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Hello, librarians!
You voted, they counted, and the winners have finally been announced!
We are thrilled to share that Benjamin Stevenson’s Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect and Mariana Zapata's All Rhodes Lead Here have been selected for the January LibraryReads list! Congratulations to both of our authors!
Want to hear how our authors reacted to the big news? Listen to our latest episode of The Library Love Fest Podcast to hear from them:
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Check out this very special conversation Virginia had with debut novelist Bill Gaythwaite whose book, Underburn, was just published.
From Virginia:
I loved this book. Hooked me from page one. A story about generations, struggles, strength, love, falling down and getting back up.
After devastating wildfires force Frank and his young boyfriend, Logan, from their rental home in the California hills. Frank’s mother, Iris, a former B-list actress, offers them temporary shelter.
The relationship between Frank and his mother was always tense. Frank is beleaguered with sadness. Iris is sharp-tongued (she can also be wickedly funny). Logan is a handsome extra on a teen soap opera who tries to match wits with Iris. They’re all trying to play nice in the sandbox. When Iris gets a letter from her estranged sister in Maine, Iris is compelled to return to the family farm she left 50 years ago—and she convinces Frank and Logan to go with her. The story takes a whole new turn with another terrific cast of characters. It’s a funny and poignant family saga about secrets and forgiveness.
I love the backstory each character gets in these pages. It never feels forced. It’s all worked seamlessly into the storyline. The reader understands each person a little more as layers are peeled back.
There’s humor and heartache amongst the suits of armor these characters have had to wear to make it through each day.
I love them all—once I understood them.
It’s a busy time of year. Stop, grab a chair, and escape into this gem of a book!
Praise for Underburn:
“A wonderfully engaging tale of both family and the underside of fame, Bill Gaythwaite’s debut novel Underburn mirrors the deceptive richness of the very generational ties it so charmingly explores: the long memories, conflicts big and small, surprisingly pivotal moments, and rediscovered bonds. One rarely encounters characters drawn with such candor, warmth, and humanity: you will gladly cheer and care for everyone as they seek to make peace with the past, while risking it all for a brand-new future.”
—Natalie Jenner, author of the international bestseller The Jane Austen Society
"A quirky family story told with wit and wisdom, with shades of Anne Tyler or Elizabeth Strout.... a fine debut."
—Kirkus Reviews
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Are you all bundled up?? Hope everyone is staying warm for this holiday season. Best wishes from the LLF team to you and yours.
We have plenty of recommendations to get you through the cold days. Here you will find a list of titles eligible for the February LibraryReads list. Don't forget to get your votes for the February LibraryReads list in by January 1st!
Happy reading,
-The LLF Team (Virginia, Lainey, and Grace)
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On December 8th, 2023, Netflix will begin streaming the film adaptation of Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam! The film will star Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke, and Myha'la. You can watch the official trailer for the film here.
Excited about the film? Read (or reread) the novel in anticipation!
Leave the World Behind is a magnetic, suspenseful, and provocative novel about two families, strangers to each other, who are forced together on a long weekend gone terribly wrong. It's keenly attuned to the complexities of parenthood, race, and class. Leave the World Behind explores how our closest bonds are reshaped—and unexpected new ones are forged—in moments of crisis.
We aren't the only fans of this novel, since its release in 2020, Leave the World Behind has received endless praise. Check out some of the love below:
“A slippery and duplicitous marvel of a novel...Leave the World Behind is atmospheric and prescient: its rhythms of comedy alternating with shock and despair mimic so much of the rhythms of life right now. That's more than enough to make it a signature novel for this blasted year.”
—Fresh Air (NPR)
“'Leave the World Behind' is the perfect title for a book that opens with the promise of utopia and travels as far from that dream as our worst fears might take us. It is the rarest of books: a genuine thriller, a brilliant distillation of our anxious age, and a work of high literary merit that deserves a place among the classics of dystopian literature.”
—Washington Post
“The best book you can read right now...A perfectly-engineered thrill ride that is also a novel of ideas, Leave the World Behind combines deft prose, a pitiless view of consumer culture and a few truly shocking moments...An exceptional read that will stay with you long after you’ve sped through its final pages.”
—USA Today
“Leave the World Behind is so many things—funny, sharp, insightful about modernity and race and parenthood and home—but at its core it’s a story of our shared apocalypse; a steady look at humanity in the moment it tumbles from a great height. I have not been this profoundly unnerved by a science fiction novel since Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go.”
—Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties
“Leave The World Behind is that rarest of things, a beautifully written, emotionally resonant page-turner. Alam explores complex ideas about privilege and fate with miraculous wit and grace.”
—Jenny Offill, author of Weather
In addition to the wonderful acclaim, Leave the World Behind was also A Read with Jenna Pick, a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award (fiction), and was featured on Barack Obama's Summer Favorites list.
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In October of 2020, the Library Love Fest team hosted Rumaan Alam on Door to Door, where he talked in depth about Leave The World Behind. Check it out here:
If you can't get enough of Leave the World Behind, listen to our interview with Rumaan on The Library Love Fest Podcast:
We know that you'll love Leave the World Behind as much as we did, so get your hands on a copy now. If you need us on Friday, we'll be busy watching the new film adaptation on Netflix!
—The Library Love Fest team
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