Most books that receive media attention get it all at once, right around publication date; a few are discovered more slowly. This is true for Zoo Story, by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Thomas French. Spotted by Laura Miller in Salon last month, it was also a People Pick and gets two major pick ups this week. A review in today’s USA Today calls it,

…both top-notch reporting and page-turning storytelling…French’s narrative reads like a mystery novel. What will happen next? Will politics win out? Who will end up leading this zoo? What will happen to the chimps that escape?

The author appeared on the Colbert Report last night.

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Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives Thomas French Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Hyperion – (2010-07-06) ISBN / EAN: 1401323464 / 9781401323462

Tantor Audio; Read by John Allen Nelson; UNABR; On Sale Date: 07/31/2010

Trade 9781400118830 9 Audio CDs $34.99
Library 9781400148837 9 Audio CDs $83.99
MP3 9781400168835 1 MP3-CD $24.99

Yunte Huang’s examination of Charlie Chan, the Chinese detective that was featured in 40 movies beginning in 1934, has caught the attention of many reviewers. On NPR’s Fresh Air, critic Maureen Corrigan says Huang reveals that Chan was not always considered an outrageous stereotype. In his time, he was celebrated in China as the only positive portrayal of a Chinese character in American film.

The book is also featured in the current issue of Time magazine (Watching the Detective), was reviewed by Charles McGrath in the NY Times (Charlie Chan: A Stereotype and a Hero) and in today’s B&N Review (The Legacy of Charlie Chan).

Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History Yunte Huang Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 354 pages Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company – (2010-08-23) ISBN / EAN: 0393069621 / 9780393069624

Coming to theaters Oct. 1, a documentary based on the best seller Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, (Harper).

On NPR’s Morning Edition today, the fascinating story of a man who lived in NYC in the 1880′s as a light-skinned African American, when he was actually white. As the story says, this was “highly unusual.”

Also highly unusual is NPR featuring a book that came out in hardcover over a year ago; the story is part of a special series Morning Edition is doing this week on how race is woven into American lives.

The book came out in trade paperback in January.

Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line Martha A. Sandweiss Retail Price: $17.00 Paperback: 384 pages Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) – (2010-01-26) ISBN / EAN: 014311686X / 9780143116868

OverDrive WMA and MP3 Audiobook
Tantor Audio

12 Audio CDs (Retail Unikeep Pkg); 9781400111510; $26.24
12 Audio CDs (Library Binder Pkg); 9781400141517; $52.49
2 Mp3-CDs (Retail SlimlineL Pkg); 9781400161515; $18.74

Among the names that appear on lists of “What To Read After You Finish Larsson” are Henning Mankel, Jo Nesbo and Karin Fossum.

The Washington Post reviews Fossum’s latest, a “haunting psychological suspense novel,” which alternates chapters from the author’s point of view thus, “having some fun…with the old saw that, during the writing of a book, a novelist’s characters will take on lives of their own.”

Broken Karin Fossum Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 272 pages Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt – (2010-08-01) ISBN / EAN: 0151013667 / 9780151013661

A sure sign that it’s back to school season; USA Today looks at four books that give “updated advice on navigating college.”

Writing about the book with the most up-to-date sounding title, The iConnected Parent: Staying Close to Your Kids in College (and Beyond) While Letting Them Grow Up(Free Press), review editor Deirdre Donahue asks, “Are cellphones, Facebook and e-mail morphing into the campus equivalents of baby monitors? “

On the Today Show, Stephanie Dolgoff mourns former hotness, but tries to say the message of her book, My Formerly Hot Life, is to not fear aging. It rose to #80 on Amazon.

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My Formerly Hot Life: Dispatches from Just the Other Side of Young Stephanie Dolgoff Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 224 pages Publisher: Ballantine Books – (2010-08-17) ISBN / EAN: 0345521455 / 9780345521453

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Jennifer Arnold charmed viewers of Good Morning America when she showed off her training techniques with her dog, Butch. Arnold is against the idea that people need to be dominating “alphas” to their dogs; “they try so hard to please us that I find it very sad that we would ever use anything other than kindness to work with them.”

Her book, Through a Dog’s Eyes, rose to #165 on Amazon’s sales rankings, from #6,547.

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Through a Dog’s Eyes Jennifer Arnold Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 240 pages Publisher: Spiegel & Grau – (2010-08-10) ISBN / EAN: 1400068886 / 9781400068883

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Books On Tape; UNABR; 9780307737199; #30

News that Anne Hathaway would star in the movie of the British novel One Day propelled it up the charts. It’s currently filming in Scotland and is slated for release some time next year (the tabloid press has been going on about her ”geeky look” on set).

Meanwhile, Hathaway is starring, with Jake Gyllenhaal, in another romantic comedy based on a book, Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman, renamed Love and Other Drugs for the film version (and the paperback tie-in). It comes out this Thanksgiving.

(for more Movies Based on Books information, check the links at the right).

Love And Other Drugs Trailer

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Original Title:

Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman Jamie Reidy Retail Price: $19.95 Hardcover: 224 pages Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing – (2005-03-01) ISBN / EAN: 0740750399 / 9780740750397

Tie-in:

Below are upcoming titles on the radar for GalleyChat.

Please join us at 4 pm.

SEPT

Russian Winter, Daphne Kalotay, Harper — the author was fascinating at the First Novelists session at ALA.

OCT

Up from the Blue, Susan Henderson, Harper — One of my favorites; I was mesmerized by this story about a girl yearning for her bipolar mother who suddenly and mysteriously disappears. I’m not the only one; author Jamie Ford (Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet) tweeted in March, “Just finished reading a galley of Susan Henderson’s UP FROM THE BLUE. I’m awestruck.”

The Wake of Forgiveness, Bruce Machart, HMH — This will be compared to Cormac McCarthy, but MUCH darker. an inhouse favorite; great PW review.

Steinberg, Avi,  Running the Books Nan A. Talese — memoir by a rison librarian. Great opening line “Pimps make the best librarians.”

NOV

Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand, Random House — As in her mega-selling Seabiscuit, Hillenbrand writes about overcoming adversity — in this case, a WWII bombardier who survives at sea after a plane crash. She gets you INSIDE people & makes you care about things you never thought you might (she had me on the edge of my seat describing a track meet!)

FEB

West of Here, Jonathan Evison. Algonquin- Robin Beerbower, Salem [OR] Public Library says,

This book reminded me of those sprawling meaty historical novels I read back in the 70s and 80s. Set in Port Bonita,Washington, a fictional Port Townsend, part of the story takes place in the late 1800s with a parallel story taking place in 2006, and chronicles the early history of Port Bonita, focusing on the building of the Elwha Dam and the exploration of the Olympics…The book goes back and forth in time and skips around between characters, which I found a little confusing, and it took me a good 100 pages to really get the characters sorted and into the story, but after that I found it enjoyable.

The Devotion of Suspect X, Keigo Higashino, Minotaur — A major seller in Japan; some of you may have picked up a copy from the “Sneak Peek” feature on The Book Reporter.

The Slap has “has sparked heated discussions across the world” according to The Telegraph. Now the author of “the most divisive book” on the long list for the Booker Prize, Christos Tsiolkas is making enemies by calling European writers dry and academic, preferring John Updike’s Couples because it has “a fearlessness that I am hungry for.”

About the aftermath of a guest slapping an obnoxious child, not his own, at a barbecue The Slap is currently the most popular Booker nominee in the UK, selling 3.5 times more copies than the second most popular title, The Room by Emma Donoghue.

It is not nearly as popular here, where it’s at #4,352 on Amazon’s list, as opposed to #16  in the UK. In libraries, holds are light.

So, here’s a thought; it may be an ideal choice for book clubs. It’s available here in paperback, people love it or hate it, making for heated discussions, and there’s the added interest of seeing whether it continues on the Booker short list (to be announced 9/7) and whether it wins the Booker in October (10/12).

It’s received strong reviews in both the UK and the US:

London Review of Books

Jane Smiley reviewed it in The Guardian in May

L.A. Times

Washington Post

Tsiolkas, who lives in Australia, has been interviewed here by WAMU’s Diane Rehm and  The Bookslut.

The Slap: A Novel Christos Tsiolkas Retail Price: $15.00 Paperback: 496 pages Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) – (2010-04-27) ISBN / EAN: 0143117149 / 9780143117148

We’re always happy to see a neighborhood joint do well, especially since our neighborhood is in Brooklyn, a borough sometimes overshadowed by that other one across the river.

So, imagine our delight when we heard Frankies Sputino, a restaurant a mere ten blocks from EarlyWord HQ, featured on NPR’s All Things Considered ? Like many of you, we first learned about the eatery from that font of all things worth knowing, Michael Rockliff, Workman’s head of library marketing (get a sample of his newsletter here).

As a result of the feature, the restaurant’s cookbook rose to #82 on Amazon sales rankings (from #2,453 yesterday).

The Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion & Cooking Manual Frank Falcinelli, Frank Castronovo, Peter Meehan Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Artisan – (2010-06-14) ISBN / EAN: 1579654150 / 9781579654153

We’re not surprised when we see Gawker making fun of Rhonda Byrne’s book The Power, the followup to her super successful The Secret, releasing today, but USA Today? The newspaper’s book review editor Dierdre Donahue finds Byrne’s ideas pretty flimsy, and ends with this zinger, “With The Secret, Byrne made a fortune off the delusional bliss of magical thinking. Let’s not give her any more power.”

The Wall Street Journal, naturally, take a more businesslike approach to the whole thing, calling its publication a “bright spot” in a struggling business. Publisher Atria tells the WSJ that they have pre-orders for 924,000 copies, “the largest in its history.”

The Power (The Secret) Rhonda Byrne Retail Price: $23.95 Hardcover: 272 pages Publisher: Atria Books – (2010-08-01) ISBN / EAN: 1439181780 / 9781439181782

S&S Audio; Read by: Rhonda Byrne; September 2010; ISBN-13: 9781442337961; $29.95