We’re kicking off a new feature, EarlyWord Galley Chat. This is an opportunity for librarians to talk to each other about favorite galleys (we know you carried or shipped a boatload of them back from PLA). To find out more, click here.
Our many links on the far right offer useful tools for selection and readers advisory librarians. Get a head start on the Fall season by checking out the new Publisher’s Catalogs, view trailers for Movies Based on Books and identify Movie Tie-ins. If you need a librarian-friendly contact at publishing houses, check our listings under Publisher Contacts.
A book with an unusual title, The Tower, The Zoo and The Tortoise, is being compared by booksellers to another unusual, but now familiar title, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, according to USA Today, which asks, “Can a quirky novel about a hapless Beefeater guard at the Tower of London and his 181-year-old pet tortoise, Mrs. Cook, be August’s hot beach read?”
Library Journal’s reviewer beat booksellers to the comparison, “Filled with the humor and heart that calls to mind the delightful novels of Alexander McCall Smith, and the charm and beauty of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society [it] is a magical, wholly original novel whose irresistible characters will stay with you long after you turn the stunning last page.”
The book’s editor, Alison Callahan, says the book “makes readers feel good…It’s an uplifting and effervescent story. It’s as funny as it is poignant. It hits all the right notes.”
We mentioned it as a book to keep your eye on in our preview of the week’s upcoming books. Holds are still modest, but up a bit from last week.
Speculation is rampant on who will play The Girl With the Dragon Tatto in the American version of the movies based on the Stieg Larsson trilogy.
In the UK, the tabloids are writing that Emma Watson (who has had some experience with a book series brought to the movies; she played Hermione in the Harry Potter films) has “hacked off” her hair to audition for the role.
The CBS Early Show reported on the “hot buzz” yesterday, mentioning Natalie Portman and Ellen Page (Juno, Inception), but holding out the idea that an unknown would be more interesting.
One of the early front-runners, Cary Mulligan, is no longer a candidate; some speculate that director David Fincher found her too “clean cut.”
Daniel Craig will play the lead, Mikael Blomkvist. Robin Wright is reportedly in negotiations to play Erika Berger, Blomkvist’s love interest.
On Friday, ABC’s Nightline interviewed Larsson’s real-life partner, the woman he lived with for 32 years, Eva Gabrielsson.
Meanwhile, critic Maureen Corrigan spoke about other Nordic mysteries on NPR’s Fresh Air last night, propelling titles by the writing team of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo up the Amazon sales rankings.
USA Today joins the growing trend of writing about “one of the fastest-growing genres in romance publishing,” novels with Amish settings (Business Week, The Wall Street Journal and the AP have all written about the phenomenon).
Several new and forthcoming titles are cited, including the launch of a new series, from “the queen of the genre,” Beverly Lewis.
Amish-themed mysteries are also being released, including the first in a series originally published by Ohio University Press and being reissued by Plume.
When Washington Post Carolyn See critic loves a book, she doesn’t hide it. Her review for the debut novel The Doctor and The Diva, begins, “Some novels just naturally enslave you, and this is one of them.” Set in Boston in the early 1900’s, it’s about a woman caught in a conflict between her love for her husband, her desire to become an opera singer and her desire for another man.
The novel is based on a true story that the author researched in depth. Writes See,
The details of the novel — such as the long coach rides down a Trinidad beach where the sands are firm as pavement — gets its richness from diaries, clippings and letters. The effectiveness of the narrative comes from the novelist’s striking skill. From the very first pages, we are utterly engaged in what’s going to happen to these three people — they become as close to us as family friends.
It ’s published under a new Viking Penguin imprint, Pamela Dorman Books. Dorman is known for acquiring and editing The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards, Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding and The Deep End Of The Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard. When she was at Hyperion, she was responsible for The Physick Book Of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe, The Monsters Of Templeton by Lauren Groff, as well as the memoirs The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan, and Perfection by Julie Metz.
Fans can stop holding their breath; HBO confirmed that A Game of Thrones, based on the first book in George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series, will debut this coming spring, according to several sources, including USA Today and the LA Times.
We’ve been tracking the mounting reviews for Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story and we fully expected to find it on the cover of this week’s NYT Book Review.
But, no, that space goes to the novels by Hans Keilson, published in the Netherlands in 1947, now being published by FSG in the US. Francine Prose calls The Death of the Adversary and Comedy in a Minor Key masterpieces and Keilson a genius.
Also reviewed are Mary Roach’s Packing For Mars, (the reviewer agrees with most everyone else, including Jon Stewart, that is is “hilarious”) Mona Simpson’s My Hollywood (“Simpson works her habitual magic”), Rick Moody’sThe Four Fingers of Death(doesn’t “succeed as a whole”) and Susan Isaacs’As Husbands Go (fun characters, but too much detail).
In an essay, Pamela Paul explains she’s not the only one who prefers her kids’ books to those written for adults. Lev Grossman,Time magazine’s book critic says, ““I think young adult fiction is one of the few areas of literature right now where storytelling really thrives.”
“British writer Julia Stuart (The Matchmaker of Périgord) crafts a subculture that is so sweet and enchanting that the whole affair would be terribly twee were it not for the sense of heartbreak and longing that holds it all together.”
You Lost Me There by Rosecrans Baldwin (Riverhead) gets an A- from Entertainment Weekly, which calls it “beautiful, brainy, offbeat,” while praising the author’s “steadying compassion and literary flair in the dissection of miseries, identifying with equal compassion the dissatisfactions of a dead wife and the grief of a bewildered widower.”
But Kirkus, PW and Booklist were all underwhelmed by this debut, calling it “thinly plotted” and criticizing the main character’s “fundamental blandness” - so probably best to wait for more reviews.
Tough Customerby Sandra Brown (Simon & Schuster) tells the story of a private investigator whose estranged daughter is threatened by a stalker. Kirkus says “the narrative, slowed by too many talky scenes and descriptive filler, eventually rewards readers’ patience with a bang-up surprise ending.”
Cure by Robin Cook (Putnam) follows a couple, both medical examiners, who investigate a mob hit. PW says “Even devoted Cook fans may find that the crimes and subterfuges are resolved too swiftly and perfunctorily.”
Veil of Nightby Linda Howard is a romantic suspense novel about a wedding planner and the murder of her bridezilla client.
Death on the D-Listby Nancy Grace is the second Hailey Dean thriller by bestselling author, attorney, and TV personality Grace.
City of Veils by Zoe Ferraris (Little, Brown), is the author’s second literary mystery, set in Saudi Arabia and featuring the desert guide Nayir Sharqi and forensic scientist Katya Hijazi. The starred Booklist review calls it “a suspenseful mystery and a sobering portrait of the lives of Muslim women. Recommend this potent thriller as book-club reading.” It was also a pick on the LA Times summer reading roundup and the August Indie Next list. Libraries are showing modest reserves on modest orders.
By all accounts, Stieg Larsson was a very private person, so there are few clues to what inspired his writing. This week, the UK paper, The Daily Mail published a piece about him with an attention-grabbing headline, “How a brutal rape and a lifelong burden of guilt fuelled Girl with the Dragon Tattoo writer Stieg Larsson” (it’s also on the Huffington Post today). The story is by Kurdo Baski, who has also written a bio of Larsson, due out this fall, from MacLehose Press, a division of the British publisher Quercus, also Larsson’s UK publisher.
UPDATE: Thanks to a comment from a reader, we’ve learned that this book will be published in the US as Stieg Larsson: Our Days in Stockholm, Pegasus (December 6, 2010) 978-1605981741; $25.
In addition, Knopf announced that it is releasing a new boxed set of the Millenium trilogy, which will also include a volume called On Stieg Larsson, with essays about the author as well as emails between him and his publisher, Eva Gedin. Priced at $99, it will be on sale the day after Thanksgiving.
On NPR’s Morning Edition yesterday, Nancy Pearl recommended several titles, sending all of them up the Amazon sales rankings.
Nancy brought a stack of books, but was only able to talk about four — the full list, with Nancy’s written commentary on each title, is at the NPR Web site, where you can also listen to the segment. Below are the titles she discussed on air, by Amazon sales rankings.
#163 from #40,504 yesterday
The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli — Nancy says two great Vietnam novels published this Spring; this one and Matterhornby Karl Marlantes (Atlantic Monthly Press, 3/23).
Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel — Nancy found a great way to avoid relying on plot when she described both this and the author’s new title, The Singer’s Gun; “Reading them is like looking through the viewfinder of a camera. At first, it’s a real tight closeup. As the pages turn, the viewfinder gets bigger and bigger until you see where all the characters belong and what their back stories are.”
By the way, if you are not familiar with the independent publisher of these titles, Unbridled Books, they are worth getting to know. They’ve just celebrated their fifth anniversary, focusing on quality fiction; quite an accomplishment in today’s climate.
Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay — Nancy says it’s one of her life’s missions is to make Guy Gavriel Kay a best seller in the U.S. (he already is in Canada). This is “historical fiction mixed with a little bit of fantasy, so, sadly, it ends up being categorized in fantasy where all those people who love historical fiction will not find it.”
This weekend, C-Span 2 ran a video of Nancy Pearl recommending summer books in the aisles at ALA (watch here).
Also on the site is Nancy’s ALA interview with Mary McDonagh Murphy, author of Scout, Atticus & Boo, which examines influence of Harper Lee’sTo Kill a Mockingbird. The video includes clips of interviews Murphy did for the book as well as from the movie (watch here). It’s worth watching, if only to hear Adriana Trigiani reading the part of Scout.
The Romance Writers of America named their RITA Awards, for best published romance novels and novellas and their Golden Heart Awards, for best manuscripts, this weekend. Harlequin nabbed the largest number, winning four of twelve RITA’s.
The winner in the hot paranormal category is Kiss of a Demon King by Kresley Cole, part of the best-selling Immortals After Dark series. Earlier this year, the creators of the web site Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, told NPR that the series is the best representative of the genre, “full of Norse mythology and the women are just incredibly empowered and fascinating characters.”
The association also gives a Librarian of the Year Award, to “a librarian who demonstrates outstanding support of romance authors and the romance genre.” This year’s winner is Jennifer Lohmann from Durham County Library, Durham, North Carolina.
This book has come up often on GalleyChat. Virginia Stanley, head of library marketing at HarperCollins, is a passionate advocate. I agree with her assessment that it’s “a wonderful portrait of a marriage.” Given its setting, a community of houses on pilings in the Biscayne Bay, it’s no surprise that thee Miami Herald is the first newspaper to review it, summing it up perfectly, “Daniel renders Frances and her family so authentically, their dynamics and quirks come to feel utterly familiar and endearing. Deceptively placid Stiltsville reminds us, like Frances, to appreciate the small but potent magic in everyday life.”
A favorite of Carol Fitzgerald at the BookReporter.com who said in her newsletter back in April that it reminds her of how much she enjoyed reading Herman Wouk’s Marjorie Morningstar. It’s about a man who, “spends his life trying to escape a past that he is not proud of as he infiltrates the most elite social circles. It takes place over four decades, and the story is rich and full of detail.”
The author supported herself as a shoe shine girl on Wall Street while beginning her novel.
I spent the weekend completely absorbed by this O, the Oprah Magazine and indie next pick. It’s told through the eyes of various family members during their 2007 Thanksgiving celebration in Connecticut, a great device for exploring the conflicts which lie beneath the slightly rippling surface. Adding suspense are chapters about two black teenagers from the Stamford projects, planning a break-in. The book raises issues about financial privilege, the treatment of war veterans, and feminism, making it ripe for book discussions. On the Today Show’s “Hot Summer Reads” segment in June, Justin Cronin called Vanderbes “one of our great underrated authors…she’ll have many new fans with this book.”
Richard Russo (Empire Falls, That Old Cape Magic), throws strong support behind The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay, by Beverly Jensen in Sunday’s NYTBR. Although it is technically a collection of stories, Russo says,
…thanks to its chronological sweep (from 1916 to 1987), its multiple settings (from New Brunswick — so vividly rendered that it becomes another character — to Boston to coastal Maine) and a good half-dozen of the richest fictional characters I’ve encountered anywhere, the book delivers the emotional rush of a novel, indeed of a great novel.
The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay was published to acclaim from many writers, from Stephen King to Joyce Carol Oates and Elizabeth Strout. Most of the prepub reviews, with the exception of PW, were strong (Kirkus starred it). Despite all that, the book, which came out the end of June, has had little consumer press attention, other than being selected as one of Six Books to Watch For in August in O, The Oprah Magazine.
The author, Beverly Jensen, died before any of her stories were published. She had resisted publishing them while she was alive because she wanted to spend her time writing. But after she died, her husband wrote in the Huffington Post, “It seemed too terrible that they would end up merely as family heirlooms, that her sisters and I would be telling some great-niece how talented her great-aunt Beverly had been and bringing out an old photocopy.”
Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story is now offcially a reviewers’ darling, with six reviews in local papers over the weekend, following last week’s blitz. All are positive, some over the top. Even those that express reservations insist that you must read the book. The common descriptors are “dark,” ”dystopian” and “Orwellian.”
The word “äppäräti” may soon become part of our vocabulary. In Super Sad, everyone has these devices for shopping and texting (which is the predominant form of communication; when people actually talk, it’s called “verballing”). These devices also broadcast personal information like credit and sexual desirability ratings, but not what the owner recently checked out of the library, since reading is considered repulsive (books “smell bad”).
The author gets more attention tonight, appearing on NPR’s Fresh Air.
Super Sad is now at #20 on Amazon sales rankings; expect to see it on next week’s print best seller lists.
Boston Globe, 8/1 –”In the novel’s greatest moments, [Shteyngart’s] habit for impersonation and knowing reduction culminate in transcendent writing.” but, “There’s a point at which [his] shtick is merely that, a hyperbolic demonstration of his own abilities as a critical impersonator of ethnicities, races, personalities, and their banalities.”
Dallas Morning News, 8/1 — “Although the future described in Super Sad True Love Storyis a bleak and superficial one, the book is grounded by its sensitive and funny portrayals of [the main characters] Lenny and Eunice’s immigrant parents. This insight into immigrants is the element that Shteyngart, who came to the United States with his parents from Leningrad when he was a boy, has brought to all three of his novels.”
Miami Hearld, 8/1 — “no one should doubt that Shteyngart is one of the most powerful voices of his generation.”
Phildelphia Inquirer, 8/31 — reviewed by Jane Smiley — “the great dark pleasure of Shteyngart’s novel is the world that his characters live in, inferred from the most dynamic and threatening parts of ours…As with all satirists, the mix of humorous and horrifying is idiosyncratic, and the reader may not respond as readily with laughter as with tears, or vice versa. My own reservation has to do not with the super sad part, but with the love story part.”
Seattle Times, 8/31 — “his wild, exuberant wit and deadly accurate satire have made the Russian émigré one of the most acclaimed, enjoyable — and unsettling — novelists working today.”
Mary Roach was the big hit of this year’s BEA Librarian “Shout & Share,” getting votes from all the librarians on the panel for her book Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void. She was also funny, enthralling and informative during a BEA author breakfast moderated by Jon Stewart (who was cracking up during most of her talk – watch it here). She was equally funny when she spoke to librarians at the AAP breakfast at PLA in March..
Word-of-mouth on the new book is good, but libraries we checked are well behind demand on this title.
Expect major media attention (no surprise, she will be on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Monday) for Roach’s look at some of the bizarre and uncomfortable realities facing future astronauts, as outlined in starred reviews from Library Journal (“While there are occasional somber passages, most of the descriptions of the many and varied annoyances of space travel are perversely entertaining.”) and Kirkus (“There is much good fun with – and a respectful amount of awe at – the often crazy ingenuity brought to the mundane matters of surviving in a place not meant for humans“).
The book trailer, already featured on BoingBoing, illustrates Booklist’s assessment that ”Roach brings intrepid curiosity, sauciness, and chutzpah to the often staid practice of popular science writing,” giving it YA crossover appeal
Though scheduled for release next week, Angelina: An Unauthorized Biography by Andrew Morton (St. Martin’s) was rushed to market this week because some the supposed revelations about the life and career of actress Angelina Jolie were leaking out.
USA Todaydissects Jolie’s epic love life, and adds that the Jolie-Pitt household’s legion staff includes “nannies from Vietnam, the Congo, and the U.S.; four nurses, a doctor on permanent call; two personal assistants; a cook; a maid; two cleaners; a busboy; four bodyguards, and six French former army guards.”
New York Times critic Janet Maslin chastizes Morton for not citing sources and for his many frivolous details (e.g. the type face of a particular Jolie tattoo never seen in public), while praising him (sort of) for connecting the biographical dots of Jolie’s life.
I Am Number Fourby Pitticus Lore (HarperCollins) is a YA novel about nine alien refugee teenages who land on Earth. Three are already dead, and number four is next. As we mentioned earlier, Entertainment Weekly has been running exclusives about this title, including an interview with the author, who claims to be “an extraterrestrial Elder from Lorien named Pittacus Lore.”
Artemis Fowl: The Atlantis Complex by Eoin Colfer (Hyperion); this will be the next-to-last entry in the best-selling middle-grade fantasy series, as Colfer revealed this week to the UK’s Guardian.
Notable Fiction on Sale Next Week
My Hollywood by Mona Simpson (Knopf) is her first novel since Off Keck Road (2000), narrated in alternate chapters by Claire, a composer whose marriage is strained by her husband’s late hours as a TV writer, and Lola, the Filipina nanny she hires. Entertainment Weekly gives it an “A-”: “Claire, privileged and damaged, floats along in a daze of unfulfillment, while the ever-practical Lola observes her L.A. milieu with a realist’s eye in imperfect yet oddly poetic English… A character as rich as Lola won’t easily fade from anyone’s mind.” There’s also an interview with Simpson in the New York Times.
I Curse the River of Timeby Per Petterson, translated by Charlotte Barslund (Graywolf Press), from the author of the surprise hit Out Stealing Horses, is the story of a Danish communist who faces divorce and a dying mother. Entertainment Weekly gives it a “B,” saying: “A times it’ll feel alien to readers who’ve never been young Communists… (The translation can also be quite a rickety bridge.) But there’s no denying the novel’s Raymond Carver-like power as Arvid and his mother come to terms with how life hands you hope just before it hands you disappointment and tragedy.”
Hangman by Faye Kellerman (Morrow) is the newest mystery novel with spouses Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus. Booklist says Kellerman fans will be reasonably satisfied, but “if you’re new to Kellerman…this is not the place to start. Kellerman works primarily in dialogue, with very sketchy narrative support, which requires readers unfamiliar with the backstory to act as their own detectives, figuring out what the heck is going on in each scene.”
Burn by Nevada Barr (Minotaur Books) is the 16th book with National Park Service ranger Anna Pigeon, though this time she is transplanted out of her element, to New Orleans. Booklist says, “Barr develops the narrative carefully, never letting the eerie black-magic elements overshadow her solid and suspenseful plotting. A definite winner.”
The Red Queenby Philippa Gregory (Touchstone) chronicles the War of the Roses through the perspective of Henry VII’s mother.
Scarlet Nights: An Edilean Novel by Jude Deveraux (Atria) follows a woman whose fiancé turns out to be a scheming criminal. Booklist says it’s ”another guilty-pleasure romance of suspense that will hook readers and leave them with a smile.”
In Harm’s Wayby Ridley Pearson (Putnam) is the fourth thriller with Idaho sheriff Walt Fleming. Booklist is not so impressed: “although this novel is sufficiently entertaining, it lacks both the taut plotting and intricate excitement of his best work.”
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