illus.) (Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers)
The Wolf, the Duck, and the Mouse, by Mac Barnett, Jon Klassen (Illus.) (Candlewick)

The awards have also added a new category this year, "because of the growing popularity of audiobooks."

Audiobook of the Year
American War, by Omar El Akkad, read by Dion Graham (Penguin Random House Audio)
The Fact of a Body, by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, read by the author (Macmillan Audio)
Hunger, by Roxane Gay, read by the author (HarperAudio)
Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann, read by Will Patton, Ann Marie Lee, and Danny Campbell (Penguin Random House Audio)
Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders, read by Nick Offerman, David Sedaris, George Saunders, and a full cast (Penguin Random House Audio)
The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott, read by Euan Morton (Macmillan Audio)

People, Etc.

Erroll McDonald, vice president and executive editor at Knopf Doubleday, has been named the chairman of the board of directors of the Center for Fiction.

Beth Sochacki has been promoted to senior marketing manager at Sourcebooks.

Jenna Huerta has joined Chronicle Books as senior designer. Previously she was a lead designer at Pixar.

Harassment Files
The ABA announced a new code of conduct for association meetings and events. The code will apply to all participants, including "booksellers, ABA staff, exhibitors, speakers/presenters, guests, sponsors, volunteers, and all affiliated attendees." On the list of behaviors that violate the code: offensive verbal comments; inappropriate physical contact; sexual propositions; unwelcome sexual attention; off-color or obscene jokes, remarks, or gestures; and more. Anyone who violates the code "may, in the judgment and discretion of ABA, be asked to stop; may be expelled from an ABA event, without refund if applicable; may be prevented from attending future ABA events; and may have ABA membership and future participation privileges revoked."