Champions, a ‘gay Romeo & Juliet’, a bear and Dylan Thomas
/Good morning and welcome to Sunday, where I’ve decided to not do a news story and instead round-up a few things from this week in the book world.
Think of it as a digest or tasty little…digestibles that can power your book-loving ways.
Bookshop.ORg’s indie champions are the top-selling books across all the independent bookshops it covers
First up, Bookshop.org has announced its first book of the month: Young Mungo by the Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain, Douglas Stuart. Young Mungo is Stuart’s second novel and a title The Observer has described as:
…a gay Romeo and Juliet set in the brutal world of Glasgow's housing estates.
Bookshop’s offering free shipping on Young Mungo for the entirety of April, which is a nice little saving.
Sticking with Bookshop for the second bit of today’s news is the site’s March Indie Champions (the top-25 best-selling books from all indie book shops on the site). The top-25 can be found here.
Elsewhere, the British Book Awards are scheduled for Monday May 23rd, and we can’t believe how quickly the year already seems to be going. The Bookseller has the big list of shortlists to check through, should you be keeping an eye on who’s in the running for the 12 categories.
We’ll let you know of the winners in the future of course.
Meanwhile, speaking about this year and it’s lovely to see The Hay Festival is already winding up its coil to spring into life come May 26th. We’ve only been once ourselves and it was ruddy brilliant!
Early bird tickets for the festival are on sale now. Hmm, here’s hoping we can plan a last-ditch visit this year…
Turning our attention to awards and the six-book shortlist has been announced for this year’s Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize, including titles that perhaps unsurprisingly make Bookshop.org’s indie bestseller list for March. The titles are:
A Passage North - by Anuk Arudpragasam
Auguries of a Minor God - by Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe
The Sweetness of Water - by Nathan Harris
No One Is Talking About This - by Patricia Lockwood
Open Water - by Caleb Azumah Nelson
Filthy Animals - by Brandon Taylor
Of course, we’ve got a list of those for you if you want to pick any up.
More award news too as Hannah Gold’s debut title The Last Bear pawed and swiped the Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize this week. A word from Hannah herself.
And finally, if you missed it this week…
Hive has rounded up some Easter book ideas for children, the first three books of the Penguin Marvel Classics collection are due in June in two different editions, and Tom Parker’s autobiography Hope is due this July and….Deliveroo is now delivering books (in some parts of the UK).
That’s it. Have a very, very nice Sunday. Bye for now!
