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Booker Prize winner…
Winner of the 2020 Booker Prize. A deeply sympathetic story about poverty and addiction in 1980s Glasgow, and a cutting look at the impact of Thatcherism in Scotland. The titular character, the young Shuggie Bain, is desperate to escape the trappings of being poor and attain that elusive status of “normal”; his mother, Agnes, wants to stay sober but keeps falling back into alcoholism. “Challenging, intimate and gripping … anyone who reads it will never feel the same,” said the Booker Prize judges.
Nobel Prize winner…
Louise Glück won the 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature for “her unmistakable poetic voice, that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal,” according to the Swedish Academy, which oversees the award. Glück has long been considered one of America’s greatest contemporary poets, and this melancholic National Book Award-winning poetry collection is one of her best.
National Book Award shortlist…
A simple premise belies the provocative racial themes that unfold in this slow burn thriller nominated for the National Book Award in Fiction. A white Brooklyn family rents a luxurious house in the Hamptons for a weeklong getaway, but they’re barely settled in when there’s a late night knock at the door. It’s an older Black couple claiming to be the owners who rented the house out, but they’re back due to a severe power outage in the city. With no internet or cell phone access in this remote area, it’s difficult to verify what’s really going on. The tension keeps ratcheting up until the pulse-pounding end. Netflix has already scooped up the movie rights with Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington to star.
Book club pick…
Reese Witherspoon’s book club pick for October is “His Only Wife.” Hailed by Kirkus Reviews as “‘Crazy Rich Asians’ for West Africa,” it’s a feminist Cinderella story of sorts about the arranged marriage between beautiful, poor seamstress Afi and wealthy businessman Elikem. “Culture, heroism and the search for independence are just a few of the wonderful themes in this vibrant book,” Witherspoon wrote in her announcement post.
Book-to-screen…
The supernatural forces, secret sorcerers’ cult, and monsters reaching out of these pages won’t scare you half as much as the very real racism an African American family faces as they search for their missing father during Jim Crow. Jordan Peele and J.J. Abrams adapted this trope-busting book into a series now streaming on HBO.
Hispanic Heritage Month…
Isabel Allende was one of the first prominent female writers of Latin American fiction when she published her stunning debut in 1985. Her follow up, “Daughter of Fortune,” gained so much acclaim that it was selected for Oprah’s Book Club shortly after it was published. The story follows an orphan raised in Chile, Eliza Sommers, as she journeys north to Gold Rush era California. It’s a novel of growth, longing, and immense discovery, further solidifying Allende as a prominent voice in literature.
Halloween…
The first book out of the popular “Welcome to Night Vale” series takes the podcast’s surrealist absurdism to new heights. Focusing on the perspectives of Jackie Fierro and Diane Crayton, it’s a perfect read for those who can’t get enough of the desert town’s oddities.
Book club pick…
For Hispanic Heritage Month, writers John Green and Rosianna Halse Rojas chose Valeria Luiselli’s novel about novels for their book club, Life’s Library. “Faces in the Crowd” is “Concerned, above all, with literature's ability to transcend time and space,” according to a review from Mina Holland in The Guardian.
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