book review contest 2022

Astral Codex Ten

Book Review Contest 2022 Winners

Thanks to everyone who entered or voted in the book review contest. The winners are:

1st: The Dawn Of Everything , reviewed by Erik Hoel . Erik is a neuroscientist and author of the recent novel The Revelations . He writes at his Substack The Intrinsic Perspective .

2nd: 1587, A Year Of No Significance , reviewed by occasional ACX commenter McClain.

=3rd: The Castrato , reviewed by Roger’s Bacon. RB is a teacher based in NYC. He writes at Secretorum and serves as head editor at Seeds of Science   (ACX grant winner), a journal publishing speculative and non-traditional scientific articles.

=3rd: The Future Of Fusion Energy , reviewed by TheChaostician .

=3rd: The Internationalists , reviewed by Belos. Belos is working on a new blook titled best of a great lot about system design for effective governance. 

All three third place winners were within two votes of the others, so I decided to award a joint prize. First place gets $5,000, second place $2,500, all three third places get $1,000 each. Please email me at [email protected] to tell me how to send you money; your choices are Paypal, Bitcoin, Ethereum, check in the mail, or donation to your favorite charity. Please contact me by October 1 or you lose your prize.

The other Finalists were:

Consciousness And The Brain , reviewed by Demost. Demost is a university researcher in mathematics, computer science, and neuroscience.

Making Nature , reviewed by Étienne F.D. Étienne is a writer and programmer in Montreal. He blogs at  Atlas of Wonders and Monsters . 

The Anti-Politics Machine , reviewed by Colin Aitken. Colin is a PhD student in Chicago. He blogs at All of it Again about religion, mental health, and effective altruism

The Outlier , reviewed by Max Nussenbaum. Max writes at  Candy for Breakfast .

The Righteous Mind , reviewed by Ben Wōden. Ben is an analyst from Reading, UK.

Society Of The Spectacle , reviewed by Jack F. Jack is a bartender from Nashville.

Viral , reviewed by Mike Saint-Antoine. Mike is finishing up a PhD in computational biology and looking for a job. You can reach him at [email protected] .

Exhaustion: A History , reviewed by Van Occupanther. Van is a psychiatrist from Australia who would prefer to remain pseudonymous

God-Emperor Of Dune , reviewed by Resident Contrarian. RC is a rapidly aging father from Phoenix, Arizona. He blogs at  residentcontrarian.com  and is available for freelance work

Kora In Hell , reviewed by Lucas Paletta. Lucas is a writer from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He blogs (in Spanish) at www.stackdamage.com.ar .

I really enjoyed all of these. A few notes of special praise: The Internationalists was probably most fascinating, in the sense of describing a strange historical episode I didn’t know about before. The Outlier was similar and I give it high marks for making Jimmy Carter interesting. Consciousness And The Brain was a whole new neuroscience theory I knew nothing about and I expect to reread it a bunch of times to try to get it to sink in. Sam Altman sent me an email saying he enjoyed the review of The Future Of Fusion Energy . The Making Nature review did a great job talking about and analyzing a trend I’d never thought about before, far beyond even what was in the book. I think about Exhaustion every time I see a CFS patient - specifically, about the claim that 19th century psychiatrists would prescribe a “West cure” of going off and doing cowboy things on a ranch; I haven’t yet recommended that to anyone, but like I said, I think about it often. God Emperor of Dune and Kora In Hell were the token fiction and poetry reviews; I thought they did a spectacular job overcoming the difficulties of reviewing their respective media. I was reading some of the non-finalists and found 1587 in there and was surprised it hadn’t reached finalist status and decided to promote it; based on your votes it seems like that was the right choice.

My process for picking finalists was kind of haphazard; I had you rate all reviews on a scale of 1-10, anyone above 8 got in automatically, and then I picked my favorites from the reviews between 7 and 8. This was sort of unfair, and meant there were some reviews that scored better on the voting than finalists but weren’t finalists themselves, and others that I liked better than some finalists but couldn’t pick. All of these are Honorable Mentions. You’ll notice some of them are politically charged, and yes, I did sort of discriminate against these (though not so much that I wouldn’t have picked them if they’d made it above 8). They are:

Unsettled , reviewed by Julius S. Julius is a machine learning engineer from San Diego. He blogs at Curious About Ideas .

Unsettled , reviewed by D.A. Haller (yes, two people reviewed this book, and both got Honorable Mentions). He is a software engineer and writer from Maryland. He has recently started writing his (villainous) thoughts down at Affably Evil .

The Beginning Of Infinity , reviewed by Cam Peters. Cam is a data analyst who blogs at  Fallible Pieces  and tweets at  @campeters4 ..

Now It Can Be Told , reviewed by Sin-Pharion.

Japan At War , reviewed by TH

Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality , reviewed by Ashadyna.

Albion: In Twelve Books , reviewed by Hal Johnson (who says he might be the only person to have ever read it all the way through). Hal is the author of several books including the upcoming (please pre-order! pre-orders make or break a book!) Impossible Histories , a book of alternate histories that quotes G.K. Chesterton and the old SSC comments section at least once each.

An Education For Our Time , reviewed by Matt Mandel. Matt works at a startup and lives in New York. You can find his Substack here .

Autumn In The Heavenly Kingdom , reviewed by NM.

Civilization And Its Discontents , reviewed by AWanderingMind. He is an anonymous blogger that blogs at https:/www.awanderingmind.blog/

From Paralysis To Fatigue , by APsychiatryBlogger. He is a psychiatrist who writes a apsychiatryblogger.substack.com .

Golem XIV , reviewed by Mechanical Mantis.

Memories Of My Life , reviewed by Adam Mastroianni. Adam is a psychologist and blogs at  Experimental History .

Surface Detail , reviewed by Froolow. Froolow is an economist and science-fiction enthusiast from the United Kingdom.

The Fall Of Robespierre , reviewed by Duane McMullen. Duane is from Ottawa, Canada, and is trying to figure out how to make a difference.

More comments: I really enjoyed Autumn In The Heavenly Kingdom and From Paralysis To Fatigue , but I couldn’t justify having two books on Chinese history or chronic fatigue in the finalists, so I had to demote them to Honorable Mentions. Memories Of My Life is Francis Galton’s autobiography; read it if you want to learn about things like how:

…at 16, Galton’s parents decide he should be a doctor. His medical training consists of following doctors around, mixing up potions, stitching up busted heads, relocating arms, and pulling teeth. While apprenticing at a hospital, he supplements his daily training by trying every medicine on himself in alphabetical order. He stops after he takes two drops of croton oil and shits himself so bad that he still remembers it fifty years later.

Unsettled is about the science of global warming; both reviews were excellent but very long; read them if you’re interested in this topic. Trans got exactly 8.0 and I was forced to decide whether by “above 8” I meant “including 8” or “literally above 8” and how much I wanted to start World War III in the comments section; I apologize to the author for chickening out. Albion is a bizarre 19th-century experimental epic poem, and the review is excellent; this is another one I feel bad for not being able to include.

All winners and finalists get a free ACX subscription at the email I have on record for them. I haven’t done this yet but I will next week. All winners and finalists also get the right to pitch me essays they want me to put up on ACX (warning that I am terrible to pitch to, reject most things without giving good reasons, and am generally described as awful to work with - but you can do it if you want! If I choose to publish your article, I will give you some fair amount of money we can negotiate at the time, probably around $1K. If it should be a different email, let me know). All winners and finalists get the opportunity to be named and honored publicly here; if I didn’t include your details, it’s because I didn’t get your response to my email asking me what details to include, and if you want to change that you should send me an email so I can name you in an open thread or something.

I was happy with my decision to keep this contest anonymous, because the most “famous” person to enter won first place, and if it had been open-identity I would have wondered whether he was drawing on a pre-existing fan base. But no, Erik can rest assured he is actually very good at writing (which he probably already knew, being a novelist and all, but you never know). In fact, 2 of the 5 winners, plus an extra 1.5 of the remaining finalists, were authors of Substacks which I read and have linked to here ( Hoel , Roger’s Bacon , Resident Contrarian , and the extra 0.5 is for Etienne who I didn’t know about before this week but just saw his post Common Tech Jobs Described As Cabals Of Mesoamerican Wizards on the subreddit). I’m always suspicious that everything is fake and good writers aren’t actually good and it’s just a social conspiracy to believe that they are, but these results are a vote in support of our existing writer-identification-institutions (are they all Substack? I guess it’s just Substack) - although many unknown people also did very well, including the 2nd place winner (I didn’t get a response to my email asking how I should reveal his identity, so I’m defaulting to initials, but I don’t recognize his real name either).

Thanks again to everyone who made this possible, including a_reader (who collected all the reviews into readable documents), everyone who participated in preliminary voting, everyone who participated in final-round voting, and of course the 141 people who entered. If you want to know how you did, I’ve put the scores of all entries in the preliminary round of voting up here . Notice the small sample size and don’t take it too seriously!

I’m planning another book review contest next year. I’ll post the official announcement sometime like January and demand final submissions sometime like April/May - but for now just assume everything will be the same, and start getting your entries ready!

Ready for more?

READERS' CHOICE BOOK AWARDS

Submissions CLOSED

The Readers' Choice Book Awards was established in 2020 to provide quality book reviews and an affordable award contest with real financial rewards.

The Readers' Choice Book Awards currently runs two award contests per year and submissions for book reviews are open all year round. 

  The Readers' Choice Book Awards accepts submissions from  any author, but submissions from self-published authors and small publishers are encouraged.

There are four awards available across four categories and the winners of each category receive a cash prize.

OUR REVIEWS AND AWARDS

We launched four new book awards in 2020!

All entrants receive a detailed and thorough review of their book.

All winners and  finalists (with a five star review) will receive a digital badge / sticker.

A cash prize of $250 will be awarded to the gold winner.

Book review

Entry to contest

Gold digital badge / sticker

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***$250 cash prize***

GOLD  WINNER

SILVER  WINNER

Silver digital badge / sticker

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AWARD CATEGORIES 

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If you would like to enter a book in any of the following categories, please use the submission form or check out the FAQs for further information.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

1/  Decide on the book category and use our online form to submit your book here.

2/  Pay the submission fee via Paypal and upload or email your book to us. You may enter more than one book, or for more than one category, but you must complete a separate form for each book and each category. ​

3/  Your book will be sent to one of our b ook clubs, school reading groups or nurseries (depending on the category),  and will be given a review and a star rating (out of 5).

4/ You will receive your book review and star rating within 3 to 4 weeks (Express Review) or 6 to 8 weeks (Standard Review)

5/ ALL books receiving a 5 star rating will go through to our award contest, where our reader panel will select the GOLD, SILVER and BRONZE winners.

6/  The GOLD award winner will receive a cash prize of  $250, and the SILVER and BRONZE winners will receive a SILVER AND BRONZE award. ​

7/ ALL books with a 5 star review will receive a FINALIST award. 

8/  ALL finalists and winners will be listed and promoted on our website and on social media.

Buy and sell your books at the best price

2022 book review contest winners announced.

Valentine’s Day is the only day of the year that is soaked in love from top to bottom. People all around the world celebrate this day by sending messages of love and affection to their partners, family and friends. For someone this can be the right moment to confess their feelings which they’ve been hiding for a while and didn’t dare to pronounce those three magic words—I LOVE YOU! It is this love formula that resonates non-stop from every corner. But have you ever addressed these words, not to a person but a book? What a seemingly silly question! The thing is that today we have another bright and love-oriented holiday— Library Lovers’ Day , dedicated to book lovers across the globe. 

To celebrate this extraordinary date, we organized a Book Review Contest on our Facebook page, where we asked you to share your story about the best book you’ve read for the last year. It could’ve been a groundbreaking book that impressed you immensely, the one that genuinely changed your life, exerted a lasting impact on you, helped to learn a valuable life lesson, or inspired you to take actions for self-improvement. 

• Cianna Damita for the review of Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn.
• Brandon Diehl for the review of Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse.
• Chloée Nia for the review of Popisho by Leone Ross.

Meanwhile, we decided not to stop delighting you and hosted Library Lovers’ Day Giveaways on our Twitter and Instagram pages. Thanks to everyone for your enthusiastic participation. Here are our lucky winners:

Twitter Giveaway winner

@SaraAyrton11 who gets a 6-month Book Drop Subscription on CrateJoy.com.

Instagram Giveaway winner

@crossstitchhouse who gets a 3-month Introvert’s Read&Relax Subscription on CrateJoy.com.

Congratulations! We’ve reached out to our winners to get the details so that the prizes can be sent to them.

The world belongs to those who read! Reading is a way to expand your mind, open your eyes and fill up your heart. Let’s love reading and read more. And BookScouter is always there to help you. BookScouter helps sell your old books , and buy or rent used books and textbooks at the best price by comparing offers from over 30 vendors with a single search. It’s absolutely free and easy to use. Buy and sell books the smart way!

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Last Updated on May 23, 2023 by Olivia Smith

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2022 Giveaway Prize Winners

2022 award contest winners, featuring 800+ winners and finalists in 150+ categories..

Click on any book cover for a description of the book and a link to its Readers' Favorite review page, which features more information about the book and author as well as links to purchase the book. Manuscript entries will not have a review page because they are not currently available for sale. However, we update the manuscript listings when their book is published, so you may see very few manuscript entries as the year progresses.

We offer up to 5 award levels in each category: Gold, Silver, Bronze, Honorable Mention and Award Finalist. You will notice that not all levels are awarded in each category despite the record number of entries in this year's contest. That is because each book is given a score that corresponds to a particular award level. No attention is given to the number of entrants, only the quality of the book being judged. In some cases, the same award is given more than once in the same category, which is a result of more than one book receiving the same judging score.

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All authors are automatically entered to win one of more than 260 prizes worth a combined total of $100,000 just by entering the Readers' Favorite International Book Award Contest. Prizes are donated by the good people who provide our Author Services as well as industry experts. View this year's lucky winners!

Wind Dancer Films Winners

Wind Dancer Films is an independent motion picture and television production company that has generated over $4 billion in revenue from film and television properties including the hit TV series "Home Improvement" and movies like "What Women Want" with Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt. Wind Dancer Films has offered to evaluate 10 of our contest award-winners each year for possible film or TV production by their company! This year's candidates feature stories that meet the needs of the current market and conform to a number of production factors. We wish them the best of luck!

• "Eudora Space Kid" by David Horn
• "When The Sky Roars" by Katie Weaver
• "Resting Beach Face" by Melanie Summers
• "Ruby Roy and the Murder in the Falls" by Rima Ray
• "Both Sides of Love" by Kimberly Wenzler
• "The Golden Hearts Club" by Cinda K. Swalley
• "The Lighthouse" by Christopher Parker
• "Love and Other Sins" by Emilia Ares
• "Of Dreams and Angels" by Jared Morrison
• "Men or Paws" by Rich Amooi

Headline Books Winners

Headline Books is an acclaimed independent traditional publisher who has been helping authors succeed for over 30 years. Headline Books has offered to evaluate 10 of our contest award-winners each year for possible publication by their company! This year's candidates were selected because they feature stories that meet the current needs of Headline Books. We wish them the best of luck!

• "The Power of Kindness" by Ruth A Maille
• "Hugo von Hector the Kids' Art Collector" by Whitney Beatty
• "The Scariest Story You've Ever Heard" by Ron Keres
• "A Barrel Racer's Dream" by M.D. Ford
• "Ghost Hunters" by Susan McCauley
• "A Ghostly Twist" by Carla Solomon
• "Carlotti" by David Dalrymple
• "Last Liar Standing" by Danielle M. Wong
• "Everything About Astronauts - Vol. 1" by Marianne Jennings
• "Rules of Falling" by Leslie Tall Manning

Allen Media Strategies Winners

Allen Media Strategies is one of the nation’s premier media, marketing and public relations firms, focusing on communications consulting and strategy including comprehensive television, radio, print and online media relations services. Allen Media Strategies allows us to randomly select 10 of our contest award-winners each year for possible representation by his company. All 10 winners will receive a Publicity Primer package and one of the 10 winners will be chosen for a 90 day representation and relaunch of their book. Here are this year's candidates, we wish them the best of luck!

• "Gracie and the Perfect Painting" by Michael Wuehler
• "Blind Passion" by Vincent I. Perry
• "The Computer Wasn't in the Basement Anymore" by Anthony G. Picciano
• "Saving Bliss" by Zanne Sweeney
• "The Roaring Brook Fiddler" by Julie Lyonn Lieberman
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Folio Literary Management Winners

Folio Literary Management is a full-service, mid-sized agency, located in the heart of Manhattan. With over 15 agents who are some of the most productive in the business, Folio combines the expertise, experience, and strength of a larger firm with the passion and ingenuity of a boutique agency. Mr. Weimann, Senior Vice President and Director of Operations for Folio Literary Management, has agreed to evaluate 10 Readers’ Favorite Award Winners for possible representation. Here are this year's candidates, we wish them the best of luck!

• "Cries of the Savanna" by Sue Tidwell
• "Chasing Bin Laden" by Barbara K. Janik
• "Why Some Animals Eat their Young" by Dallas Louis
• "Scrapped: Justice and a Teen Informant" by Lisa A. Peebles and John O'Brien
• "One More Season" by Lorin Fife
• "The Evil I Have Seen" by Robert Davidson
• "Gunrunner" by Mario Oliveira, Keith Knotek
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The Readers' Favorite Illustration Award recognizes books with quality illustrations. Entries are judged by Mark Wayne Adams, a multiple award-winning illustrator who has worked as an artist for Disney and Sea World. He is currently the CEO of an illustration and publishing company and is the former president of the Florida Authors and Publishers Association.

Winners are chosen in each of six genres: Children, Young Adult, Christian, Fiction, Non-Fiction and Graphic Novel/Comic, as well as an award for best Book Cover. Some genres may have more winners due to ties. Click the titles to learn more about these wonderfully illustrated books.

Freddie deBoer

Book Review Contest 2022!

Plus call for august subscriber writing.

Many of you have asked, and yes, the book review contest is back! And the prizes are going up. First prize will receive $1,000, a lifetime free subscription comp (if wanted), and the review will run on this newsletter. Two runners-up will each receive $500 and a year free subscription comp and, if they wish, I will publish their reviews to this website, though they will not be sent out to the email list but will be in the weekly digest post. I can distribute funds via Paypal or Venmo so please make sure you can access one of these if you plan to enter the competition.

There are not a lot of restrictions or rules here, though there are a few. I’ll accept reviews of any book provided that a) they are 2000 words long or less and b) were originally produced for this contest and not previously published anywhere else, even if it was on a low-traffic blog. Please don’t submit anything that exists elsewhere online, in whole or in part. There are no content restrictions on books and no preference for fiction or nonfiction, but use your head. (It would perhaps not be a great strategy to review Protocols of the Elders of Zion , and while submitting a very negative review of my book would be a ballsy move I must warn you that it would be unlikely to be successful.) My suggestion would be that you avoid books that I have reviewed in this space, but that is only a suggestion and I can certainly imagine rewarding a review like that. If you’re wondering what I’m looking for in a review, I’ve got you covered .

Please email your submission to [email protected] , and make sure that you do so with the email address associated with your account so that I can confirm that you’re a subscriber, or at least let me know your official subscriber email address. (This is important.) Attaching your submission as a Word document is strongly preferred but if you can’t do that I will work around it. Reviews will be anonymized by having someone assign numbers to each email address, and I’ll read the submissions blind so that I’m not influenced by who wrote each review. To facilitate this, please do not put the name of the book in the filename or in the text of the email (so that I don’t match the book with your name just by opening the email), and don’t put your own name in the file itself . (Self-references to your job, experiences, expertise, etc. is fine.) The filename bookreviewcontext.docx and the subject line “book review contest” are fine. Winners can be identified by pseudonyms if desired, both the winner and runners-up will be invited to link to a personal website and/or social media, and once the winners have been declared everyone is of course free to publish their entries wherever else they would like. You retain all copyright rights (copyrights?) aside from my right to host your essay here.

I will accept submissions until 10:00 PM EST on Saturday, October 1st. I hope to announce the winners two weeks later, but I reserve the right to extend the review period if the number of submissions is more than I can handle in that timeframe. I certainly hope to announce winners by Halloween, but these might be famous last words. If after the contest submitted reviews are posted elsewhere online I would be happy to post links to them in a Weekly Digest post.

Also, it’s time for August subscriber writing. Please see here for details and make sure to email me at [email protected] if you do submit to make my life easier. Deadline for this month is Monday, August 29th! Also, please use the following format in your submission if you can remember to:

Your Preferred Name , Your Piece of Writing's Title with Hyperlink

one-sentence synopsis of your piece

That really makes my life much easier. If I messed up previously and promised to include your entry this month, please email to remind me! And if you don’t use the [email protected] address, I have no sympathy if I fail to include you. I look forward to seeing what you come up with, and I’m dedicated to having fewer mistakes than last time.

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Pacific Book Awards Contest

Pacific book awards.

2023 Winners & Finalists

Here is the List for Winners & Finalist

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LET THE WORLD KNOW YOU’RE A WINNER OR FINALIST!

Who can enter.

We accept manuscripts, published and unpublished books, ebooks and audio books.  No publication date requirement and no word count restriction. English language entries are accepted worldwide.

Dear Nicole, Thank you for selecting my book as a winner in the 2014 Pacific Book Review Writer’s Awards. I am very honored to have been part of your selection process and to have been involved with a group of people who have contributed so much to the book industry. I would like to thank you, your staff, and reviewers for your encouragement and for setting such an inspirational example in your devotion to books.I would also like to thank you for your many past kindnesses despite what is obviously a very busy schedule. Thank you again for this honor. Sincerely, Jan Surasky

Hello Nicole, I just wanted to thank you and Pacific Book Review for the honorable award. I have been proud to place it on media-related materials and I have already participated in events in which mentioning the award has been a wonderful bonus to my presentation. I have nothing but great things to say. This award has been a huge boost in my confidence as a writer. Thank you to everyone at Pacific Book Review for your professionalism and and great customer service.  I will definitely be using your services in the future. Veronica Stich (Ronnie Stich)

Dear Ms. Sorkin, Thank you very much for the awards that were given to the titles Human Natures, of Animal and Spiritual (Philosophy), and Reel to Real (Poetry). I am grateful to all who were involved in the process of choosing my books to be among this year’s Pacific Book Review Writer’s Awards Winners and Finalists. This awards program and other possibilities that you and your company have created to provide greater opportunity for independent authors and publishers to promote their work are well appreciated. Best regards, Carroll Blair

ENTRY FEE & DEADLINE

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Please Note:    Immediately after payment completion you will be rerouted to our Book Questionnaire form. Please make sure to fill out the form and click the submit button at the bottom.  Make sure to specify that you’re entering your book in the Pacific Book Awards Contest. The Pacific Book Awards selection committee reserves the right to determine the eligibility of any book.  If for some reason you don’t receive the form here is the link.    Entry Form

Benefits of Winning the Pacific Book Award

Being a winner in a prestigious book awards contest gives your book a Seal of Excellence unequaled by other forms of media exposure.

Winners and Finalists will receive National Media & Industry Exposure!

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If your book has been reviewed by Pacific Book Review, we will add our award logo to your review page and or author spotlight page.

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Results announced to 100,000 booksellers, publishers, public and acedemic librarians, wholesalers, distributors, agents through Publishers Weekly.

Why Are Book Awards So Important?

Book awards increase books sales. If you want to sell more books, having an award seal on the front cover gives a book instant credibility and an advantage over other books in the same genre.

As a winner or finalist you can highlight your award on your marketing materials. You can also both download the seal to print on your book and order stickers to put on each book you have already printed. Award stickers will be available for purchase.

The Pacific Book Award judges recognize winning books that demonstrate a wide scope of criteria that makes for an excellent overall presentation.

Whether you are entering a print book or an e-book (electronic book) category, we recommend that you complete the preliminary entry online to save you time and to ease the entry process. You can submit an online entry by following the guidelines below.

What steps are required to submit an online entry?

There are three simple steps to complete your online entry:

1. Pay the entry fee(s) at the bottom of this page – all major credit cards accepted including checks. Please note that if you pay by credit card the charge on your credit card statement will show up as Pacific Communication Group. You can also mail as a check at: Pacific Book Awards, Attn: Nicole Sorkin, 2363 Dondero Court, Sparks, NV 89434

2. Fill out and the Entry Form

3. Mail a copy of your book or books to: Pacific Book Awards, Attn: Nicole Sorkin, 2363 Dondero Court, Sparks, NV 89434

Note: Shortly after you submit your online entry for the Pacific Book Awards, we will send you a confirmation email. To ensure that you receive the email.

Click here to read the entry guidelines           Click here to see categories

Judging Process

Judging will be based on content, originality and overall readability, with emphasis on innovation and creativity. Our judging panel includes experts from the fields of editing, reviewing, bookselling and publishing, as well as industry experts in specific fields. Every entry will be read by the judges, whose decisions are final. Top award winners will be notified on May 20, 2020.

Important Dates

Deadline:   April 22, 2024

Winners and Finalists announced on  May 20, 2024.

Winners in each category will be notified by e-mail and on our website.

Please send one copy of the book per category entered. You will need to fill out the submission form per book title. Published books from anywhere in the world are eligible as long as they are in English and able to be purchased in the United States.

Pacific Book Review is the recipient of the “Honoring Excellence” and “Best Websites for Authors” awards by the Association of Independent Authors, and are members of the National Book Critics Circle and the National Education Association.

Fantastic Books: A Book Review Contest 2022

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The Book Review Contest was first presented to our community in 2014, and since then it has served as a constant reminder to embrace the love of reading that we'd all like to see instilled in everyone. We all agree that books are the treasure of the world. The more we immerse ourselves in reading, the more we learn to use the human experience as signposts to chart the terrain toward the direction we choose. We hope that this contest will remind you to read a little more every day so that you can have the treasure of the world to carry you through hard times. The stronger you become, the better the future we can see for our community. To make the event richer and more certain, we hope you will participate with us.

In this year's contest, you are to read a book and give us your thoughts about the book with a 60-second video. The book must be in English and available at RMIT Vietnam Library, either in print or electronic.

Thank you to our sponsors Asia Books and Fahasa; and partners RMIT Saigon and Hanoi Dance Club and SEUP for making this event a success.

You can join both challenges:

Main Challenge: #FantasticThings about your Favorite Book  

Create a video to share with us about your book of choice

Side Challenge: #The Book Song (Optional) 

 Follow the dance tutorial for the Book Song and name your favorite book

Event Timeline

14 - 18 November 2022

Online Games and Booth Activities

21 November - 09 December 2022

Contest Submission and Workshops

14 and 16 December 2022

Closing Ceremony and Shortlist Showcase

Get the best out of the contest by joining our workshops to learn more

Workshop 1: Get to know the Contest

22 November, 10:00am - 10:45am

Workshop 2: Reading for Change

24 November, 10am - 10:45am 

Workshop 3: Talk about Reading​​​​​​​

24 November, 2pm - 2:45pm

Who can join

• All RMIT students, staff, alumni from both campuses (HN & SGS)

How to join

• Read a book and give us your feelings on the book with a video (no longer than 60 seconds). The book must be available at RMIT Vietnam Library, either in print or electronic
• Only English books are acceptable. Comics, magazines, and textbooks are excluded
• There is no limit to the number of participations per contestant. You can apply multiple times by reviewing different books. Only the 'PUBLIC' posting will be evaluated
• The submission must be the contestant's original work, not have been published, released, or distributed in any form nor have won any prize; and not infringe the copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity, or other personal or proprietary rights of any person or entity. The submission that may infringe or infringe the rights of the third party may be excluded from the prize without notice after deliberation
• The author's legitimate interests should not be unfairly harmed, such as unauthorized modification of the original work or translation or including content that damages the reputation of the author
• By participating in this Contest, contestants agree to be bound by these conditions, and all decisions by the Organiser are final and binding. The Organiser reserves the right to change, amend, add or delete any of these terms and conditions without prior notice at any time and contestants shall be bound by such changes. The Organiser is not obligated to give any reasons on any matter in the contest

Applicable language

• English. The application can be accompanied by a written essay of no longer than 300 words
• The Contest is open from 0:00:00am on 14 November 2022 to 0:00:00am on 09 December 2022 (the “Contest Period”)
• The Organiser reserves the absolute right to amend the Contest Period if deemed necessary without any notice
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• All prizes must be claimed from the Organiser personally by the Winners within ONE (1) month after the Contest end date (00:00:00, 10 December 2022). Any unclaimed prize shall be withdrawn by the Organiser and the Winner(s) shall no longer be entitled to claim any prize in any form. The Organiser reserves the right to withdraw the prizes if the winners do not comply with the contest terms and conditions

Marking Rubrics

• Upload your video on social media and submit posting links on the Application Form
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• Required to include these hashtags in both challenges: #BookReview2022 #RMITVietnamLibrary #FantasticBooks #VideoContest 

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Book Review Contest 2022 Winners‪‬ Astral Codex Ten Podcast

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-contest-2022-winners       Thanks to everyone who entered or voted in the book review contest. The winners are: 1st: The Dawn Of Everything, reviewed by Erik Hoel. Erik is a neuroscientist and author of the recent novel The Revelations. He writes at his Substack The Intrinsic Perspective. 2nd: 1587, A Year Of No Significance, reviewed by occasional ACX commenter McClain. =3rd: The Castrato, reviewed by Roger’s Bacon. RB is a teacher based in NYC. He writes at Secretorum and serves as head editor at Seeds of Science (ACX grant winner), a journal publishing speculative and non-traditional scientific articles. =3rd: The Future Of Fusion Energy, reviewed by TheChaostician. =3rd: The Internationalists, reviewed by Belos. Belos is working on a new blook titled best of a great lot about system design for effective governance.       

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2022 Reader’s Choice Awards

Welcome to the “reader’s choice” awards.

Wanna WIN an $150 Amazon eGift Card? Vote!

Attention, readers, bookoholics, and bibliophiles. We’re giving you a chance to vote for your favorite (independent/small press published) book. In return, when you select one of our Reader’s Choice Titles as your “Favorite”, you will get an entry to win a $150 Amazon eGift Card   when you enter our Raffle form on any of the “Genre” pages, including this page!

In the meantime, our 2022 Kindle Book Review Judges are diligently reading and evaluating these manuscripts. So let’s compare notes, VOTE, VOTE, VOTE, and enjoy our love for reading together!

Voting Starts: May 23, 2022.

Last Day to VOTE: Oct. 15, 2022.

1 WINNER: Announced on Nov. 1st on our Official 2022 KBA Winner’s Page & this page. We will select a category winner in each genre, and distribute “Runner-Up” badges to category winner’s. The book with the most votes will be THE 2022 Kindle Book Review Reader’s Choice WINNER . In the case of a tie, the book with the best book cover wins (see official rules).

HOW CAN YOU VOTE & WIN?

• Click on YOUR preferred genre box below.
• Scroll through the book covers in your preferred genre. If you see your favorite book in that list, VOTE for it IN THE COMMENTS . If you see a book that draws you in, read it, and if it’s your new favorite, VOTE for it. Vote MUST include book Title & Author name .
• Finally, enter the easy entry Rafflecopter form below for a one (1) entry to WIN a $150 Amazon eGift Card.

So without further ado, we present this year’s categories. Please click on your preferred genre, and then VOTE for one of the books in your preferred genre after scrolling though all the book covers on that page. Please  VOTE for ONE BOOK ONLY .

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73 Responses to 2022 Reader’s Choice Awards

Sangre Cove by Gina Castillo

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Royal Decoy by Heather Frost

Pearlized for best thriller by B. K. Sweeting

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Royal decoy by Heather Frost

Reframing: 40 Days to Reframe & Refresh Your Life Kindle Edition by Alisa Wagner

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Salman Rushdie recounts his attack and recovery in ‘Knife’

In his new memoir, the celebrated novelist reflects on the 2022 stabbing that nearly took his life.

“Beauty is its own excuse for Being,” Emerson once wrote. In contrast, an interesting, unusual or disturbing experience is not always its own excuse for a memoir.

The venerable Salman Rushdie is a vibrant and vigorous (if uneven) novelist, but his latest work of autobiography, though occasioned by great suffering, is meandering and frequently trite. And although “ Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder ” treats a dramatic attempt on Rushdie’s life, it is also surprisingly boring.

It goes without saying that the novelist’s ordeal was harrowing. On Aug. 12, 2022, he found himself in the idyllic town of Chautauqua, N.Y., where he was slated to talk about “the importance of keeping writers safe from harm.” The subject is one he knows all too much about: Since Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death, pursuant to the publication of his virtuoso novel “The Satanic Verses” in 1988, the author has been in and out of hiding. It was only in 2000 that he decided to “remake a life of freedom,” as he puts it, in New York City. For 22 years, he lived in the United States unharmed.

But before Rushdie could begin his remarks in Chautauqua, a 24-year-old extremist from New Jersey named Hadi Matar rushed onto the stage and stabbed him repeatedly . His injuries, both physical and psychological, were extensive. “There was the deep knife wound in my left hand, which severed all the tendons and most of the nerves,” he writes in “Knife.” “There were at least two more deep stab wounds in my neck.” Worst of all was the injury to his eye. “The blade went in all the way to the optic nerve, which meant there would be no possibility of saving the vision.”

The road to recovery was tortuous. “In the presence of serious injuries, your body’s privacy ceases to exist,” Rushdie recalls. The self becomes an object for others to prod, poke and manipulate. “One of the knife wounds in my face had damaged the channel by which saliva reached my mouth,” he writes, “and the saliva was oozing out of my cheek. A young doctor came to attend to this.” Other doctors and nurses helped Rushdie use the bathroom; still others drained fluid from a leaky lung.

Fifteen days after his emergency surgery, during which doctors operated on multiple organs simultaneously, he was able to walk again; more than six weeks later, he returned to his home in Manhattan. But even then, he had to undergo physical therapy so as to relearn how to move his hand, and a severed nerve in his neck meant one side of his lower lip was permanently paralyzed.

In the first chapter of the book, Rushdie notes that his assailant, whom he refuses to name, had read very little of his work. “From this we can deduce that, whatever the attack was about, it wasn’t about ‘The Satanic Verses.’ I will try to understand what it was about in this book.”

In one extended sequence about the mental state of his attacker — a fictionalized dialogue between the novelist and the would-be assassin — he makes good on this promise. But this exchange is isolated (and somewhat jarring) in a book that otherwise contains only a handful of well-rehearsed meditations on the plight of persecuted writers — “if you are afraid of the consequences of what you say, then you are not free”; “when religion becomes politicized, even weaponized, then it’s everybody’s business, because of its capacity for harm.”

What, then, is the preponderance of “Knife” about? For the most part, the book is dryly documentary, an unembellished diary. Rushdie blacks out in the hospital; he plots his return to New York, then his journey from hospital to apartment; he enjoys his first significant nonmedical excursion, a Valentine’s Day date with his wife, the accomplished poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths.

Rushdie is a fount of erudite references — he alludes to Henry James, Elias Canetti and John Berryman, among others — but his own writing in “Knife” can veer into cliché. His friends’ supportive words in the wake of the attack were “comforting and strengthening”; when he revisits the site of the incident, he is “making my peace with what had happened, making peace with my life.” On the night he met Griffiths, he “felt like Ali Baba learning the magic words that opened a treasure cave — Open, Sesame — and there, its light dazzling the eye, was the treasure, and it was her.” Most cloyingly of all, he confesses: “I have always believed that love is a force, that in its most potent form it can move mountains. It can change the world.”

On the occasions when Rushdie attempts more experimental sorties, he falters. His halfhearted riffing on the idea and image of the knife does not always land, particularly in the mortifying sequence when the blade narrates its own misdeeds: “Here I am, you bastard … I’ve been waiting for you. You see me? I’m right in front of your face, I’m plunging my assassin sharpness into your neck.”

The best passages in “Knife” probe the emotional fallout of the attack — and double as considerations of brutality more broadly. “The targets of violence experience a crisis in their understanding of the real,” Rushdie writes. An assault like the one he weathered “smashes” the usual niceties. “Reality dissolves and is replaced by the incomprehensible.” Indeed, the motives of Rushdie’s attacker were so thin as to strike him as entirely unreal. Matar reported that he committed his crime because he regarded its victim as “disingenuous.” That would be an “unconvincing motive if one were to use it in crime fiction,” Rushdie wryly remarks. Hence the author’s fascinating choice to imagine a conversation with a more interesting adversary.

But thoughts on violence, reality and fiction are few and far between. For the most part, “Knife” sticks to the facts: the stabbing, the suffering, the recuperation. It is not that Rushdie has no larger points to make: It is only that these points are by now familiar and bear little relevance to the rest of his narrative. He is prone, for instance, to hectoring lectures on in the inanity of younger generations. “Something strange has happened to the idea of privacy in our surreal time,” he complains. “Instead of being cherished, it appears to have become, for many people in the West, especially young people, a valueless quality — actually undesirable. If a thing is not made public, it doesn’t really exist.” Later, he admonishes the “bien-pensant left,” noting that its emphasis on protecting minority rights has eroded “freedom of speech.” He neglects to explain what, if anything, the “bien-pensant left” has to do with his decidedly reactionary attacker. These polemics are not sustained or even germane arguments so much as drive-by scoldings.

Unfortunately, perhaps even unjustly, the most acute agony does not always produce the most profound writing. Raw suffering must be reshaped, renovated into something more than itself. Rushdie’s memories as presented here are as unrefined and muddled as a casual conversation. “Knife” is not worthy of his best work or the pain that occasioned it, though his desire to memorialize his anguish is of course understandable.

Becca Rothfeld is the nonfiction book critic for The Washington Post.

Meditations After an Attempted Murder

By Salman Rushdie

Random House. 209 pp. $28

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Food & Function

Medicinal and edible polysaccharides from ancient plants: extraction, isolation, purification, structure, biological activity and market trends of sea buckthorn polysaccharides.

* Corresponding authors

a State Key Laboratory of Southwestern Chinese Medicine Resources, School of Pharmacy, Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu, China

b State Key Laboratory of Southwestern Chinese Medicine Resources, School of Ethnic Medicine, Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu, China E-mail: [email protected] , [email protected]

c Meishan Hospital of Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Meishan, China

Sea buckthorn ( Hippophae L.), a well-known medicinal and edible plant, is known as the “king of VC”. Due to its excellent medicinal and nutritional value, it has been developed into a variety of functional products. Sea buckthorn polysaccharides (SPs), one of the important and representative active components, have attracted the attention of researchers in the fields of health food and medicine because of their potential beneficial effects on human health. Recently, SPs have shown various biological activities in in vitro and in vivo studies, such as anti-obesity, immunomodulatory, anti-tumor, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-fatigue, and hepatoprotective activities. This review provides a comprehensive and systematic summary of the extraction and purification methods, structural characterization, biological activity, and market trends of SPs to provide a theoretical basis for their therapeutic potential and sanitarian functions. A future scope is needed to further explore the medicinal and nutritional value of SPs and incorporate them in functional food products.

• This article is part of the themed collection: Food & Function Review Articles 2024

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Salman Rushdie Reflects on His Stabbing in a New Memoir

“Knife” is an account of the writer’s brush with death in 2022, and the long recovery that followed.

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KNIFE: Meditations After an Attempted Murder , by Salman Rushdie

“So it’s you,” Salman Rushdie remembers thinking on the morning of Aug. 12, 2022, as a black-clad man, a “squat missile,” sprinted toward him on an auditorium stage in Chautauqua, N.Y. Rushdie thought: “Here you are.”

Thirty-three years had passed since the former supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa ordering the deaths of Rushdie and everyone involved in the publication of his 1988 novel, “The Satanic Verses.” It had been at least two decades since Rushdie stopped running. He had been living an almost normal life in New York City. Socially, he had become a giraffe, eating leaves from the tops of the highest trees, but he was seen in dive bars too.

The black-clad man was an apparition from an older, more punitive world, one Rushdie thought had largely forgotten about him.

It is among that August morning’s ironies that Rushdie was in Chautauqua to participate in a discussion about keeping the world’s writers safe from harm. His attacker had piranhic energy. He also had a knife. Too stunned to try to protect himself, Rushdie only raised his left hand. At first, some in the audience thought the scuffle was performance art.

In his candid, plain-spoken and gripping new memoir, “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder,” Rushdie describes what happened next. The black-clad man, stabbing wildly, had 27 seconds alone with him. That is long enough, Rushdie points out, to read one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, including his favorite, No. 130. He does not print the poem, but I will, to provide a sense of the interminable horror. This is 27 seconds:

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips’ red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.

His attacker was at last subdued. Blood was everywhere, pooling. Rushdie’s clothes were cut off him. His legs were raised to keep what blood he had left flowing to his heart. He remembers feeling humiliated. “In the presence of serious injuries, your body’s privacy ceases to exist,” he writes. The reader considers it a good sign, for Rushdie’s health and for the tone of this humane and often witty book, that among his first thoughts was, “Oh, my nice Ralph Lauren suit.”

A member of his surgery team later tells him, “When they brought you in from the helicopter, we didn’t think we could save you.” Rushdie describes the appalling damage:

There was the deep knife wound in my left hand, which severed all the tendons and most of the nerves. There were at least two more deep stab wounds in my neck — one slash right across it and more on the right side — and another farther up my face, also on the right. If I look at my chest now, I see a line of wounds down the center, two more slashes on the lower right side, and a cut on my upper right thigh. And there’s a wound on the left side of my mouth, and there was one along my hairline too. And there was the knife in the eye. That was the cruelest blow, and it was a deep wound. The blade went in all the way to the optic nerve, which meant there would be no possibility of saving the vision. It was gone.

As bad as this was, he had been fortunate. A doctor says, “You’re lucky that the man who attacked you had no idea how to kill a man with a knife.”

This is Rushdie’s second memoir. His first, “Joseph Anton” — the title refers to the pseudonym he used when in hiding — was published in 2012. “Joseph Anton” is a sophisticated and multilayered book that recounts his years on the lam. It’s a book about friendship, about the many people who took him in. It was also a book about divorce. He was in the process of separating from his second wife, the novelist Marianne Wiggins, when the fatwa was announced, and during the book his third marriage, to Elizabeth West, falls apart as well.

“Knife,” on the other hand, contains a love story. Rushdie recounts meeting, wooing and marrying the American poet and novelist Rachel Eliza Griffiths, three decades his junior. She is now Lady Rushdie; her husband was knighted in 2007 for services to literature. Their story adds buoyancy to this memoir. But it takes a long time for that light to pour in. First there will be arduous recovery and rehab.

The poet John Berryman said an artist is lucky when “presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he’s in business.” This is cynical but true. I’ve rarely read about worse physical trauma.

Rushdie is initially held together by staples. His ruined eye bulged out of its socket and hung down his face “like a large soft-boiled egg.” He spends time on ventilators. There were small bags attached to his body to gather a variety of leaking fluids. No one will permit him to look in a mirror. Mentally, he tortures himself. Why had he not defended himself? Was it that he was 75 and his attacker 24?

“On some days I’m embarrassed, even ashamed, by my failure to try to fight back,” he writes. “On other days I tell myself not to be stupid, what do I imagine I could have done? This is as close to understanding my inaction as I’ve been able to get: The targets of violence experience a crisis in their understanding of the real.”

This is not, it must be said, the most elegant book. It does not have the emotional, intellectual and philosophical richness of the journalist Philippe Lançon’s memoir “Disturbance” (2019), about surviving the 2015 Charlie Hebdo magazine attacks by thugs claiming allegiance to Al Qaeda. But Rushdie was wise to largely stick to the details and stay out of his story’s way. To paraphrase Roy Blount Jr., I put this book down only once or twice, to wipe off the sweat.

During Rushdie’s convalescence, his friend Martin Amis died. Another friend, the editor and food writer Bill Buford, nearly expired from heart problems. Another, Paul Auster, discovered he had cancer. “There have been many times since the attack,” Rushdie writes, “when I have thought that Death was hovering over the wrong people.”

His mind, a free-associating unit, is intact. The literary and film references in “Knife” run deep. Along the way we learn that Rushdie is a “Law & Order” fan, that against his better judgment he orders books from Amazon, and that he needed the Chautauqua check to pay for a new air conditioning system. And so on.

Humor bubbles up organically from pain. “Dear reader, if you have never had a catheter inserted into your genital organ, do your very best to keep that record intact,” he writes. He enjoys that one of his surgeons has “the improbably gastronomic name of James Beard.” His account of a prostate exam includes these lines: “Aaagh. Double aaagh. Even more aaagh.” He is self-deprecating about his weight, which was 240 at the time of the attack. He lost 55 pounds in the months that followed. He does not recommend his weight loss technique.

He no longer has any urge, he writes, to defend “The Satanic Verses” or himself, although renunciation is the last thing on his mind. “If anyone’s looking for remorse,” he writes early on, “you can stop reading right here.”

Near the end of this memoir there is a sharp pivot. Throughout, Rushdie has provided pellets of information about his hostile and ill-informed attacker, whom he chooses to refer to as “the A.,” instead of the less decorous label (the Ass) he would prefer to use. Before the attack, the A. had been in Chautauqua for several nights, sleeping rough, checking out the site. He carried a false ID, his fake name an amalgam of the names of well-known Shia Muslim extremists. He had been living in his mother’s basement in New Jersey, playing video games and watching Netflix. He’d been radicalized by YouTube videos and, his mother suspected, by a trip to Lebanon in 2018.

Rushdie decides against trying to speak to him face to face. Instead, he imagines an interview with him, a conversation that consumes 30 pages of this book. I will not give the contents of this imagined interview away, except to say that the topics include radicalization, the ruthlessness that comes with the blinkered conviction that your cause is just, translation, hatred, laughter, literacy, gym memberships, mothers and the New York Giants.

Rushdie is no Oriana Fallaci, and no Tom Stoppard. I am not sure this section entirely comes off, but I am still processing it. Their fictional exchange did put me in mind of a bitter line from Lançon’s book, uttered by the satirical cartoonist Stéphane Jean-Abel Michel Charbonnier, better known as Charb: “If we start respecting people who don’t respect us, we might as well close up shop.”

“Knife” is a clarifying book. It reminds us of the threats the free world faces. It reminds us of the things worth fighting for. Rushdie’s friend Christopher Hitchens, in the wake of the initial fatwa, eloquently explained the stakes. The affair drew a line between “everything I hated versus everything I loved,” he wrote. “In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual and the defense of free expression.” His words apply to this book.

Many questions are left at the close of “Knife.” It is uncertain if Rushdie will lose the sight in his remaining eye because of macular degeneration. It is unclear where Rushdie and Griffiths will choose to live. But the mood of this book is suggested by this line about going out to a restaurant for the first time since the attack: “After the angel of death, the angel of life.”

KNIFE : Meditations After an Attempted Murder | By Salman Rushdie | Random House | 209 pp. | $28

Dwight Garner has been a book critic for The Times since 2008, and before that was an editor at the Book Review for a decade. More about Dwight Garner

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