This year’s winner of the Women’s Prize will be announced June 14. These books are up for the award: In addition to these books, the 2023 longlist included: This year I’ve read 8 of the 16 books on the longlist. I’ve described them in order of my favorites. The Bandit Queens: This was a fantastic surprise…
Category: Award winners
2023 Women’s Prize Longlist to be Announced March 7
Every year I look forward to the release of the Women’s Prize longlist, because I get some of my best book recommendations from them. The longlist is a list of 16 books, selected from novels by women, regardless of nationality or residence, written in English and published in the UK after April 1 of the…
Review: The Last Girl by Nadia Murad
This isn’t really a review because this is the kind of book that’s nearly impossible to review. It was impressive, inspiring, devastating, and informative. Nadia Murad grew up in the village of Kocho in Northern Iraq, in a small community of Yazidi, an ancient religion and ethnic minority. She describes the persecution of the Yazidi…
Review: The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers
I’ve been recommending Chambers a lot lately, even to my husband who has pretty different science fiction tastes. This is surprising because I didn’t like Chambers’ first book, A Long Way to a Small, Dark Planet even though most people raved about it. I found it a bit contrived and self-conscious. But, in my eyes at…
Women’s Prize 2022 Longlist Announced
The Women’s Prize is my favorite literary award. I’ve discovered so many wonderful authors just by reading from their longlist each year, and I always enjoy following the award through the year to see which favorites make the shortlist and receive the final prize. The longlist was announced March 8, the shortlist of 6 books…
Review: Before the Ever After by Jacqueline Woodson
Before the Ever After is a beautifully written middle-grade novel about a 12-year-old boy whose father, a professional football player, is suffering from CTE. The book occurs in a time before anything was widely known about CTE and its effects on many athletes. Zachariah, or ZJ, is in the dark about what’s happening to his father, and…
Reading about Race: Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King
This summer I read several powerful books about race that I’d encourage everyone to read, particularly if you’re interested in U.S. history and racism. In my last post, I wrote about Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. After Caste, I read Gilbert King’s Devil in the Grove, a Pulitzer Prize winner that describes racism and the justice…
Reading the 2021 Women’s Prize Longlist – Mini-Reviews
A few months ago I posted about the 2021 Women’s Prize longlist. At the time I had only read two of the books, Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi and The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (both excellent). Since then I’ve read four more of the books from the longlist: Piranesi, Luster, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps…
The 2021 Nebula and Hugo Finalists for Science Fiction and Fantasy
The finalists for this year’s Nebula Award were announced on March 15, 2021. The Nebula Awards are voted on by members of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America which, according to its website, has over 1,500 members. I’ve read four of the six Nebula finalists for best novel, and I started but didn’t finish…