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9 New Books We Recommend This Week
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There are woods near my house where I sometimes head when I’m craving green shadows and stillness, a reminder that time and nature have very little to do with the human scale of things. Very little — but not nothing: As Scott Weidensaul points out in his new book about migratory birds, “A World on the Wing,” humans are deeply implicated in the recent decimation of aviation species. If you love the woods as I do, this book will make you more alert to the chirrups and whistles and flashes of movement in the canopy above you and give you new respect for birds’ incredible abilities. It’s one of our recommended titles this week.
We also have a good stack of fiction in store for you, from Haruki Murakami’s latest story collection to Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s satire of Hollywood and marriage to debut novels from JoAnne Tompkins, Sanjena Sathian and Thomas Grattan. In nonfiction, the historian Annette Gordon-Reed takes a turn toward the personal with her book about Texas, “On Juneteenth,” while Simon Heffer revisits the British Empire before World War I and Linda Colley examines the role that constitutions have played in shaping modern governance.
Gregory Cowles Senior Editor, Books Twitter: @GregoryCowles
ON JUNETEENTH , by Annette Gordon-Reed. (Liveright, $15.95.) This series of short, moving essays by the noted historian explores “the long road” to June 19, 1865, when the end of legalized slavery was announced in Texas, the state where Gordon-Reed was born and raised. If the book is a more personally revealing departure for Gordon-Reed, it’s still guided by the humane skepticism that has animated her previous work. “One of the things that makes this slender book stand out is Gordon-Reed’s ability to combine clarity with subtlety,” our critic Jennifer Szalai writes. “She leads by example, revisiting her own experiences, questioning her own assumptions — and showing that historical understanding is a process, not an end point.”
GOOD COMPANY, by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney. (Ecco, $27.99.) Beginning with the discovery of a long-lost wedding ring, Sweeney’s warm, witty novel plumbs the depths of two marriages. Secrets and resentments abound, but loyalty and abiding affection carry this bicoastal tale of actors finding their way in real life. “Sweeney is uncommonly skilled at gently lampooning Hollywood,” Meghan Daum writes in her review. “The constant internal struggle between what the heart wants versus what it should be grateful it already has serves as the primary emotional engine of ‘Good Company.’”
A WORLD ON THE WING: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds, by Scott Weidensaul. (Norton, $32.) Weidensaul takes readers on a gripping journey alongside the world’s feathered wanderers and the people who study them. He’s also on something of a crusade, drawing attention to the large number of birds that have been disappearing from the skies. “Weidensaul tasks himself with communicating to both the knowing birder and the layman the epic scale of what’s happening in our skies every year, the whys and hows, while offering rays of hope through the gloomy storm clouds,” Christian Cooper writes in his review. “The success of ‘A World on the Wing’ in navigating that challenge rivals the astonishing feats of the birds he chronicles.”
WHAT COMES AFTER, by JoAnne Tompkins. (Riverhead, $28.) In this debut novel, a pregnant teenager appears in a small town that is reeling in the wake of tragedy. How the residents open their doors to a stranger, and how two neighbors find their way forward after the deaths of their sons, is the backbone of this difficult but elegant story. “It’s a cautionary tale, one that prompted me to ask a series of probing, unwelcome questions at the dinner table,” Elisabeth Egan writes in her latest Group Text column. “But it’s also a powerful and inspiring reminder of how a close-knit community will rally around people in trouble, no matter their age.”
GOLD DIGGERS, by Sanjena Sathian. (Penguin Press, $27.) The teenagers at the center of Sathian’s debut novel drink literal gold in a desperate attempt to fit in as children of immigrants. The book is filled with achingly real reminders of what it was like to be an adolescent in post-9/11 America, feeling the weight of your parents’ dreams on your shoulders, but mostly just wanting to drink and make out. “The tension Sathian builds is one of teenage insecurity swelling into adulthood,” Lauren Christensen writes in her review. “This intimate glimpse of millennials who are second-generation Americans … shows how history repeats. It is a story of immigrants reaping their futures from property they have found, which is not theirs — or is it?”
FIRST PERSON SINGULAR: Stories, by Haruki Murakami. Translated by Philip Gabriel. (Knopf, $28.) Murakami’s new stories expound on memory’s power to shape us, incorporating confessional musings and touches of his signature supernaturalism: Charlie Parker speaks to us in a dream, a monkey with a strange compulsion comes clean. Our reviewer, David Means, admires the collection: “Whatever you want to call Murakami’s work — magic realism, supernatural realism — he writes like a mystery tramp, exposing his global readership to the essential and cosmic (yes, cosmic!) questions that only art can provoke.”
THE RECENT EAST, by Thomas Grattan. (MCD/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.) The rare novel to make a good life interesting, “The Recent East” follows three generations of one family, each uprooted and relocated across the world at a pivotal moment while growing up. “Most extraordinarily, Grattan gives us not only life, but a good life, the rarity of which in fiction (and increasingly, reality) is a shame,” our reviewer, Patrick Nathan, writes. “Is happiness really so uninteresting? Is contentment? Both seem to have developed that reputation, but in Grattan’s hands, life’s joys are magnetic.”
THE AGE OF DECADENCE: A History of Britain, 1880 to 1914, by Simon Heffer. (Pegasus, $39.95.) This sweeping history of Britain before World War I combines seriousness with a welcome waspishness, and may remind Americans of their country’s own present condition. “There are many pleasures to be had in this fine book, not the least of which is the vivacity of Heffer’s prose,” Richard Aldous writes in his review. “Heffer has little interest in debates among historians on the period, but unlike many general surveys of this kind, he does not rely just on secondary literature and makes excellent use of wide-ranging archival research. That approach gives the book a fresh perspective.”
THE GUN, THE SHIP, AND THE PEN: Warfare, Constitutions, and the Making of the Modern World, by Linda Colley. (Liveright, $35.) Colley’s examination of constitutions in the modern world reveals surprising origins for the unprecedented restrictions that were placed on governmental power beginning in the 18th century. “Colley also reminds us of how revolutionary and inspirational constitutions were — and still are,” Sheri Berman writes in her review. “At a time when many are questioning the future of democracy, it is worth remembering how important and precious these things are.”
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‘New York Times’ Reveals Its Best Books of 2021
BY Michael Schaub • Nov. 29, 2021
The New York Times Book Review unveiled its list of the 10 best books of the year , with titles by Honorée Fannone Jeffers, Patricia Lockwood, and Clint Smith among those making the cut.
Jeffers was honored for her debut novel, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois , which was a finalist for this year’s Kirkus Prize and longlisted for the National Book Award.
Lockwood made the list for her Booker Prize-finalist No One Is Talking About This , while Imbolo Mbue was honored for her novel How Beautiful We Were . The other two works of fiction selected by the Times were Intimacies by Katie Kitamura and the genre-defying When We Cease To Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut, translated by Adrian Nathan West. Kitamura’s novel made the National Book Award fiction longlist, while Labatut’s book was on the prize’s translated literature shortlist.
Smith’s How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America , also longlisted for the National Book Award,was one of the nonfiction books to make the Times list, along with Annette Gordon-Reed’s On Juneteenth .
Other nonfiction books on the list included Andrea Elliott’s Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City and Tove Ditlevsen’s memoir cycle, The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood; Youth; Dependency , translated by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman.
Rounding out the list was Heather Clark’s Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath . The biography, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award, was published in 2020; when asked on Twitter why it was named one of the Times’ notable books of 2021, Times Book Review editor Pamela Paul explained , “We used to make the cut after the Holiday issue and carry the titles over [to the] following year. Moving forward, it’s the full calendar year.”
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
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The New York Times Reveals Their 10 Best Books Of 2021
Carina Pereira
Carina Pereira, born in ‘87, in Portugal. Moved to Belgium in 2011, and to Rotterdam, The Netherlands, in 2019. Avid reader, changing interests as the mods strikes. Whiles away the time by improvising stand-up routines she’ll never get to perform. Books are a life-long affair, audiobooks a life-changing discovery of adulthood. Selling books by day, writer by night. Contact
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As the end of the year approaches, various platforms start putting together a selection of the books they believe deserve to have the literary spotlight of the last 365 days.
From Goodreads Choice Awards , to the Top Five Books Of The Year At Amazon , these lists are often a great way to compare what is going around our own social media bubble, and what the mainstream media and platforms deem the best of. (Amazon’s list has one book in common with the New York Times. Read this whole post and see if you can guess which one before you click that link.)
Book Riot is obviously not an exception in this matter – we are always down to tell you all about our favourite reads – and you can check out the books we held most dear to our hearts in 2021 here .
The 10 Best Books Of The Year as it is currently presented by The New York Times has been going on since pretty much the beginning of the Book Review magazine, back in 1896.
After several changes across the years, in 2004 the list has taken the shape that is still being used today: as fall arrives, the editors start reading, discussing, and choosing what will become their definitive list of the ten best books of the year.
These are their choices for 2021:
- How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue
- Intimacies by Katie Kitamura
- The Love Song Of W. E. B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
- No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
- When We Cease To Understand The World by Benjamín Labatut, translated by Adrian Nathan West
- The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen, translated by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman
- How The Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With The History Of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith
- Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope In An American City by Andrea Elliott
- On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed
- Red Comet: The Short Life And Blazing Art Of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark
As it’s common with the New York Times 10 Best Books Of The Year lists, the first five books are labelled under the genre literary fiction, and the other five are works of non-fiction, although Labatut is said to stand on the edge of both.
This year’s list includes two books in translation. Or, if we are in the mood to be pedantic, we can say it actually includes four, since Ditlevsen’s are actually three books put together and they can be found and purchased on their own (nice little way to include 12 books in a list of 10, New York Times!). Likewise, you’ll find several important works around social justice themes, including class and race, both fiction and non-fiction.
The Love Songs Of W.E.B Du Bois was one of the picks of Oprah’s Book Club 2021. It was also nominated for Time’s best books of 2021. Similarly, other books on the above list also fell under the Time’s 2021 best of non-fiction: Juneteenth , How The Word Is Passed , Invisible Child , and The Copenhagen Trilogy .
Fifty percent of the books nominated were written by authors of colour. Last year, this same list included forty percent authors of colour.
Read more about each of the 10 books listed above in this link. And for those with full access to the New York Times website, here are 100 Notable Books released in 2021 that their editors put together.
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The New York Times Book Review revealed their top 10 books of the year in a virtual event for subscribers . Dava Shastri's Last Day by Kirthana Ramisetti is the December GMA Book Club pick. More Best of the Year lists arrive. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan gets reviewed. LJ posts the May 2022 Prepub Alert complete list. Bernardine Evaristo will preside over the Royal Society of Literature. Interviews arrive with Faith Jones, Raekwon of the Wu-Tang Clan, Mel Brooks, and Mario Vargas Llosa. Stephen Graham Jones’ forthcoming novel, Don't Fear the Reaper is due out in August 2022. Plus, authors Anne Helen Petersen and Charlie Warzel reconsider the future of work.
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Book clubs, awards, & best of the year.
Editors at The New York Times Book Review revealed their top 10 books of the year in a virtual event for subscribers .The list will be published later today.
Dava Shastri's Last Day by Kirthana Ramisetti (Grand Central) is the December GMA Book Club pick .
Time releases the 100 must-read books of 2021.
The Chicago Tribune picks its top 10 books of the year.
Book Page delivers its Best Books of the Year lists.
Merlin Sheldrake wins Royal Society Science Book Prize for Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures . The Bookseller reports.
The Guardian reviews Renegades: Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama (Crown): “if that person in your life who has everything deserves a reminder of how rock’n’roll can be more moral than its enemies, of how, sometimes, the arc of history bends towards justice a little more noticeably, Renegades will stuff that stocking amply.”
Briefly Noted
Bernardine Evaristo will preside over the Royal Society of Literature . The Guardian reports.
Salon has a conversation with Faith Jones , Sex Cult Nun: Breaking Away from the Children of God, a Wild, Radical Religious Cult (Morrow; LJ starred review), about “leaving a religious cult and re-discovering who she was.”
People talks with Alfonso Ribeiro about whether or not he will read his friend’s memoir, Will , by Will Smith (Penguin Random House).
Bustle explores the question, “Is There A Better Way To Write About Interracial Friendship?” with co-authors of the novel, We Are Not Like Them (Atria), Christine Pride and Jo Piazza.
FoxNews share s details from Brothers and Wives: Inside the Private Lives of William, Kate, Harry, and Meghan by Christopher Andersen (Gallery Books).
The LA Times has 6 books for December .
LitHub shares 12 books out this week .
Bustle has 10 new books for the week.
Jakucho Setouchi, Buddhist nun and best-selling Japanese author, dies at 99 . The Washington Post has an obituary.
Authors On Air
Mel Brooks talks to Good Morning America about his remarkable life in show business and his new memoir, All About Me! (Ballantine: Penguin Random House).
NPR has an interview with Mario Vargas Llosa about his new book , Harsh Times , trans. by Adrian Nathan West (Farrar).
Netflix will no longer produce the adaptation of Alice Sebold memoir. The Guardian reports.
LitHub shares a clip of Chadwick Boseman reading Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass .
Vanessa Lachey, Life from Scratch: Family Traditions That Start with You , written with Dina Gachman (HarperOne) will be on with Drew Barrymore tomorrow, and Andy Cohen, Glitter Every Day: 365 Quotes from Women I Love (Holt), will be on The Real.
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