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Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
The 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award Winners Announced
The big story is that James did not in fact win in the fiction category. The winner, which I have not read so I will withold any “but whyyyyyy” reactions, is My Friends by Hisham Matar. It is been in and around several awards so I wouldn’t say it is a surprise necessarily. No wait, I think it actually kind of is. Challenger winning in Nonfiction and There’s Always This Year in Criticism (still a puzzle why it is there) are terrific outcomes. Full list of winners, including Best First Book and Translation, listed here.
Finalists for Inaugural Climate Fiction Prize Announced
Here’s an interesting book prize that I hadn’t heard of previously. Climate Spring, which is a nonprofit dedicated to “transforming” the what climate change is represented in media sponsors this prize, which comes with a tasty 10,000 pound cash purse. Intriguing list of finalists, but I am struggling to recall how central climate change was to Ministry of Time. Certainly surprised to see it included over Playground by Richard Powers. Notable feature of the list: all women authors.
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Teaser Trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another Released
This is probably my most anticipated movie of the year, both because I adore PTA movies and because what it means for this movie to be based on Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland. Vineland is probably the most approachable of his novel’s, though that is sort of like saying drowning is probably not as bad as being burned at the stake: it is still something to prepare yourself for. I will leave you with an excerpt from Salman Rushdie’s original review for The New York Times:
But what is perhaps most interesting, finally, about Mr. Pynchon’s new novel is what is different about it. What is interesting is the willingness with which he addresses, directly, the political development of the United States, and the slow (but not total) steamrollering of a radical tradition many generations and decades older than flower power. There is a marvelously telling moment when Brock Vond’s brainchild, his school for subversion in which lefties are re-educated and turned into tools of the state, is closed down because in Reagan’s America the young think like that to begin with, they don’t need re-education.
The Reading Life of Stephen Graham Jones
I had the wonderful privilege of talking to Stephen Graham Jones about his reading life. Stephen Graham Jones is the NYT bestselling author of thirty-five or so novels and collections, and there are some novellas and comic books in there as well. Most recent are Earthdivers and I Was a Teenage Slasher.
I have done quite a few of these reading lives segments over the years. There are moments in this interview that are all-timers. Do give it a chance if you are at all inclined.
His new book, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, is out now.