Archive for the ‘Memoirs’ Category

DENIAL in Washington Post

Monday, August 16th, 2010

Jessica Stern is an expert on terror, not only because she’s studied it, but because she’s lived it. When she and her sister were children, a man broke into their home and raped both of them at gun point. She now teaches at the Kennedy School at Harvard and has written two respected books on terrorism.

But her new book, Denial, is much more personal; in it, she explores how her own experience has affected her life. In the Washington Post, Marie Arana calls it an “incandescently honest book” and “a powerfully constructed memoir.”

Denial: A Memoir of Terror
Jessica Stern
Retail Price: $24.99
Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Ecco – (2010-07-01)
ISBN / EAN: 0061626651 / 9780061626654

Adobe EPUB eBook from OverDrive

Rosanne Cash on GMA

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

Rosanne Cash talked to George Stephanopoulos about how difficult it was to write her memoir, Composed,  She also appears today on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show.

The NYT reviewed it this week, saying that, although the book lacks “narrative tension,” it tells some great stories.

…………………………

Composed: A Memoir
Rosanne Cash
Retail Price: $26.95
Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Viking Adult – (2010-08-10)
ISBN / EAN: 0670021962 / 9780670021963

Large Print; Thorndike;  $32.99
ISBN 13: 9781410431905
ISBN 10: 1410431908
Published/Released: November 2010

Cash and Caldwell Memoirs Rising

Friday, August 6th, 2010

Two women’s memoirs are likely to get significant media attention next week.

Rosanne Cash’s Composed, about her music career and life as Johnny Cash’s daughter, is already getting admiring attention, though holds are modest on light ordering at libraries we checked.

The Los Angeles Times calls it “one of the best accounts of an American life you’ll likely ever read. Yes, Cash comes from a well-known family and makes her living in the entertainment business, but ‘Composed’ is really about her spiritual growth as a daughter, a sister, a mother, a lover, a wife and an artist.”

New York Magazine profiles Cash and O, the Oprah Magazine selects it as one of 10 Books to Pick Up in August 2010.

Composed: A Memoir
Rosanne Cash
Retail Price: $26.95
Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Viking Adult – (2010-08-10)
ISBN / EAN: 0670021962 / 9780670021963

———————–

Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell is the Boston Globe book critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist’s account of her deep friendship with writer Caroline Knapp. Like Caldwell, Knapp was single by choice, dedicated to her writing and recovering from alcoholism, before she died of cancer in 2002.

Laura Miller in Salon calls it

…a slender and beautiful book… [Caldwell] never stoops to tear-jerking or sentiment. Which is not to say she won’t make you cry. It might be something as simple as her first-page description of love’s tempo that does it: “For years,” she writes, “we had played the easy daily game of catch that intimate connection implies. One ball, two gloves, equal joy in the throw and return.”

It was also a LA Times summer reading pick, and the #3 Indie Next pick for August .

Let’s Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship
Gail Caldwell
Retail Price: $23.00
Hardcover: 208 pages
Publisher: Random House – (2010-08-10)
ISBN / EAN: 1400067383 / 9781400067381

Other Notable Nonfiction On Sale Next Week

Hollywood: A Third Memoir by Larry McMurtry (Simon & Schuster) is a new series of reminiscences from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and screenwriter. Booklist says the chapters are “disconnected,” and “his descriptions are not always charitable, but they are consistently sharp, interesting, and enjoyable.”

Where There Is Love, There Is God: A Path to Closer Union with God and Greater Love for Others by Mother Teresa (Doubleday) offers more wisdom from Mother Teresa culled from private lessons she gave to fellow nuns.

The Murder Room: The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes Gather to Solve the World’s Most Perplexing Cold Cases by Michael Capuzzo (Gotham) is about the Vidocq Society, a real-life crime-solving group.  USA Today has a Q&A with the author. This one’s also an August Indie Next pick.

Taking THE LONG WAY HOME

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

I have a problem with Gail Caldwell’s wonderful memoir, Let’s Take The Long Way Home, coming next week. I love it, but how do you recommend a book about a friendship that ends with one of the friends dying (as well as the author’s beloved dog)?

Laura Miller at Salon has found the key;

The losing isn’t the exceptional part of this story; everyone loses something, sooner or later. The wonder lies in finding it in the first place.

Let’s Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship
Gail Caldwell
Retail Price: $23.00
Hardcover: 208 pages
Publisher: Random House – (2010-08-10)
ISBN / EAN: 1400067383 / 9781400067381

Tantor Audio; UNABR; Read by Joyce Bean; Simultaneous

Trade 9781400115600 6 Audio CDs $29.99
Library 9781400145607 6 Audio CDs $59.99
MP3 9781400165605 1 MP3-CD $19.99

THE LONG WAY HOME

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

I’ve been trying to figure out how to talk about Gail Caldwell’s wonderful memoir, Let’s Take the Long Way Home, about her friendship with Caroline Knapp (author of Drinking: A Love Story), coming in August. How do you recommend a book in which the author’s two best friends, one human and the other canine, both die?

Perhaps the best way is to simply read from it, as Caldwell does here (via Shelf Awareness):

.


————————–

Let’s Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship
Gail Caldwell
Retail Price: $23.00
Hardcover: 208 pages
Publisher: Random House – (2010-08-10)
ISBN / EAN: 1400067383 / 9781400067381

Tantor Audio; UNABR; Read by Joyce Bean; Simultaneous

Trade 9781400115600 6 Audio CDs $29.99
Library 9781400145607 6 Audio CDs $59.99
MP3 9781400165605 1 MP3-CD $19.99

ADDICT on the Today Show

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man has received an enviable amount of press, but it took an appearance on the Today Show yesterday to move the sales needle on Amazon (to #84 from #446 yesterday).

Some libraries show growing holds.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

——————

Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man: A Memoir
Bill Clegg
Retail Price: $23.99
Hardcover: 240 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2010-06-07)
ISBN / EAN: 0316054674 / 9780316054676

New Chapter Equals Best Seller

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

When Elizabeth Edward’s book Resilience came out last year, she still believed that her husband’s affair with Rielle Hunter had been a one-night stand. Of course, she later learned that was not true in a very public way, when news broke that John Edwards is the father of Hunter’s baby.

The paperback version of Resilience was released on Tuesday; it contains a new chapter, in which Edwards writes about her reaction to the news.

She is also making the rounds of the media to talk about the chapter; she’s interviewed in the new issue of People, on newsstands tomorrow, on the Today Show yesterday and on Larry King Live last night.

The book is currently at #34 on Amazon sales rankings. Most libraries are not showing the paperback edition on their catalogs.

In the Today Show interview, Matt Lauer asked her about two books that became best sellers, both of which detailed the affair and were critical of her; The Politician by Edwards’s aide Andrew Young and Game Change by journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin.

She says that The Politician is “full of lies,” but that Game Change concerned her more because it quoted people close to the campaign. She says it was “useful” to see how she was perceived; that she made the mistake of forgetting that her words carried extra weight because she was married to the candidate.

She says she still feels she married a “marvelous man” but that he changed.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

——–

————

Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life’s Adversities
Elizabeth Edwards
Retail Price: $15.00
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Broadway – (2010-06-29)
ISBN / EAN: 0767931564 / 9780767931564

G.W. Bush Memoir To Be “Strikingly Candid”

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

George Bush’s memoir Decision Points isn’t coming out until November and the drums are already beating.

(Note: despite the date shown below, the following is from yesterday’s Today Show)

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

—————-


Decision Points
George W. Bush
Retail Price: $35.00
Hardcover: 400 pages
Publisher: Crown – (2010-11-09)
ISBN / EAN: 0307590615 / 9780307590619

Large Print; Trade Pbk; Random House; 9780739377826; $35
Audio; ABR; 9780307748645; $35

A Warning About Celebrity Memoirs

Monday, May 24th, 2010

It was heavily reported last week that Demi Moore is shopping a memoir.

The following should be required viewing for all potential buyers (short ad in the beginning):


Watch CBS News Videos Online

New Memoirs

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

USA Today rounds up new memoirs, giving the nod to the following three:

Slow Love: How I Lost My Job, Put On My Pajamas & Found Happiness
Dominique Browning
Retail Price: $23.00
Hardcover: 250 pages
Publisher: Atlas – (2010-05-09)
ISBN / EAN: 1934633313 / 9781934633311

Sample chapter here, which opens with a great bit about what it was like to work at the famed Conde Nast.

—————————

One More Theory About Happiness: A Memoir
Paul Guest
Retail Price: $21.99
Hardcover: 208 pages
Publisher: Ecco – (2010-05-01)
ISBN / EAN: 0061685178 / 9780061685170

Adobe EPUB eBook downloadable from OverDrive

—————————

Losing My Cool: How a Father’s Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-hop Culture
Thomas Chatterton Williams
Retail Price: $24.95
Hardcover: 240 pages
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The – (2010-04-29)
ISBN / EAN: 159420263X / 9781594202636

Seeking Manna

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

When William Alexander first tasted a really good loaf of bread, he describes the experience as an eye-opener,

…the first bite into the crust, which managed to be both crispy and chewy at the same time and had a natural sweetness from the sugars that had developed during baking. And the crumb, which is the word that bakeries use to describe the interior of the bread, the crumb had some bite back when you bit into it.

Most of us would just make a note to return to the restaurant that served such heavenly bread. But the author of The $64 Tomato, subtitled, “How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden,” decided he had to learn to reproduce that achievement at home.

He documents his quest in the book 52 Loaves. Today’s Boston Globe says, “Alexander’s breathless, witty memoir is a joy to read.” The author appeared on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday earlier this month (listen here).

Several libraries are showing more than ten holds per copy, on light ordering.

52 Loaves: One Man’s Relentless Pursuit of Truth, Meaning, and a Perfect Crust
William Alexander
Retail Price: $23.95
Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Algonquin Books – (2010-05-04)
ISBN / EAN: 1565125835 / 9781565125834

On OPRAH Today

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

Lisa Ling, who is a contributor to the Oprah Show, appears today with a very personal story; the rescue of her sister from a Korean prison.

The sisters will also appear  tomorrow on the Today Show and NPR’s Fresh Air.

Somewhere Inside: One Sister’s Captivity in North Korea and the Other’s Fight to Bring Her Home
Laura Ling, Lisa Ling
Retail Price: $26.99
Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: William Morrow – (2010-05-18)
ISBN / EAN: 0062000675 / 9780062000675

Adobe EPUB eBook available from OverDrive.

Ling was imprisoned with fellow journalist Euna Lee, who has also written a memoir, which releases this fall.

The World Is Bigger Now: An American Journalist’s Rescue from Captivity in North Korea . . . A Remarkable Story of Faith, Family, and Forgiveness
Euna Lee, Lisa Dickey
Retail Price: $25.00
Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Broadway – (2010-09-28)
ISBN / EAN: 0307716139 / 9780307716132

Random House Audio; UNABR; 9780307749932; $35

Women’s Memoirs to Watch

Friday, May 14th, 2010

Two notable women’s memoirs go on sale next week – both with modest holds in libraries we checked, though that’s likely to change as the media weighs in.

Somewhere Inside: One Sister’s Captivity in North Korea and the Other’s Fight to Bring Her Home by Lisa Ling Morrow is a reporter’s account of her 2009 capture and five month imprisonment in North Korea, after filming a documentary about women who defected from North Korea to China and were later forced into arranged marriages or sex slavery.

In a starred review, Booklist calls the memoir ”a riveting story of captivity and the enduring faith, determination, and love of two sisters.”

The authors will be on Oprah on May 18th, and on the Today Show as well as CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 on May 19th. For more details, see EarlyWord’s Harper Buzz titlle page.

Somewhere Inside: One Sister’s Captivity in North Korea and the Other’s Fight to Bring Her Home
Laura Ling, Lisa Ling
Retail Price: $26.99
Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: William Morrow – (2010-06-01)
ISBN / EAN: 0062000675 / 9780062000675

———————————–

Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations by Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the author’s third memoir of her escape from an arranged marriage in Somalia to Holland, and most recently of building a new life in America.

PW was not impressed:

…many personal stories are repeated from her earlier accounts… Her wholesale condemnation of an entire religion and the multiple cultures it has engendered is so sweeping and comprehensive, and her faith in Western values (particularly her romantic view of Christianity) is so wide-eyed, that the book ultimately reads like a callow exercise in expressing the author’s own sense of aggrievement.

Hirsi Ali recently contributed an op-ed to the Wall St. Journal about a fatwa against the creators of the comedy show South Park for their portrayal of the prophet Muhammad.


Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Retail Price: $27.00
Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Free Press – (2010-05-18)
ISBN / EAN: 1439157316 / 9781439157312

LOST GIRLS

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

USA Today features a new book about three Manhattan friends who chucked everything to travel the world in an effort find themselves, and they did it before reading Eat, Pray, Love.


-

The Lost Girls: Three Friends. Four Continents. One Unconventional Detour Around the World.
Jennifer Baggett, Holly C. Corbett, Amanda Pressner
Retail Price: $24.99
Hardcover: 560 pages
Publisher: Harper – (2010-05-01)
ISBN / EAN: 0061689068 / 9780061689062

Adobe EPUB eBook avilable from OverDrive.

On the Rise

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

Continuing to climb on Amazon’s sales rankings, after the author’s appearance on The View yesterday, CBS Sunday Morning (see below) and on Oprah last week, is The Other Wes Moore, now at #80.


Watch CBS News Videos Online

The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates
Wes Moore
Retail Price: $25.00
Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau – (2010-04-27)
ISBN / EAN: 0385528191 / 9780385528191

Random House Audio; UNABR; 9780307877130; $35
Adobe EPUB eBook and WMA Audiobook from OverDrive