EarlyWord is the home of GalleyChat, monthly online discussions where library staff share excitement about upcoming books. More information here.
Summaries of chats and announcements are posted to the right. Use them to add to your own TBR piles and for collection development.
Links on the far right of the site offer information useful to readers advisors.
Hope to see you during our next chat,
GalleyChatters
On NPR’s Morning Edition, Nancy Pearl mentioned Jim Malusa’s Into Thick Air and the graphic novel, Berlin: City Of Stones sending them both up Amazon’s sales rankings.
All the books she discussed (follow this link to listen to the show) are featured in her new book, Book Lust To Go: Recommended Reading for Travelers, Vagabonds, and Dreamers.
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Jennifer Donnelly, whose sophisticated young adult novel A Northern Light won a Printz honor back in 2002/2003, returns with Revolution, which has been getting good trade reviews. It’s a teen drama about a high school senior grieving over her younger brother’s murder and her mother’s subsequent breakdown, who becomes obsessed with a diary written by a young woman during the French Revolution while on Christmas break in Paris with her father and his pregnant 25 year-old wife.
Orders are in line with reserves at libraries we checked, but this one may get more media attention, and word among early readers is that it has crossover appeal to adults.
Booklist is enthusiastic:
The ambitious story, narrated in Andi’s grief-soaked, sardonic voice, will wholly capture patient readers with its sharply articulated, raw emotions and insights into science and art; ambition and love; history’s ever-present influence; and music’s immediate, astonishing power: It gets inside of you . . . and changes the beat of your heart.
And more than 75 reviewers on GoodReads give it 4.08 out of 5 stars.
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Other Notable Young Adult and Children’s Fiction
The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan (Hyperion) begins a new series set in the same universe as his bestselling Percy Jackson and the Olympians series.
Beautiful Darkness by Margaret Stohl and Kami Garcia is the followup to the bestselling young adult vampire novel Beautiful Creatures, which was one of Amazon’s Top 10 picks for 2009.
Fancy Nancy and the Fabulous Fashion Boutique by Jane O’Connor and Robin Preiss Glasser (HarperCollins) is a picture book for young readers.
Usual Adult Suspects:
Our Kind of Traitor by John Le Carre (Viking) gets the thumbs up from Kirkus: “Le Carre uses still another aspect of international relations in the new world order—the powerful, equivocal position of money launderers to the Russian mob—to put a new spin on a favorite theme: the betrayal that inevitably follows from sharply divided loyalties.”
American Assassin (Mitch Rapp Series #11) by Vince Flynn (S&S) introduces the young Mitch Rapp, as he takes on his first assignment.
Forbidden Places by Penny Vincenzi (Overlook) is a sprawling saga set in the WWII-era English countryside and revolves around the ordeals of three young women. Booklist says “Vincenzi does an admirable job of evoking the bustle and fears of wartime England, and providing plenty of juicy plot twists and turns to keep readers hooked.”
Many libraries have The Twilight Saga: The Official Guide by Stephenie Meyer on their catalogs, with a pub date of 2008 and a note that the publication is delayed.
Now comes a breathless “exclusive” from Entertainment Weekly‘s book blog, ShelfLife that The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide (note the addition of the word “Illustrated” in the title), written by Meyer will be published on April 11, 2011. The story, making no reference to the earlier book, says the new one will include “character profiles, outtakes, a conversation with Meyer, genealogical charts, maps, extensive cross-references, and much more.” It will be illustrated by Young Kim, illustrator of Twilight: The Graphic Novel, Volume 1.
The ISBN from the previously announced title has been reassigned to the new one.
More déjà vu; there are also two Twilight Saga Official Illustrated Movie Companions by Mark Cotta Vaz.
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We love that O’Reilly Media, known for it’s geeky-but-in-a-cool-way tech books and conferences, has published a cookbook, aptly titled Cooking for Geeks, by Jeff Potter. The current issue of USA Today says, “it’s interesting enough for the experienced sous-chef but covers the basics (scrambled eggs = a surprising foray into protein entanglement) for the truly cooking-impaired” and details Potter’s rather frightening efforts to hack his oven so it would be hot enough to produce a great thin crust pizza.
Cooking for Geeks is also on O’Reilly’s on-demand digital library, Safari Books Online.
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Been getting sudden requests for Flaubert’s classic work? Perhaps they were prompted by Playboy‘s excerpt of the new translation of what they call “Most Scandalous Novel of All Time,” or by Kathryn Harrison’s rave review by in the New York Times BR (under the headline, “Desperate Housewife“).
Most likely, however, they’re coming from Maureen Corrigan’s review on NPR’s Fresh Air last night (sorry, Playboy), which sent the book to its highest ranking to date on Amazon (#140).
The new translation is by Lydia Davis, who won acclaim for her translation of Marcel Proust’s Swanns Way seven years ago. She is also a short story writer; her Collected Stories appeared on several best books lists last year.
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Diana Kennedy, who at 87 is still “on the hunt for the perfect tamale,” has done for Mexican cooking what Julia Child did for French cuisine; celebrated it and made it accessible to home cooks.
She is interviewed on NPR’s Morning Edition about her new book which focuses on Oaxaca, “the culinary hot spot of Mexico.”
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The clip being that’s all over the Web today is Jon Stewart’s show intro last night, a send up of Rick Sanchez, who was fired over the weekend by CNN for calling Stewart a bigot during a radio interview.
At least a few people stuck around to hear Stewart interview the man he calls a “professional atheist,” Sam Harris, author of The Moral Landscape. The book rose to #12 on Amazon (from #53).
The book is also featured on The Book Beast and reviewed in the Wall Street Journal.
The Harris interview is the hottest segment of the show (“anyone in this room could improve the ten commandments in five seconds”), but if you really want to see Stewart on Sanchez, link here.
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S&S Audio; UNABR; Read by the Author
What are the odds? While being mugged, you suddenly recognize the knife-wielding attacker as one of your former library patrons.
The odds are greater if you are a prison librarian, as Avi Steinberg recounts in his memoir, Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian, excerpted in this week‘s NYT Magazine.
Steinberg, who worked in a Boston prison, says that inmates’ reading tastes, unsurprisingly, run towards true crime. Coincidentally, the AP backs up that observation today; “Connecticut Prison Inmates Reading True Crime And Other Violent Books.” The article quotes State Sen. John Kissel, R-Enfield, who says he will ask that In Cold Blood and “other true crime or graphically violent books be removed from prison libraries. If the department does not remove the books…he will introduce legislation to force them.”
The American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut said it would oppose any such ban.
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One of our favorite books of the season, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, by Tom Franklin, was featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday (listen here). The book is described as “part crime drama, part coming-of-age story and part portrait of a small town largely left behind by the 21st century.”
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Isabel Wilkerson’s book about the migration of African-Americans to the North from 1915 to 1970 was in the media spotlight early last month, including a cover review in the NYT BR to an A from Entertainment Weekly. Few books get a second round, but The Warmth of Other Suns is receiving even more attention this month.
The Warmth of Other Suns sheds light on America’s Great Migration — USA Today, 10/3
The Great Migration: Journey That Reshaped America — NPR, All Things Considered, 10/2
Isabel Wilkerson on Black America’s Immigration Story — Time, 10/2
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The Social Network, the movie about the founding of Facebook, led the box office this weekend, as expected. The tie-in edition of the book it was based on, Accidental Billionaires, also rose on Amazon sales rankings. Another recent title about the company, The Facebook Effect, also received a boost.
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Even though Let Me In was considered a box office disappointment, it gave the Swedish horror novel, published in hardcover in the US in 2007, a boost to its highest point yet on Amazon sales rankings.
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And, despite being in theaters for over seven weeks, the highest-ranking tie-in is still Eat, Pray, Love. It received another boost this weekend; but not as high as it’s opening weekend, when it rose to #2.
Books Related to Movies Moving Up Amazon Sales Rankings, 10/1 to 10/3
#46 Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (Penguin tie-in, 6/29/10)
#131 The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal by Ben Mezrich (Anchor tie-in, 9/28/10)
#252 Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, (tie-in, Vintage tie-in, 8/31/10)
#230 Guardians of Ga’hoole by Kathryn Lasky, (boxed set, Scholastic, 10/1/06)
#343 Let Me In by John Ajvide Lindqvist (St. Martin’s Griffin, tie-in, 08/3110)
#364 The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World by David Kirkpatrick, (S & S 6/8/10)
Already on the cover of Time magazine, Origins arrives on the cover of the new New York Times Book Review(with a somewhat less eye-catching cover).
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In fiction, Abraham Verghese (Cutting for Stone) is enthusiastic about Salvation City by
Sigrid Nunez (Riverhead Books). Ken Follett’s Fall of Giants is deemed “masterly,” even though, Follett “…is no Tolstoy, but he is a tireless storyteller, and although his tale has flaws, it’s grippingly told, and readable to the end.”
This just in from Cuyahoga P.L; they are planning on to ramp up their order for Brock Clarke’s Exley, based on the word of mouth from CCPL staff who have read the ARC.
Recent consumer reviews have focused on the book’s “hall of mirrors” construction, making it sound like a post-modern novel that could put off general readers, but Collection Development Manager Wendy Bartlett says that readers are taken with the 9-year-old protagonist. “People seem to like young narrators, as witnessed by the popularity of Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, and Room.” She notes, however that “a precocious narrator (as opposed to an innocent one) can be risky.” Indeed both Janet Maslin in the NYT and Wendy Smith in the Washington Post found the narrator too precocious for belief, but Cuyahoga’s readers don’t agree and love the book for being “quirky, imaginative and thought provoking.”
We’d love to know what titles you are ramping up, based on word of mouth. You can comment below, or drop us an email.
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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.
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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.
Entertainment Weekly gives the book an “A-,” adding that Chernow
…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.
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Notable Nonfiction on Sale Next Week
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.
We’re excited to see good press coming for a book we’ve fallen in love with, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin. Washington Post critic Ron Charles greets it with a rave review:
A smart, thoughtful novel that sinks deep into a Southern hamlet of the American psyche… I was reminded of another fine novel about the poisoned friendship between a white boy and a black boy called Prince Edward, by Dennis McFarland, but Franklin’s tale has those Southern Gothic shadows that make it darker and more unnerving.
It is also the #1 Indie Next Pick for October, and goes on sale next week. Libraries we checked have modest holds on modest orders, but other media is likely to take notice, so this is worth keeping an eye on – and reading!
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Other Indie Next Picks
A Lily of the Field by John Lawton (Atlantic Monthly), the fifth Inspector Troy novel, is an Indie Next Pick for October. Utah bookseller Betsy Burton calls it “Lawton’s latest (and perhaps best) thriller…The mystery that lies at the heart of this convoluted tale centers on the two musicians, Meret and Victor, both uprooted, and adrift in a world changed utterly by war and by science.”
The False Friend by Myla Goldberg (Doubleday) is the tale of a woman who tries the right her childhood misdemeanors. It gets a lukewarm review from PW: “Goldberg’s unremarkable latest [is] a neatly constructed if hollow story of memory and deception.” But it is also an Indie Next Pick for October, which Oregon bookseller Helen Sinoradzki praises for the way each character “pushes Celia to acknowledge truths she’d rather not know. The ending, in all its perfect brevity, will keep you awake, hoping that Celia can go back to her life.”
Great House by Nicole Krauss (Norton) comes with much anticipation. The author’s previous novel was the 2005 hit, The History of Love, which spent nearly a year on the IndieBound Top Ten list in paperback. Krauss was recently chosen as one of the New Yorker‘s 20 under 40 best young writers. Writing about it for Indie Next, Ridgefield, CT bookseller Ellen Burns says, “The best books haunt and sometimes confuse you. They will make you think, feel, wonder, go back to earlier chapters, and finally, fully experience the story being told. Nicole Krauss’s new book does just that.” Entertainment Weekly agrees that the book is confusing, but doesn’t find that such a good thing, giving it just a B-. Amazon also selects it as one of their Best Books for Oct.
Usual Suspects
Reversal by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown) features characters from two series: LAPD Detective Harry Bosch and maverick lawyer Mickey Haller. In a starred review, Booklist declared, “Reading this book is like watching a master craftsman, slowly and carefully, brick by brick, build something that holds together exquisitely, form and function in perfect alignment.”
Painted Ladies by Robert B. Parker (Putnam) is the 37th Spenser novel, posthumously published. Booklist says, “Spenser can still nail a person’s foibles on first meeting, still whip up a gourmet meal in a few minutes, still dispatch the thugs who haunt his office and his home, and do it all while maintaining a fierce love of Susan Silverman and English poetry (which he quotes frequently and always to good effect).”
Promise Me by Richard Paul Evans (S&S) is a Christmas story that combines Evans’s usual holiday themes “with a bizarre twist lifted straight from science fiction,” says Booklist. “Readers will undoubtedly feel attached to Beth, even as they struggle to understand the bizarre relationship she finds herself entering into.”
Valcourt Heiress by Catherine Coulter (Putnam) is a historical romance set in medieval England.