Critical Notes

Critical Notes will return next week…..  

May Day! May Day! These releases will save you from bad reality television and boredom. NBCC board member and Balakian winner Katherine A. Powers preferred the audiobook to the memoir

The Kentucky Derby has been run, the Preakness Stakes is coming up and the stampede of summer books begins. For the Portland Press Herald, Michael Berry reviewed Richard Russo's Trajectory and also

  Balakian award winner Michelle Dean writes in the Guardian on Granta's best young American authors, including NBCC John Leonard award winners Yaa Gyasi and Anthony Marra, NBCC fiction finalists

A glorious spring day. The magnolias are blooming (they smell like bubblegum!), the forsythia is glowing golden and my tulips have not yet been eaten by rabbits. Here are the

  NBCC President Kate Tuttle interviews Jane Mayer, author of “Dark Money,”  for the Los Angeles Times. NBCC  VP/Online Jane Ciabattari's weekly Lit Hub column includes new books by Fiona Maazel,

  Do the National Book Critics Circle awards predict the Pulitzers? The NBCC gave fiction awards to Junot Diaz, Jennifer Egan, Marilynne Robinson, Edward P. Jones and Jane Smiley, to

Here is the news rundown on the National Book Critics Circle awards: Critical Mass. Video of awards ceremony. Associated Press. New York Times. Washington Post. Minneapolis Star Tribune.  Brooklyn Magazine.

Board member and vice president/online Jane Ciabattari writes about 10 books to read in March for her global books column for BBC.com. Board member Laurie Hertzel wrote about two Russian memoirs, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya's