Archive for June, 2010

Holds Growing for ONE DAY

Monday, June 21st, 2010

David Nicholls’ third novel, One Day came out in the US last Tuesday. That also happens to be the day news broke that Anne Hathaway has signed to play the lead in a movie based on the book. The director is Lone Scherfig, who was nominated for an Oscar last year for An Education.

One Day begins with two people who end up in bed together on the night they graduate from university. They are obviously wrong for each other, but there is chemistry. Over the next twenty years, they keep running in to each other. The story unfolds by showing where the characters are on a single day, July 15, of each of those twenty years.

Are you thinking When Harry Met Sally? You’re not the only one, Entertainment Weekly‘s review begins, “David Nicholls owes a plot finder’s fee to When Harry Met Sally…”

The book, released in last year in the UK, was a #1 best seller there and has received a warm welcome on this side of the Atlantic. The author was interviewed on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, by an obviously charmed Scott Simon. Entertainment Weekly, which gives it an A- (with no clear reason for withholding a full A), calls it an “irresistible way-we-were novel …the perceptive English novelist and screenwriter has a gift for zeitgeist description and emotional empathy that’s wholly his own…a nuanced love 
 story disguised as a beach read.” The NYT Book Review is equally smitten.

The Boston Globe, however, feels the author suffers from being too “risk-averse to veer too far from… safe and recognizable convention,” but ends up being won over because, “despite the story at times feeling predictable, merely readable, something happens toward the end that changes things…in its final pages…it has taken your heart and crushed it.”

The book rose to #21 on Amazon this weekend; libraries are showing holds of 10:1 on light ordering.

One Day (Vintage Contemporaries Original)
David Nicholls
Retail Price: $14.95
Paperback: 448 pages
Publisher: Vintage – (2010-06-15)
ISBN / EAN: 0307474712 / 9780307474711

ALA Book Buzz

Friday, June 18th, 2010

Publisher buzz sessions have become useful, not to mention fun, sources of insight into forthcoming titles librarians need to know about.

At ALA for the first time this year, the Trade Libraries Committee of the Association of American Publishers will present book editors buzzing their favorite fall titles, moderated by Nancy Pearl.

From the Inside(rs) Out: Book Editors and the New Titles They Love
Friday, June 25 from 3:30 to 5:00 (just prior to the opening of the Exhibit floor)
Convention Center; Room 103A

Also scheduled are sessions by publishers’ library marketing departments; great not only for getting advance buzz, but galleys, totes and (much-needed) refreshment. Earlier sessions are where librarians first heard about titles that are just breaking out now, like A Fierce Radiance or The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake.

Important Note; the publishers request that you register in advance so they will have enough goodies on hand. However, if you forget to RSVP, no worries; we’ve never seen anyone turned away at the door, just be respectful of the limited quantities of freebies.

HarperCollins FALL TITLE Presentation
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Convention Center, Room 147A
Adult Titles, 10:00 AM – 11:15 AM
Childrens Titles, 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM
RSVP to: Bobby Brinson, HarperCollins

If you’re wondering how much the HC Library Marketing team can BUZZ, check out their photo here!

Random House, Inc. BOOK BUZZ
Sunday, June 27th
Convention Center, Room 152A
Children’s Titles: 10:00am – 11:00am
Adult Titles: 11:15am – 12:15pm
RSVP to: Library@RandomHouse

Friday, June 18th, 2010

MR. PEANUT Gets Mixed Reaction

Friday, June 18th, 2010

Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross has been hyped as a summer reading breakout since last March, when Stephen King recommended it in Entertainment Weekly as “the most riveting look at the dark side of marriage since Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.”

But in a dissenting review, Tina Jordan at Entertainment Weekly gave a lowly grade “C” to this story of a marriage that ends with the investigation into how the wife’s body ended up on the kitchen floor:

The book fails completely as a police procedural. . . It’s as if there 
are two books here when there should be just one.

The author is also interviewed today on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Holds are edging up, but the libraries we checked have only a few copies.

Mr. Peanut
Adam Ross
Retail Price: $25.95
Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Knopf – (2010-06-22)
ISBN / EAN: 030727070X / 9780307270702

Other Major Fiction Titles on Sale Next Week

The Devil Amongst the Lawyers by Sharyn McCrumb (Macmillan) flashes back to Nora Bonesteeler’s first case, at age 12. Booklist says, “Loyal fans have been eagerly awaiting a new installment, so expect high demand. Discerning readers, however, will be sorely disappointed.” Holds are at 2:1 and higher, with more copies on order at several libraries we checked. McCrumb, a librarian favorite, will be speaking at the Altaff Tea at ALA.

Broken by Karin Slaughter (Delacorte) gets a rave from Library Journal:  “Move over, Catherine Coulter, Slaughter may be today’s top female suspense writer. Avid mystery and law-enforcement thriller fans as well as those who loved her series characters will devour Slaughter’s latest.” Slaughter also won some new librarian fans with her impassioned pitch for supporting libraries at the Random House Librarian Author Breakfast at BEA.

The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay by Beverly Jensen (Viking) was also touted by Stephen King in Entertainment Weekly, who suggested that the author’s death of cancer at age 49, after writing her first and only book, was a greater loss than J.D. Salinger’s passing. PW was more equivocal about the book: “While the sisters troubled relationship rings true, the story-like chapters feel quite independent of one another, and the dialogue has a tendency to veer into forced colloquialisms and melodrama.”

Sizzling Sixteen (Stephanie Plum Series #16) by Janet Evanovich (St. Martin’s Press) is uneven, says PW: “Evanovich is at her best spinning the bizarre subplots involving Stephanie’s bail jumpers, but the larger story simply recycles elements from previous installments.”

Dark Flame (Immortals Series #4) by Alyson Noel (Griffin) is the latest installment in the YA vampire series.

Family Ties by Danielle Steel (Delacorte) follows a woman who raises her sister’s children after a tragic plane crash.

In My Father’s House
by E. Lynn Harris (St. Martin’s) is about the bisexual owner of a modeling agency who is disowned by his rich father. PW says: “Harris’s wry tale about second chances highlights what readers have long loved about his work: his ability to depict the pursuit of love and self-respect, regardless of societal and family pressures.”

Will New Finance Books Fly?

Friday, June 18th, 2010

In the next two weeks, notable books about Wall Street go on sale, but will anyone be reading? That’s the question we’ve been hearing from librarians, who say that even seriously interested readers are hitting the saturation point on finance-related subjects.

Libraries we checked had few holds and few copies of these two titles, released next week. Still, here’s what you need to know:

The Zeros: My Misadventures in the Decade Wall St. Went Insane by Randall Lane, in which entrepreneur Lane chronicles the time he spent working on Wall Street during its greedy heyday, was compared to Michael Lewis’s Liar’s Poker in PW’s London Bookfair preview. There will also be an excerpt in the July issue of Vanity Fair.

The Zeroes: My Misadventures in the Decade Wall Street Went Insane
Randall Lane
Retail Price: $27.95
Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover – (2010-06-29)
ISBN / EAN: 1591843294 / 9781591843290

———————

High Financier: The Lives and Time of Siegmund Warburg by Niall Ferguson is the biography of one the members of the famous banking family. Ferguson had a hit in 2008 with The Ascent of Money.

PW was not very impressed:

Ferguson uses Warburg’s life as a window onto European unification and Britain’s postwar economic malaise, but his account, which is constantly distracted by deal making and office politics at Warburgs banking partnership, is too unsystematic to do these topics justice.

It is also available simultaneously from Tantor Audio,

14 Audio CDs; (Retail Pkg); 9781400114986; $29.99
14 Audio CDs (Library Binder Pkg); 9781400144983; $71.99
2 Mp3-CDs (Retail Pkg); 9781400164981; $22.49

The Hottest Book On the Planet

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

That’s what Entertainment Weekly dubs The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Unfortunately, Entertainment Weekly does not post its features, so we’ll have to grab the magazine, on stands tomorrow, to find out more.

An EW teaser blog post, however, says that speculation about who will play the main characters in the English-language movie is just that; speculation. Rumor has it that Brad Pitt and Daniel Craig could play Blomkvist, and some are betting on Kristen Stewart, Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, or Carey Mulligan for Lisbeth. Producer Scott Rudin will only say that casting should be complete in a month or two.

Meanwhile, we’re wondering how long it’s been since a book appeared on Entertainment Weekly‘s cover.

Oprah’s Summer Reading

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

If Oprah says it’s her “Biggest, Best Summer Reading List Ever!”, who are we to disagree?

Like many other lists to date (see our links at the right, under “Books of Summer ’10 — Previews”), it includes The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, finding in it a particularly Oprahesque message; it “encourages us all to make the most of our unique gifts while still finding a way to live in the so-called real world.” Lemon Cake is on the upcoming NYT Extended Hardcover Fiction best seller list for the second week. At #18, it’s tantalizing close to breaking on to the main list; perhaps this will push it over the line next week.

The list of 20 titles includes not only new hardcovers, but some paperback reissues and Oprah Magazine’s own, Words That Matter (HarperStudio, 3/17), as well as Sloane Crosley’s “collection of weird and wonderful essays, ” Where Did You Get This Number (Riverhead, 6/15), which has been enjoying good press this week.

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

Assessing The OVERTON WINDOW

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

In the NYT Janet Maslin of reviews Glenn Beck’s new thriller, The Overton Window. You might have missed it, however; it’s the fifth review in a roundup of “Newly Released Books.” Beyond summarizing the plot, Maslin makes little comment, except that the book “…combines lectures with action, makes an extreme point of avoiding political stereotypes and culminates in the prospect of a sequel.”

Thus, she may avoid the attacks that the Washington Post‘s Steven Levingston is receiving for calling the book a “paranoid thriller” in his review on Tuesday.

On the Huffington Post, Chris Kelly, a writer for the cable talk show Real Time with Bill Maher says the book resembles another thriller, “a pretty feeble self-published 2005 techno-thriller called Circumference of Darkness.”

Turns out that the author of Circumference of Darkness, Jack Henderson, gets credit from Beck on Overton Window for “pouring his heart and soul into this project.” In this week’s USA Today profile, Beck freely admitted to a “team approach” to writing his books. On the book’s title page, he says Overton Window is his story, but that Jack Henderson “went in and he put the words down.”

Henderson’s book was originally published by iUniverse in 2005 and later republished by Bantam in both hardcover and paperback. PW reviewed it, saying, “Though well researched, Henderson’s plot eventually crumbles into confusion and overly technical detail,” but  Booklist gave it a starred review, which ended with the line, “Henderson looks like the real thing; watch him closely.”

Circumference of Darkness is owned by 644 libraries, according to WorldCat.

There’s an amusing difference between the two books. In Circumference of Darkness, the heroes are liberals.

BLIND DESCENT

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

Jon Stewart was obviously taken with James Tabor, author of Blind Descent, last night. He called the book “stunningly fascinating.”

The book rose to #64, from #2,058, on Amazon sales rankings.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
James Tabor
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

—————-


Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth
James M. Tabor
Retail Price: $26.00
Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Random House – (2010-06-15)
ISBN / EAN: 1400067677 / 9781400067671

RH Audio; 9780307736789; $40

GAME OF THRONES on HBO

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

It’s not coming until next Spring, at the earliest, but “fans are already in lust” with the HBO series Game of Thrones, based on the first book in The Song of Fire and Ice series by George R.R. Martin, says the L.A. Times.

Feeding that lust is this 22 second-long video, which was aired on Sunday during the debut of season 3 of True Blood.

The fourth volume in the planned seven volume series was published in 2005. Fans are impatiently awaiting volume five, A Dance with Dragons, so much so that  Martin issued a statement last year, asking fans to give him a break,

Some of you are angry that I watch football during the fall. Some of you don’t want me attending conventions, teaching workshops, touring and doing promo … After all, as some of you like to point out in your emails, I am 60 years old and fat, and you don’t want me to ‘pull a Robert Jordan’ on you and deny you your book. OK, I’ve got the message. You don’t want me doing anything except A Song of Ice and Fire. Ever. (Well, maybe it’s OK if I take a leak once in a while?)

There’s Money in Them Cheezburgers

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

Like us, you may be obsessed with the crazy cat humor of the I Can Has Cheezburger? site. Today, the NYT looks in to the site’s phenomenal success.

That success includes a line of books, beginning with the indisputable classic,

I Can Has Cheezburger?: A LOLcat Colleckshun
Professor Happycat, icanhascheezburger.com
Retail Price: $10.00
Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: Gotham – (2008-10-07)
ISBN / EAN: 159240409X / 9781592404094

Washington Post Responds to Beck

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

On his radio show today, Glenn Beck was clear that he didn’t like the Washington Post‘s review of his book. The reviewer, in his blog on the newspaper’s site, Political Bookworm, shoots back that Beck’s not clear about what’s actually in the review.

Beck Takes Issue with OVERTON Review

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

From today’s Glenn Beck radio show:

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010