We’ve just added Good Morning America’s Picks for Great Summer Reading and Parade Magazine’s Great Summer Reads to our “Books of Summer” links at the right.

In today’s NYT, Chip McGrath profiles debut thriller writer, Attica Locke, whose Black Water Rising has received strong review coverage.

Large libraries own it in modest quantities.

Black Water Rising: A Novel Attica Locke Retail Price: $25.99 Hardcover: 448 pages Publisher: Harper – (2009-06-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061735868 / 9780061735868

Also in audio:

• Publisher: HarperAudio; Unabridged edition (June 9, 2009): $39
• ISBN-10: 0061772097
• ISBN-13: 978-0061772092

And downloadable eBook from OverDrive.

My EarlyWord partner Fred Ciporen is an audiophile and a Barbara Rosenblat fanatic. I swear, the man sometimes choses to drive when it would make more sense to fly, just so he can listen to her.

So, I was pleased that not only has HighBridge Audio (this week’s sponsor), just released an audio version of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, but that Barbara Rosenblat is one of the two narrators. Give it a listen by clicking on the banner above; I think you’ll see why Fred is enamored.

It’s a timely release, since Newsweek just included The Elegance of the Hedgehog as one of the few newer titles on their What to Read. Right Now list. Even though the book was published in September, libraries are still showing long reserve lists.

A couple of weeks ago, we mentioned Homer’s Odyssey, a book about a blind cat and his effect on his owner, Gwen Cooper’s life.

Happily Jen Childs, from the wonderful library marketing team at Random House, is making galleys available for EarlyWord readers.

To enter to win a copy, just send an email to EarlyWord, with “I Want Homer” in the subject line, by 11:59 p.m, this Friday, July 3rd. Don’t forget to include your UPS shipping address (no P.O. box numbers), so Jen will know where to send your galley.

If you’re not one to leave things to chance and if you’re going to ALA, Random House will be giving away Homer galleys at their booth — #1834.

Homer’s Odyssey Gwen Cooper Retail Price: $20.00 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Delacorte Press – (2009-08-25) ISBN / EAN: 038534385X / 9780385343855

Here’s Homer in action:

Many of you may know that there is at least one blind library cat. It happens she also has a Greek name, Nyx. She doesn’t have a book, but she does have a Web site; Nyx the Library Cat. One of her human companions, Ann Chambers Theis runs the Web site Overbooked.

NYT daily reviewer Dwight Garner (who recently moved over from the NYT BR) today writes what will the second entry in the EarlyWord 2009 “Review That Most Makes You Want to Read the Book” award (including, not only the honor, but a HUGE prize, yet to be determined). The first entry was also by Garner.

In his review, Garner sums up Last Journey by Darrell Griffin this way,

…the most honest and gripping accounts of the Iraq war have come from low-ranking soldiers, not from generals. Last Journey joins that small shelf of serious books, thanks to a father with a native gift for the English language, one who gave his son the greatest gift a father can give: his avid and appreciative attention.

Libraries have ordered in small quantities. The PW review was largely positive, but said,

Darrell Sr. overquotes his son’s grandiose and not always cogent ideas about religion, philosophy and politics. But when the book sticks to Skip’s everyday impressions of the conflict, it presents a harrowing, unsanitized vision of the war and the toll it takes on our soldiers

Last Journey: A Father and Son in Wartime Darrell Griffin Sr., Darrell “Skip” Griffin Jr. Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Atlas – (2009-06-29) ISBN / EAN: 193463316X / 9781934633168

We’ve been writing about The Help for quite a while, so we were pleased to see it break in to the top ten on Amazon this week, almost five months after publication.

Several libraries are showing heavy holds. Given the book’s slow and steady climb, it looks like word of mouth is still building, so it may not be too late to order more copies.

Those of you going to ALA will have a chance to hear from author Kathryn Stockett, who will be at the ALTAFF Gala Author Tea (Monday, 2 to 4 p.m.) along with Lisa Scottoline, Jill McCorkle, Gillian Flynn and Jane Stanton Hitchcock.

The Help Kathryn Stockett Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 464 pages Publisher: Amy Einhorn Books – (2009-02-10) ISBN / EAN: 0399155341 / 9780399155345

Also on audio:

• Audio CD: $39.95, Unabridged
• Publisher: Penguin Audio;  (February 10, 2009)
• ISBN-10: 0143144189
• ISBN-13: 978-0143144182

Large Type:

And downloadable eBook and audio from OverDrive.

Amazon preorders have shot The Beckham Experiment, to #243 (from #13,878), likely because of an excerpt, titled “How Beckham Blew It,”  in the July 6th Sports Illustrated. According to author Grant Wahl, soccer star David Beckham’s move to the LA Galaxy team, which was supposed to bring new American fans to the sport, has been a “soccer fiasco.”

The book’s release, originally scheduled for October, has been moved up to July 14th. According to WorldCat, only Seattle & Gwinnett County, GA, have it on order.

The Beckham Experiment: How the World’s Most Famous Athlete Tried to Conquer America Grant Wahl Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Crown – (2009-07-14) ISBN / EAN: 030740787X / 9780307407870

It will also be downloadable from OverDrive beginning July 14.

You may have been reading about Alice Hoffman Twitter slapping a reviewer (she’s since apologized) for the Boston Globe review of Hoffman’s new book, Story Sisters. Salon puts the story in context; while authors generally try to “stay classy” about negative reviews, Hoffman is not the only author who has ever lashed out.

The great twist? As a reviewer Hoffman herself has been on the receiving end of author fury.

The Story Sisters Alice Hoffman Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Shaye Areheart Books – (2009-06-02) ISBN / EAN: 0307393860 / 9780307393869

Also available in audio from Books on Tape:

• Format: 9 CDs; Unabridged
• ISBN: 9781415963883
• Price: $100.00

And downloadable from OverDrive.

One of the few new books in Newsweek’s “What to Read Now. And Why.” is #23 on the list of 50, Colm Toíbín’s Brooklyn because it,

Captures the experience of homesickness and, in deceptively unadorned prose, builds to a heart-wrenching conclusion about the impossibility of getting everything you want.

Today’s issue of USA Today is almost lyrical about this story of a young Irish woman who moves to New York in 1952; it “creates the purest form of fiction, a small world that employs few references to the real world. It transcends time and place.”

The book has received a chorus of strong reviews in the  consumer press, including the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Some large libraries we checked are showing reserve ratios of 4 to 1 on modest ordering.

Brooklyn: A Novel Colm Toibin Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 272 pages Publisher: Scribner – (2009-05-05) ISBN / EAN: 1439138311 / 9781439138311

It is also available in unabridged audio from Blackstone:

• Tape; 1-4332-9187-6; $65.95
• MP3CD; 1-4332-9191-3;$29.95
• CD; 1-4332-9188-3; $100.00

And on Playaway; 1-4332-9194-4;$59.99

Today’s NYT Science section wades into the controversial world of archeology. “Scientist Tries to Connect Migration Dots of Ancient Southwest” explores the theories of Stephen Lekson, who believes the various Anasazi sites were not separate entities, but linked by migrations, despite their distances from each other.

Lekson’s new book, A History of the Ancient Southwest argues for this ‘big picture’ archaeology. Another scientist, who completely disagrees with Lekson’s ideas, still says,

Steve is possibly the best writer in Southwest archaeology…Our academic writing has this inherent gift of taking something interesting and making it dull and boring. And Steve doesn’t have that problem. He thinks outside the box, and the rest of us comb through his ideas.

Most libraries have not ordered the book.

History of the Ancient Southwest Stephen H. Lekson Retail Price: $39.95 Paperback: 452 pages Publisher: School for Advanced Research Press – (2009-06-15) ISBN / EAN: 1934691100 / 9781934691106

These days anyone who dares to complain about work adds “But at least I have a job.”

Yet, as evidenced by what we’re reading, Americans are not fulfilled by their work. Alain de Botton’s The Pleasure and Sorrows of Work has been widely reviewed and is on waiting lists in most libraries. Matthew Crawford’s Shop Class as Soul Class, which argues against the white-collar life and for working with your hands, is at #34 on Amazon.

It seems everywhere you turn, you find new books on chucking it all and raising goats (Brad Kessler’s Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese, Scribner, 6/23; featured on Salon today) or leaving a solid career to move as far away from what you know as possible (Waking Up in Eden: In Pursuit of an Impassioned Life on an Imperiled Island, Lucinda Fleeson, Algonquin, 6/16; I spent my weekend enchanted with this book), or staying put, but changing your life completely (Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, Novella Carpenter, Penguin, 6/11).

If you’re hearing echos of the ’60’s, you won’t be surprised to learn that a book called Yeah Dave’s Guide to Livin’ the Moment rose to #14 on Amazon over the weekend (it’s now at #42).

Author Dave Romanelli is co-founder of a Phoenix AZ yoga studio and teaches “Yoga+Chocolate” and “Yoga+Wine” courses. Of the book, PW said, “This lighthearted overview of awareness should provide seekers many ideas; accomplished yogis probably need not apply…”

Yeah Dave’s Guide to Livin’ the Moment: Getting to Ecstasy Through Wine, Chocolate and Your iPod Playlist David Romanelli Retail Price: $14.95 Paperback: 224 pages Publisher: Broadway – (2009-03-17) ISBN / EAN: 0767929489 / 9780767929486

Two glowing early reviews have rolled in for How Shall I Tell the Dog: And Other Final Musings, the memoir in letters by Miles Kington, one of Britain’s most popular newspaper columnists. It’s good to see that several libraries have ordered it since we mentioned it last week as a possible sleeper.

Publishers Weekly gives it a starred review, praising the book as “a witty, bittersweet slice of meta-nonfiction” about Kington’s struggle with pancreatic cancer, “or, more precisely, his struggle to write a book about it: ‘phrases like ‘cashing in on cancer’ give quite the wrong impression. What I mean is, ‘making cancer work for its living.’” 

The bookseller newsletter Shelf Awareness declares that Kington “effortlessly takes the reader from sadness to laughter” and relishes the part where Kington thinks  

he might make a good assassin, offering his services as his last useful act on earth: “People who look at my hangdog expression and my air of lingering malady would never dream that underneath it all simmers a potential killer.” And he’s after big game, too–Robert Mugabe or a”‘public nuisance’ like Jeffrey Archer or Victorla Beckham.”

How Shall I Tell the Dog?: And Other Final Musings Miles Kington Retail Price: $19.95 Hardcover: 208 pages Publisher: Newmarket Press – (2009-07-07) ISBN / EAN: 155704841X / 9781557048417

What’s that sound? Could it be tech reporters sharpening their nails, in anticipation of next month’s release of Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, billed as the true story of the founding of Facebook?  Mezrich, you’ll remember, is the author of the nonfiction bestseller Bringing Down the House, about MIT students who beat the odds in Las Vegas, who later conceded that he had fictionalized parts of that book. 

The New York Times Bits blog and Boston magazine both note that the stakes are higher for Mezrich in the new book — and not only because Mezrich will face stiff scrutiny from tech reporters and bloggers, who have already debunked some details in leaked copies of his original proposal for the book. Mezrich has also received a $1.2 million advance for the book and has made a film deal with West Wing creator Alan Sorkin. And let’s not forget that the Facebook founders could be litigious. In addition, the Bits blog says, Mezrich’s main source is not airtight: he had access only to Eduardo Saverin, who provided seed money to one of the site’s founders, Mark Zuckerberg, before Saverin was ousted from the Facebook team. 

Libraries are showing some reserves on the book. This could be one to watch, depending on how other reporters and Facebook respond to the book.

The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal Ben Mezrich Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 272 pages Publisher: Doubleday – (2009-07-14) ISBN / EAN: 0385529376 / 9780385529372

Available from Random House audio (July 7, 2009)

• CD; $35; 9780739383582

Much touted at Book Expo, Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Wired magazine founder Chris Anderson is now drawing a round of negative publicity less than two weeks before its July publication, stemming from accusations that Anderson lifted content from the Web without attribution. Though the book has been in the news for several days, preorder activity on Amazon is relatively mild: Free is currently at #4897. Libraries we checked show some reserves, with between 10 and 25 copies on order.

The charges against Anderson first emerged in a post by Waldo Jaquith on the Virginia Quarterly Review blog, and were seconded by Edward Champion, who posted examples of possible plagarism from other websites on his own blog. Anderson, in turn, responded to Jaquith’s claims on his blog, stating that the unattributed passages would be rewritten or credited to Wikipedia in all digital and future print editions of the book.

It remains to be seen if the controversy will overshadow the book itself, which PW gave a starred review, saying “Anderson provides a thorough overview of the history of pricing and commerce…As in [his] previous book, the thought-provoking material is matched by a delivery that is nothing short of scintillating.”

Amazon has also posted a video interview with Anderson from Book Expo, taped before the controversy erupted, in which Anderson explains how business models involving “free” giveaways have evolved between the 20th and 21st centuries.

Free: The Future of a Radical Price Chris Anderson Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Hyperion – (2009-07-07) ISBN / EAN: 1401322905 / 9781401322908

Libraries are showing substantial holds on 20 copies or less of Monica Ali’s In the Kitchen, but critics are ambivalent about her third novel, after Alentejo Blue and her popular debut Brick Lane, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. The new book focuses on the metal breakdown of the head chef in a fading London hotel with a multinational staff of immigrants and refugees that’s a metaphor for the cultural crisis of modern Britian.

The Wall St. Journal published a respectful profile of Ali yesterday that made the book sound enticing, but the newspaper’s review of her new book was more scalding:

Ms. Ali brings a lively intelligence to her work, and her account of Gabriel’s mental breakdown, set against shifting scenes of London, is vivid and well done. “In the Kitchen” is ambitious, but with its one-dimensional characterizations and laggardly pace—it’s too long at 436 pages—this novel is, ultimately, hard to digest.”

Time was a bit more generous in its brief mention of Ali’s novel in a piece on books about the restaurant world, declaring that Ali ”gets the kitchen just right: the crushing pace, the fistfights, the grills and griddles and salamanders, the guy who’s always walking around with a leek hanging out of his fly.”

The Cleveland Plain Dealer review balanced criticism of the “oddly-neutralizing, drama-killing” effect of watching the main character go bonkers with appreciation for the “tender, psychologically-charged” flashbacks of that character’s boyhood, which lingered with the reviewer “long after the big social issues were digested and forgotten.”

In the Kitchen: A Novel Monica Ali Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 448 pages Publisher: Scribner – (2009-06-16) ISBN / EAN: 141657168X / 9781416571681