Welcome to EarlyWord
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.
Keep on reading,
NoraNora Rawlinson Co-Founder and Editor
On the heels of the arrival of the latest in the Fancy Nancy series yesterday, comes the news that Tina Fey is in talks to join Shawn Levy in producing a live-action movie based on the series, for Fox.
Levy directed Fey in Date Night and directed the Night at the Museum movies.
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William J. Broad’s article, “How Yoga Can Wreck your Body,” published in the New York Times on Jan. 5 brought protests from the yoga community .
Broad appeared on Fresh Air yesterday to talk about his less sensationally-titled new book, The Science of Yoga, which looks at both the risks and rewards of the practice.
Libraries are showing heavy holds on modest orders.
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Broad emphasizes the advantages of yoga in the book’s trailer:
A very tall man sat on The View’s couch yesterday. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar appeared on the show to talk about his new book, What Color Is My World?: The Lost History of African-American Inventors (Candlewick, Jan 3).
The book is currently at#26 and rising on Amazon sales rankings.
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After the New York Post broke the embargo on Mimi Alford’s memoir about her 18-month long affair with JFK, Once Upon a Secret, news shows are busily promoting their upcoming interviews with the author. The women of The View discussed why they find the book so shocking (Barbara Walters calls it “particularly sleasy”); Alford will appear on that show on Thursday. The Today Show offered a “sneak peek” at Meredith Viera’s interview with the author, to be aired tomorrow on Rock Center with Brian Williams.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
The book rose to #17, and moving up, after 3 days in Amazon’s top 100.
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BOT Audio; ebook and audio on OverDrive
We often write about dramatic sales rises on Amazon, but this may be the biggest jump we’ve ever seen. World War II Remembered, a book of 56 recollections by “the greatest generation,” published by Kendal at Hanover, a retirement community in New Hampshire, rose over 6.6 million percent (to #6 from #396,999) because of a story on last night’s NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
The book, to be released tomorrow, is distributed through the University Press of New England. It is listed by wholesalers, but not yet in stock.
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Anyone remember when we were urged to call French fries “liberty fries”?
How quickly things change; now it seems everything French is superior. French women don’t get fat and they’re better parents, according to a new book, Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting (Penguin, Feb.7).
An article in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, “Why French Parents Are Superior” sent the book up to #11 on Amazon’s sales rankings (yes; the same publication that launched Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother with the similarly titled, “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior“).
Calling JFK a “horndog” for seducing a 19-year-old intern, the New York Post quotes at length from an embargoed memoir which will be published on Wednesday. The story says the Post obtained a copy from a Manhattan bookstore. The news propelled the book to #71 on Amazon sales rankings; libraries are showing 1:1 holds on moderate ordering.
The NYT wrote about the affair in 2009, when the book deal was signed. The author has not spoken publicly about the relationship since it was first revealed in 2003.
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BOT Audio; ebook and audio on OverDrive
We’ve said it before; we think the book about a Mumbai slum, Behind the Beautiful Forevers is going to the the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks of 2012 (meaning, a book about a subject that may not immediately sound appealing, but garners great press attention, is an instant best seller, hanging on for months, going on to do even better in trade paperback).
Entertainment Weekly has already predicted, “Beautiful Forevers will be one of the year’s big books — a conversation starter, an award winner” and calls it “a riveting, fearlessly reported portrait of a poverty so obliterating that it amounts to a slow-motion genocide.” Janet Maslin gave it a rave. Now the 2/13 issue of People gives it four stars and makes it the first People Pick of the year, calling it a “tough-minded, inspiring and irresistible book… Boo’s extraordinary achievement is two-fold. She shows us how people in the most desperate circumstances can find the resilience to hang on to their humanity. Just as importantly, she makes us care.”
In addition to the shows we have already listed that are planning to cover it, an appearance has been booked on Charlie Rose and the NYT Book Review has decided to put the it on the cover:
NPR / Morning Edition – taping 2/3 (air date: 2/6)
PBS/Charlie Rose – 2/7
NPR / Fresh Air – taping 2/6 (air date: 2/7)
New York Times – profile piece by Chip McGrath – 2/7 interview (on stands date tk)
New York Times Book Review – COVER REVIEW – 2/12
Library holds are growing. Several libraries have ordered more copies.
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BOT Audio; Thorndike Large Print; OverDrive
Book Expo announces the first speaker for the Book & Author events; Michael Chabon will be featured on Thursday, June 7 at the Book and Author Breakfast.
His next book is Telegraph Avenue (HarperCollins, 9780061493348, on sale 9/11/12).
More author announcements will be coming soon.
Yesterday’s rave from reviewer Janet Maslin in the New York Times, helped to boost Katherine Boo’s book about a slum in Mumbai Behind the Beautiful Forevers into the top 100 on Amazon sales rankings. Libraries are beginning to show heavy holds on modest ordering (most libraries have bought one copy for their largest branches; holds are as high as 12:1)
Holds are likely to grow; both NPR’s Fresh Air and Morning Edition are scheduled to feature it next week, the author will be profiled by Chip McGrath in the NYT and it is scheduled for review in the NYT Book Review. It is also tops O Magazine‘s ”17 Books to Watch for in February.”
Our crystal ball? It will be this year’s Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
In addition to the audio and large type editions of the book, there is an enhanced ebook version (included the WSJ‘s guide to the best forthcoming enhanced books) which features videos of daily life shot by some of the slum children using the author’s camera.
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BOT Audio; Thorndike Large Print; OverDrive ebook and audio
Hilma Wolitzer’s new novel got a strong review from Fresh Air‘s Maureen Corrigan yesterday, calling it a “droll novel of manners” (the publisher compares it to the word-of-mouth success, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand). As a result, the book up to #381 (from #1,251) on Amazon sales rankings. Several libraries are showing holds as high as 10 to 1.
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AudioGo; ebook and audio on OverDrive
One of our New Title Radar “Watch Titles” for this week, The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey, just received an influential endorsement; the Costco book buyer, Pennie Clark Ianniciello, features the debut novel as her pick in the February newsletter, saying the author has “found a lovely balance between the harsh reality of life in 1920s Alaska and the lush dreaminess of a fairy tale.”
It also received a bookseller endorsement in the UK. It is one of bookstore chain Waterstones’ annual pick of forthcoming debut titles expected to win literary prizes and large sales. According to the Guardian, the most talked-about book on that list is Chad Harbach’s Art of Fielding, which was just released in the UK, despite concern that British readers will have difficulty with the book’s baseball references.
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Rising on Amazon’s sales rankings (now at #30) as a result of a story in the “Fashion and Style” section of Sunday’s New York Times is a book by a man who reportedly ran, “a type of prostitution ring for gay and bisexual men in the film industry, including A-listers like Cary Grant, George Cukor and Rock Hudson, and even arranged sexual liaisons for actresses like Vivien Leigh and Katharine Hepburn.” Now 88 years old, Scotty Bowers is about to release his “ribald memoir,” Full Service.
Turned down by most of the large NY publishers, it is being published by Grove Press, which has a history of publishing books others wouldn’t (fifty years ago, Grove’s published Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, as noted in a review of a book about Miller in Sunday’s NYT Book Review).
Full Service was not reviewed pre-pub and just a handful of libraries own it.
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YA author John Green, currently in the midst of a 17-city book tour, was featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, talking about his new book, The Fault in Our Stars (Dutton; Brilliance Audio), which debuted at #1 on the NYT children’s chapter books best seller list in its first week on sale.
If you’ve heard Green speak, or watched his frenetic vlog, you’ll wonder who suggested that he slow down for NPR.
During his tour, he appeared at ALA Midwinter and at the Dallas Public Library, as part of a fundraiser for the Freedom to Read Foundation, saying controversial things like people should pay taxes, teachers should be allowed to teach and librarians to select books.
Roger Rosenblatt appeared on PBS NewsHour last night to talk about his new book, Kayak Morning, (HarperCollins/Ecco, trade pbk original, Jan 3), the follow-up to his moving memoir, Making Toast, about picking up the pieces after his daughter’s sudden death at 38.
Watch Conversation: Roger Rosenblatt’s ‘Kayak Morning’ on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.
