Archive for November, 2010

Guilty Pleasures

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010

Here’s an idea for a book display — “Guilty Pleasures.” NPR beat us to it, with their “My Guilty Pleasure” series, in which writers talk about “the books they love but are embarrassed to be seen reading.”

Last night, Lionel Shriver (author of National Book Award finalist, So Much for That) said her guilty pleasure is an erotic historical novel, As Meat Loves Salt, by Maria McCann, sending the book to #62 on Amazon’s sales rankings.

As Meat Loves Salt (Harvest Original)
Maria McCann
Retail Price: $30.95
Paperback: 565 pages
Publisher: Harvest Books – (2003-01-07)
ISBN / EAN: 015601226X / 9780156012263

Fran Lebowitz Speaks

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010

Martin Scorsese’s documentary about Fran Lebowitz, Public Speaking premiered on HBO last night (it will continue to be aired on HBO and is also available on HBO On Demand).

The tie-in, a reissue of the 1994 Fran Lebowitz Reader (which in turn is a reissue of her two books, Metropolitan Life and Social Studies) rose to #240 on Amazon sales rankings as a result.

The Fran Lebowitz Reader
Fran Lebowitz
Retail Price: $15.95
Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Vintage – (1994-11-08)
ISBN / EAN: 0679761802 / 9780679761808

NPR’s Best Cookbooks 2010

Monday, November 22nd, 2010

One of EarlyWord‘s most clicked-on stories from the past year is NPR’s Best Cookbooks of 2009, so we’re happy to announce NPR’s Best Cookbooks of 2010 is here.

Even though you can Google nearly any recipe you want, T. Susan Chang tells Liane Hanson on Weekend Edition Saturday that this was an amazing year for cookbooks. In putting together this list, she stuck to the books that everyday cooks would want to use. The common thread of these books is that the “authors take the trouble to tell you everything you need to know to do the recipes. The short, cute cookbooks with almost nothing on the page, those are the ones to look out for, because they will double cross you.”

Curiously, the book that received the largest Amazon sales bump is The Food Substitutions Bible, from Canadian publisher, Robert Rose (distributed by Firefly). It rose to #53 from a lowly #18,937, proving that you can’t Google everything.

The Food Substitutions Bible: More Than 6,500 Substitutions for Ingredients, Equipment and Techniques
David Joachim
Retail Price: $24.95
Paperback: 696 pages
Publisher: Robert Rose – (2010-09-02)
ISBN / EAN: 0778802450 / 9780778802457


Mark Twain Delayed

Monday, November 22nd, 2010

Above: The currently sought-after edition and two earlier versions of Twain’s Autobiography

Wondering why you haven’t received your orders of the Mark Twain autobiography?

The New York Times reports that the publisher, the University of California Press, did not anticipate the demand. The same is true for booksellers, who are discovering, to their regret, that it has become the desired gift book of the season.

According to the NYT, the original print run was 50,000 (which probably seemed aggressive at the time). The U. of Cal. Press uses a small printer in Michigan that has been working overtime to produce 30,000 copies a week and has engaged larger trucks so they can transport more copies in each shipment to warehouses.

In libraries, holds are growing and outpacing the other surprise hits of the season. They are slightly higher than Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra and the Booker winner, The Finkler Question, but not quite as high as Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken.

Part of the allure of the book is that the autobiography was supposedly held back for 100 years. But the director of the Mark Twain Project, Robert Hirst, told NPR recently,

In spite of these efforts at suppression, however, most of the autobiography has surfaced over the years, and the supposed “embargo” has only led to increased interest in and sales for the book.

Hirst also says that the reader “might find [this edition] a bit of a slow read at times” because  it,

…includes the numerous false starts Twain made before he settled into the dictation….It is heavy slogging. But I would recommend what Mark Twain would recommend: If you’re bored with it, SKIP.

More LORD OF MISRULE On the Way

Friday, November 19th, 2010

The good news: you published the winner of the National Book Award in fiction.

The bad news: you only printed 8,000 copies

Publisher Bruce McPherson tells the Wall Street Journal that another printing of Jaimy Gordon’s Lord of Misrule should be available by Dec. 3.

So far, however, library demand is not going through the roof. At four large library systems we checked, the number of holds for this year’s Booker winner, The Finkler Question, is seven times those for Lord of Misrule.

We’re willing to bet that this is the first National Book Award winner to be reviewed by The Daily Racing Form.

Congrats to Gordon’s home town public library, Kalamazoo P.L. They nabbed the author for a program on Dec. 3rd.

Barney’s Version, The Movie

Friday, November 19th, 2010

The film adaptation of Mordecai Richler’s novel, Barney’s Version, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September, will be released in a limited number of theaters on Dec. 24, to qualify it for the Oscars. It will open across the country on January 14.

The first full-length trailer has hit the web (we showed you an earlier version back in August).

——–
Director: Richard J. Lewis

Starring:

Dustin Hoffman … Izzy
Rosamund Pike … Miriam
Paul Giamatti … Barney Panofsky
Minnie Driver … Mrs. P
Rachelle Lefevre … Clara

Official Website: BarneysVersion.com

Barney’s Version (Vintage International)
Mordecai Richler
Retail Price: $15.95
Paperback: 432 pages
Publisher: Vintage – (2010-05-04)
ISBN / EAN: 030747688X / 9780307476883

Palin Goes Where the Crowds Are

Friday, November 19th, 2010

Sarah Palin hits the road next week to promote her new compilation on American virtues, America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag (Harper). Her tour starts on November 23 in Phoenix, Arizona at a Barnes & Noble at 6 p.m., according to the Daily Beast, which notes that she will appear on the busiest Christmas shopping days of the year, including Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.

Most libraries we checked had orders in line with substanial reserves.

America by Heart : Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag
Sarah Palin
Retail Price: $25.99
Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Harper – (2010-11-23)
ISBN / EAN: 0062010964 / 9780062010964

Other Notable Nonfiction on Sale Next Week

Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris (Random House) is the third volume in the landmark biography of Teddy Roosevelt, chronicling his return to politics after his presidency. Kirkus declares “Roosevelt never fails to fascinate, and Morris provides a highly readable, strong finish to his decades-long marathon.” It’s currently rising on Amazon (now at #143).

Whiter Shades of Pale: The Stuff White People Like, Coast to Coast, from Seattle’s Sweaters to Maine’s Microbrews by Christian Lander (Random House Trade Paperbacks) is the followup to the humor hit Stuff White People Like. Although most libraries ordered the first book, several we checked haven’t ordered this one (unlike its predecessor, it wasn’t reviewed prepub).

OBJECT OF BEAUTY Gets the Love

Friday, November 19th, 2010

Next week’s media darling is shaping up to be An Object of Beauty, the third novel by actor, author and art collector Steve Martin, which follows an ambitious young woman as she cuts a swath through the New York art world.

Entertainment Weekly gives it an A-:

A dramedy of manners that doubles as an immersion course in the rarefied world of high-end art…. It takes a certain nimbleness to play the dual roles of proxy art-history professor and compelling storyteller without falling off the literary balance beam. Martin, wry, wise, and keenly observant, rarely misses a step.

The New York Times just ran a profile of Martin, noting that he received “a little pushback from Sotheby’s, which plays a small but slightly controversial role in the book, when one of the characters, a Sotheby’s employee, attempts a bidding scheme there. The people at the auction house were not pleased.” It just broke into the Top 100 on Amazon and is rising.

Libraries we checked had orders in line with substantial reserves.

An Object of Beauty
Steve Martin
Retail Price: $26.99
Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing – (2010-11-23)
ISBN / EAN: 0446573647 / 9780446573641

Ususal Suspects on Sale Next Week

The Athena Project by Brad Thor (Atria) is the debut of a new thrille rseries about an elite all-female counter-terrorism unit. Deadline reports that Warner Bros. just picked up the film rights.

The Emperor’s Tomb (Cotton Malone Series #6) by Steve Berry finds ex-federal agent Cotton Malone and old heartthrob Cassiopeia Vitt “on a dangerous mission to retrieve a priceless Chinese lamp from the third century B.C.E. in Berry’s rousing fifth thriller…. A goose-pimpleraising showdown in a remote monastery–is worth the wait.”

Pathfinder by Orson Scott Card (Simon Pulse) gets a starred review from Booklist: “Card’s latest title has much in common with his Ender Wiggins books: precocious teens with complementary special talents, callously manipulative government authorities, endlessly creative worlds, and Card’s refusal to dumb down a plot for a young audience.”

Night Whispers by Erin Hunter (HarperCollins) is book three in the feline fantasy Warriors: Omen of the Stars series.

In PEOPLE News

Thursday, November 18th, 2010

The Sexiest Man Alive is Ryan Reynolds.

Oops, sorry, the real news is that the 11/29 issue of People gives three books the four-star treatment (but the lead title, Bush’s Decision Points gets only 3.5):

The Distant Hours, Kate Morton, “A nuanced exploration of family secrets and betrayal, Morton’s latest [after The Forgotten Garden] is captivating.”

The Distant Hours: A Novel
Kate Morton
Retail Price: $26.00
Hardcover: 576 pages
Publisher: Atria – (2010-11-09)
ISBN / EAN: 1439152780 / 9781439152782

…………………………

Foreign Bodies, Cynthia Ozick, “Who would dare rewrite Henry James? Ozick proves up to the task, recasting The Amabassadors with Jewish Americans in post-war Paris.” It will be featured on the NYT BR cover this week.

Foreign Bodies
Cynthia Ozick
Retail Price: $26.00
Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt – (2010-11-01)
ISBN / EAN: 0547435576 / 9780547435572

…………………………

Louisa May Alcott, Susan Cheever; “Cheever brings her characteristic lyricism to this loving, incisive portrait.”

Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography
Susan Cheever
Retail Price: $26.00
Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster – (2010-11-02)
ISBN / EAN: 141656991X / 9781416569916

Dark Horse Wins the NBA

Thursday, November 18th, 2010

If you haven’t read the National Book Award winner in fiction, you have lots of company. Jaimy Gordon’s Lord of Misrule was just published this week, in what may be the smallest original print run in the award’s history (just 2,000 copies, with a reprint of 6,000 more ordered after the finalists were announced). However, this is the largest print run ever for McPherson, the indie that published the book. The first consumer review (unless you count the one in The Daily Racing Form) appeared yesterday, by Jane Smiley in the Washington Post. The winner is literally a dark horse; Lord of Misrule is the name of the rundown, black race horse featured in the book.

For a taste of Lord of Misrule, the author reads a selection here and an excerpt is here.

While the national press did not give author Jaimy Gordon attention in advance of the award, her local paper, The Kalamazoo Gazette, profiled her on Sunday.

The back story for the nonfiction winner is quite different. Patti Smith has already received fame in another line of work. Her memoir Just Kids hit the NYT Best Seller List in hardcover and is currently on the extended list in trade paperback and is on year-end best books lists. Nevertheless, Smith seemed genuinely moved, giving a teary acceptance speech.

In Young People’s Literature, Kathryn Erskine’s Mockingbird, won over Paolo Bacigalupi’s well-received YA futuristic thriller, Ship Breaker, Walter Dean Myer’s Lockdown, Laura McNeal’s Dark Water and Rita Williams-Garcia’s One Crazy Summer (the only one of the group to appear on School Library Journal‘s Best Books list).

In a reversal of the fiction category, the poetry winner is published by a large trade house. Terrance Hayes’s Lighthead (Penguin Books) won out over books published by indie presses and one university press.


Favorites of the Year

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

Best books lists can be stuffy, requiring all that dispassionate justification of “quality.” It’s often more fun to hear what people simply loved.

The UK’s Guardian asked various writers and other public figures to recommend their favorites of 2010. Their responses are strikingly different from the often dry annotations on best books lists. For instance, a book that has received plenty of admiring attention breathes new life from this passionate recommendation,

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell is as enjoyable as a Patrick O’Brian novel and much better written. It’s a brilliantly imagined journey through 17th-century Japan and Holland which is moving, thoughtful and unexpectedly funny.

Curtis Sittenfeld (author of American Wife) recommends Stiltsville, an EarlyWord favorite. Now that she’s won us over with that example of impeccible taste, we’re ready to give her second recommendation a try.

I fell in love with two American first novels. Stiltsville by Susanna Daniel (Harper) is the gorgeously written story of a marriage over several decades, and it takes place in Miami, Florida, a place so vividly depicted you feel like you’ve travelled there while reading. If You Follow Me by Malena Watrous (HarperPerennial) is about a college graduate who goes to teach English in Japan, thinking she’ll end up in Tokyo and instead landing in a rural nuclear power plant town. It’s funny in a sharp, dark, painfully true way.

So, please, help us create a “Librarian’s Favorites” list; tell us what you loved this year, complete with your heartfelt recommendation.

Siberian Holiday

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

Reviewers say that, even if you are not remotely interested in Siberia, you will want to read Ian Frazier’s Travels in Siberia (S.F. Chronicle; “It’s always easy to figure out whether you should read the latest book by Ian Frazier: If he’s written it, then you’ll want to read it.”).

Frazier appears on The Colbert Report tonight.

Travels in Siberia
Ian Frazier
Retail Price: $30.00
Hardcover: 544 pages
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux – (2010-10-12)
ISBN / EAN: 0374278725 / 9780374278724

S&S Audio; UNABR; 9781427210531; $59.99

Jay Z on Terry Gross

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

As part of his extensive media tour for his book, Decoded, Jay Z talks to Terry Gross about his music and growing up in a housing project in Brooklyn. He will appear on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart tonight. Earlier this week, he appeared at the New York Public Library.

Decoded
Jay-Z
Retail Price: $35.00
Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau – (2010-11-16)
ISBN / EAN: 1400068924 / 9781400068920

Can’t Get Enough About the Financial Crisis

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

Why read yet another book on the financial crisis? A Huffington Post columnist has declared the latest in a long line of them, All the Devils Are Here, by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera, the “Best Business Book of the Year” (he does, however, admit to being a friend of one of the authors). Time magazine says, “When the financial crisis of this decade is being taught in business schools in the next, All the Devils Are Here could be the textbook.”

The authors convinced Jon Stewart’s viewers on The Daily Show last night (Stewart used the magic words, “you have to get this [book]”); it rose to #13 on Amazon sales rankings after their appearance.

Coming tomorrow to The Daily Show, Jay-Z, Decoded (Spiegel and Grau) and on Thursday, Philip K. Howard, Life Without Lawyers (Norton).

All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis
Bethany McLean, Joe Nocera
Retail Price: $32.95
Hardcover: 400 pages
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover – (2010-11-16)
ISBN / EAN: 1591843634 / 9781591843634

Betting on the NBA

Tuesday, November 16th, 2010

The National Book Awards will be announced tomorrow night and the excitement in the press is less than overwhelming, in a marked contrast to the comparative frenzy that greeted the lead-up to the Bookers in the UK (is it legalized betting that makes that race seem more interesting?)

Just a reminder; although it’s accepted wisdom that the NBA has little effect on sales, last year’s winner went on the the NYT Trade Paperback Best Seller list and remained there for most of the year, occasionally slipping to the extended list (where it is now, at #29).

Among the national newspaper critics, only Ron Charles, in the guise of the “Totally Hip Book Reviewer,” makes predictions. He looks at  the fiction nominees, satirizing several of the selections, but coming down on the side of Lionel Shriver’s So Much for That (Harper, March).

For a more serious look at the field, turn to the The Barnes & Noble Review, which offers passages from each book, along with intelligent analyses of each one’s chances (the author, Tom LeClair, was a judge the year that William Vollmann’s Europe Central won). LeClair wants to see Karen Tei Yamashita win for  I, Hotel (Coffee House Press, June), because it “is the most ambitious in its cultural range, the most diverse in character, the most ingenious in form, and the most idiosyncratic in style.” However, the book may be “too off-putting” to get the necessary votes, so he predicts Nicole Krauss will win for Great House (Norton, Oct).

What about the other categories? Looks like they will have to wait until tomorrow to get press attention.