We're happy to announce our latest addition -- EarlyWord YA GalleyChat. Please join us the second Tuesday of every month at 4 p.m. Eastern (mark your calendars for Feb. 14. Yes, we heart YA) for a lively discussion of the new galleys grabbing readers' attention.
And, don't forget our adult GalleyChat, the first Tuesday of each month (info on how to join each,
here).
Let us know what is happening in your library. Email me with information on books that are getting an unexpected number of holds and the titles you enjoy recommending.
Rising to #10 on Amazon’s sales rankings after the author’s appearance at ALA Midwinter is Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain (RH/Crown; Random House Audio; OverDrive ebook and audio; Center Point Large Print). Many of the libraries we checked are showing heavy holds, as many as 9 to 1.
Rhe Midwinter appearance may not be the only factor. The book, which released yesterday, was featured in yesterday’s USA Today, along with an introvert/extrovert quiz and Fast Company‘s “Expert Blog” offers “3 Reasons Every Extrovert Should Read The New Book Quiet.”
Buzz is building for Where Good Ideas Come From by science writer Steven Johnson. The New York Times ran an early review in the Business section, praising Johnson’s storytelling ability in this exploration of innovative environments like the city and the Internet, and how a “series of shared properties and patterns… recur again and again in unusually fertile environments.”
At libraries we checked, current orders are in line with reserves, but this looks like one to watch, since Johnson was also a featured speaker at TED, the elite technology, entertainment and design conference, this summer. And his cool video trailer for the book appears to be going viral.
Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow gets a respectful review from critic Janet Maslin in the New York Times, who finds that this biography is justified by new material unearthed from Washington’s papers at the University of Virginia.
At 900-odd densely packed pages, Washington can be arid at times. But it’s also deeply rewarding as a whole…. [and] offers a fresh sense of what a groundbreaking role Washington played, not only in physically embodying his new nation’s leadership but also in interpreting how its newly articulated constitutional principles would be applied.
…makes excellent use of Washington’s own voice — the man’s angry letters are like thunderbolts — and turns constitutional debates and bureaucratic infighting into riveting reading.
A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson (Random House) is “a wonderfully meandering journey through history, sociology, science, and more. The thread that connects it all is Bryson’s. . . home, a charming former church rectory in a small English village,” according to bookseller Christopher Rose in the October Indie Next Pick citation. NPR’s Morning Edition will feature the book on October 5, followed by the New York Times Book Review on October 10. It is also the Amazon Spotlight Selection for the month of Oct.
Is It Just Me or Is It Nuts Out There? by Whoopi Goldberg (Hyperion) finds the actress and co-host of ABC’s The View sharing stories from her own life, when she’s been forced to deal with tough situations in family, marriage, friendship, and business.
Cesar’s Rules by Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier (Crown) is the bestselling dog trainer’s primer on establishing the rules of the house.
The Dog Who Couldn’t Stop Loving by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (Harper) considers the far-reaching consequences of the co-evolution of dogs and humans, drawing from recent scientific research.
You: Raising Your Child by Michael F. Roizen & Mehmet C. Oz (Free Press) explores the biology and psychology of raising a child from birth to school age.
Trickle Up Poverty by Michael Savage (Morrow) is the author and conservative talk show host’s attack on President Obama’s agenda and his political tactics.
I’m Not High: (But I’ve Got a Lot of Crazy Stories about Life as a Goat Boy, a Dad, and a Spiritual Warrior) by Jim Breuer (Gotham/Penguin) is a memoir by the comedian and Sirius radio show host best known as “Goat Boy” on Saturday Night Live. He was also featured on the ALTAFF Humor Panel at ALA Annual.
The Tenth Parallelby Eliza Griswoldwas a Shout n Share pick for several librarians at Book Expo. At libraries we checked, holds are modest, but this account of the authors’ travels along the line of latitude 700 miles above the equator, where tensions run high between Christians and Muslims, may be one to keep an eye on.
For starters, it got a starred review from Booklist: “Griswold teases out the threads of a complex fabric of religious doctrine, capitalist economics, ethnic pride, and power politics… A compelling portrait of embattled human communities yearning for more-than-human succor.”
Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto by Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe (Morrow) FreedomWorks chairman Armey and CEO Kibbe outline the agenda of the Tea Party movement, including tips on organizing. Sure to be featured on the Glenn Beck Show.
Encounter by Milan Kundera (Harper) is a series of essays arguing the importance of art in a world that devalues beauty. In its reverent review, the Los Angeles Timesobserves that “the artists and writers with whom Kundera keeps company…produce counter-currents to the tide of kitsch and sentimentality in which we swim. They offer not only intellectual challenges but strong emotional attachments, no matter how crazy powerful feelings may seem in a world warped by banality, easy irony and noise.”
The Power by Rhonda Byrne (Atria) a followup to the Oprah-anointed The Secret.
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.”
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.
…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.”
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.
Lately, I can’t stop talking about an adult galley I just read, Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things. Turns out I’m not the only fascinated by it. Last night, the authors, Randy Frost and Gail Steketee were featured on NPR’s Fresh Air. The book is now rising on Amazon and libraries are showing significant holds in libraries.
No wonder; it’s truly a compulsive read. Frost and Steketee write about people who collect stuff to the extent that it interferes with normal everyday living…no livable space due to piles and piles of things most people feel no need to collect, whole rooms filled, tunnels formed between dangerously tottering layers of clothing, books, newspapers and trash.
Frost and Steketee begin their examination of this psychological condition with by looking at one of the most well-known case, the Collyer brothers of New York who died trapped in their piles of junk (they were the protagonists in E.L. Doctorow’s novel Homer and Langely).
These are not dry case studies but rather an empathetic exploration of theories and observations of why a person might become a hoarder. The book helps us examine our own hoarding tendencies and the triggers that may cause it. In addition to working with the individuals who are suffering, the authors devote a chapter to the effect excessive collecting has on relationships, especially with hoarders’ children who must learn to survive living with a parent who cannot stop creating chaos in the home.
A new program for teachers and parents of toddlers with autism is producing encouraging results.
The NYT “Well” blog points to a report in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics that shows the Early Start Denver Model (E.S.D.M.) resulted in increased I.Q.’s.
The “Well” blog also interviews one of the co-authors of a new book describing the program. Libraries we checked have not ordered it.
We didn’t see this one coming; featured in the NYT Magazine this week is a $150 book, which quickly rose to #4 on Amazon, just three spots away from The Lost Symbol.
The book is Carl Jung’s record of his own hallucinations during a mental breakdown, which he chronicled in words and drawings in a red notebook. Although Jung believed that The Red Book was the source of all his works, he never published it and left no instructions regarding whether to do so after he died. For years, The Red Book was kept in a bank vault and very few people were allowed access to it. The NYT Magazine‘s story details how the book came to be scanned, translated and is about to be published.
Libraries we checked do not show it on order.
(the above spread comes from W.W. Norton’s catalog)
Rising to #10 on Amazon’s sales rankings after the author’s appearance at ALA Midwinter is Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain (RH/Crown; Random House Audio; OverDrive ebook and audio; Center Point Large Print). Many of the libraries we checked are showing heavy holds, as many as 9 to 1.
