The fourth volume in Bob Woodward’s series on the Bush presidency is embargoed until Monday.

According to Editor and Publisher, the trade journal on the newspaper business, the Washington Post had a deal to run a four-part excerpt beginning on Sunday. Fox News posted a story on the book late yesterday, saying  “an advance copy was obtained exclusively by FOX News.” 

As a result of Fox breaking the embargo, the Washington Post, put up a detailed story about the book less than two hours later on their Web site, which also appears on the front page of the Post today. Both the Fox and the Post stories have now been picked up by news agencies all over the world.

The book is considered one of the major titles of the Fall, but library holds are surprisingly light at this point. At the four large libraries I checked, there are a total of 231 holds on 177 copies; a ratio of 1.31 holds per copy. 

Woodward will appear on 60 Minutes on Sunday.

The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008

Bob Woodward

• Hardcover: 512 pages; $32.00
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (September 8, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 1416558977
• ISBN-13: 978-1416558972

It’s my personal indicator that the Fall is upon us; USA Today’s Fall Books Calendar has just been posted, listing 150 titles.

It feels like they created this one just for me, since my personal pick of the Fall, Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World is the opening image. But, I’m not the only one who’s been smitten by this kitten; USA Today featured the book back in June. And who could resist that face?

Have fun browsing the listings; for both collection development and readers advisory staff, it’s interactive format, including excerpts, covers and annotations, makes it a convenient way to brush up on what may be the big titles of the fall (they included the then little-known Story of Edgar Sawtelle in their summer list).

In addition, USA Today editors have picked ten titles consider “talkers;” books you want to talk about.

We’re at work putting together a mashup of all the fall picks, similar to the one we did for the summer titles. This time, since we often hear how frustrating it can be to hunt down various formats for a title, we’re including ISBN’s for audio and large type editions.

Since People does not put its reviews online and, since it reaches so many, well, people and is often a good source of RA material, we take a look at their lead book coverage each Wednesday, when the new issue hits the newsstands. We also include a full list of the titles reviewed in our Consumer Book Coverage.

This week (9/15, double issue; “Sarah Palin’s Family Drama” shares cover with “66 Celebrity Babies”) the book coverage includes:

Book Feature:

Fitting in with the issue’s baby theme, People features “vegan gurus” Kim Barnouin and Rory Freedman on the newest in the Skinny Bitch series, Skinny Bitch: Bun in the Oven. The book was pubbed on Monday, but all libraries I checked are still showing it on order.

Lead Review:

Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife gets 3 1/2 out of a possible four stars. Unprophetically, People declares the book will “set tongues wagging” (they’ve been wagging for quite some time now). Library holds have nearly doubled since the last time we checked. It’s been in the teens on Amazon most of the week, which means it will appear on next week’s print bestseller lists.

Four-star titles:

Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl

Stacey O’Brien

• Hardcover: $23; 240 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (August 19, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 1416551735
• ISBN-13: 978-1416551737

Cal-Tech biologist adopts baby owl; “her portrait of the complex and unforgettable animal she grew to love is irresistible.” So is the accompanying photo of the author, cuddling Wesley. Libraries have ordered lightly and have comfortable holds to copy ratios.

——————————-

Map of Home, Randa Jarrar

• Hardcover: $24.95; 304 pages
• Publisher: Other Press (September 2, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 1590512723
• ISBN-13: 978-1590512722

Novel about a girl who escapes with her family from Kuwait during the Iraqi invasion, “Depictions of her hilarious family…are punchy and vibrant. Jarrar’s lack of sentimentality and her wry sense of humor make Home a treasure.”

——————

Book tie-ins:

The new HBO series (debuting Sunday), True Blood gets 3 out of four stars, but the review reads more like a single star; Anna Paquin’s “refreshingly direct, simple performance lights up this nutty, boddy production…without her, it might seem like the hell spawn of Anne Rice and Dexter.” The series is based on Charlaine Harris’s Dead Until Dark.

A new PBS series (begins Sept 20) features Gwyneth Paltrow and Mario Batali (don’t roll your eyes; they’re “pals”, even though she doesn’t eat meat and he emphatically does; she clearly diets and he…), Spain…On the Road Again runs for 13 weeks.

Most libraries I checked have not ordered it.

Spain: A Culinary Road Trip

Mario Batali and Gwyneth Paltrow

• Hardcover: $34.95; 384 pages
• Publisher: Ecco (October 21, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0061560936
• ISBN-13: 978-0061560934

Following a string of reviews, Joyce Carol Oates takes on American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld in Sunday’s NYT BR. The book has since risen to #16 on Amazon’s bestseller list. Holds in libraries have also increased significantly.

Like the other reviewers, Oates finds the portrait of Alice/Laura  more compelling than that of Charlie/George W. 

Unlike other reviewers, she sees a metaphor in the book (which she says Sittenfeld surely did not intend);

the “American wife” is in fact the American people, or at least those millions of Americans who voted for a less-than-qualified president in two elections — the all-forgiving enabler for whom the bromide “love” excuses all.

 

American Wife

Curtis Sittenfeld

• Hardcover: $26.00
• Publisher: Random House (September 2, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 1400064759
• ISBN-13: 978-1400064755

• Audio CD: Abridged, $34.95
• Reader: Kimberly Farr
• Publisher: Random House; (September 2, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0739323865
• ISBN-13: 978-0739323861

In his review of Louis Bayard’s The Black Tower in today’s Wall Street Journal, Robert Hughes says the author “has emerged as a writer of historical thrillers in the vein of Caleb Carr.”

The current Entertainment Weekly calls it “delicious.” Set in Paris in 1818, the book concerns a “sad-sack hero” whose life is changed by a flamboyant figure,  based on the legendary French detective Eugène François Vidocq. Marilyn Stasio, in her 8/22 NYT review says,

The real-life Vidocq was unmatched as a figure of romantic legend. On the run as a thief, he offered his services to the law, becoming so adept at catching criminals that in 1811 he was named the first chief of the Sûreté, whose detective ranks he filled with former miscreants like himself.

Vidocq is determined to figure out if Marie Antoinette’s son really died in prison, or if he can still find him alive.

There are few holds showing in libraries I checked, so readers advisory librarians may actually have an opportunity to put the book into customer’s hands.

• Hardcover: $24.95
• Publisher: William Morrow (August 26, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0061173509
• ISBN-13: 978-0061173509

Oh, boy! It’s Michiko Kakutani taking on American Wife in the NYT today. You can almost hear the knife being sharpened.

But, hold on, the Mikey of book reviewers kind of likes it!

Turns out author Sittenfeld, who hates George W. Bush, likes his wife (she wrote an essay for Salon in January, 2004 called Why I love Laura Bush) and does a “nimble Job” of getting under Laura’s skin. She creates some imaginative scenes — “her account of a family gathering at the family’s Kennebunkport-like vacation home is wickedly hilarious” — but when she writes about George W., the author, begins “using [her] heroine as a sock puppet for her own views on the unhappy tenure of the Bush administration.”

Kakutani relates the book to Joe Klein’s 1996 Primary Colors which attracted “a lot of readers” (reminder: it was a major bestseller) because they “thought they were getting a roman à clef about Bill and Hillary Clinton.” Kakutani rarely speculates on a book’s potential popularity, but she predicts American Wife will have an appeal similar to Primary Colors, also attracting “a lot of readers.”

So far, library reserve patterns don’t reflect that. Since I checked yesterday, reserves have ticked up only slightly at four large library systems. There are now a total of 423 reserves on 166 copies (in both audio and print), which is slightly more than 2.5 per copy. 

American Wife

Curtis Sittenfeld

• Hardcover: $26.00
• Publisher: Random House (September 2, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 1400064759
• ISBN-13: 978-1400064755

We suggested earlier that The Good Thief, which is on order in small quantities in most libraries, is a title to watch.

Today’s New York Times seems to bear that out. Janet Maslin gives it a very strong review, calling it “darkly transporting.” She relates it to The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, saying that in both books “the reader can find plain-spoken fiction full of traditional virtues: strong plotting, pure lucidity, visceral momentum and a total absence of writerly mannerisms.”

Good Thief 

Hannah Tinti

• Hardcover: $26; 336 pages
• Publisher: The Dial Press (August 26, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0385337450
• ISBN-13: 978-0385337458

The next Starbuck’s Pick, The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper, is the lead book review in People this week (9/8; Jessica Simpson on the cover. She’s in love — again).

The book, a memoir of the author’s privileged childhood in Liberia, which her family had to escape in 1980, gets 3 1/2 out of a possible 4 stars.

The author set sweet, funny stories…against the darker canvas of [her parent's] divorce…Nearly three decades after fleeing Liberia, Cooper offers an indelible view of her homeland and makes palpable the pain that she felt when she lost it.

The book was also reviewed in the Spring ‘08 issue of Ms. Magazine (review not posted online).

Ordering in the libraries I checked is light (the prepub reviews were good, but not overly enthusiastic). Reserves are building, but still at comfortable levels (four holds to one copy). None have ordered the audio or large type editions.

The House at Sugar Beach

Helene Cooper

• Hardcover: $26.00
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (September 2, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0743266242
• ISBN-13: 978-0743266246

• Simon & Schuster Audio, September 2008
• 9 Compact Disks (Unabridged)
• Read by: The Author
• ISBN-10: 0-7435-7951-8
• ISBN-13: 978-0-7435-7951-3

• Large Type, Hardcover: $31.95
• Publisher: Thorndike Press; (September 2, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 1410410382
• ISBN-13: 978-1410410382

Book videos rarely rise to the level of movie trailers (the production values of Dark Knight require a lot of cash), but a few have managed to pull off pretty effective videos precisely by not going Hollywood (the one for Yiddish with George and Laura still makes me laugh).

And, then, there are videos with great production values, that make you wonder what they actually do for the book (case in point; Celubatantes).

Brad Meltzer believes the medium can work, so he created a “trailer” for Book of Lies, coming out next week. As he told Entertainment Weekly’s “PopWatch” blog last week,

I had seen so many book trailers which were exactly like every other book commercial you see: scary-voice-guy tells you what it says on the back of the book jacket. But none of those trailers ever invested you in the story. Or the characters. And that’s what the best movie trailers do. So I wrote what you see. Brandon Graham and Expanded Books did the filming and production. I treated it like my own personal independent film. The goal was to create the trailer for the greatest movie that didn’t exist. And then, like any independent film, I called in some friends. The goal was simple: we wanted to change how books are sold (how’s that for presumptuous?)

I’m convinced, but don’t just take my word for it; after, all it did manage to get “PopWatch” to turn its attention from movies & tv for a second, and mention a book.

Judge for yourself:

• Hardcover: $25.99; 352 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (September 2, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 044657788X
• ISBN-13: 978-0446577885

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo will be pubbed in the US in a few weeks, on the heels of great success in Europe. The Times of London explores that success in a weekend feature.  

In the author’s native Sweden, the book sold over one million copies before being published in England, where it’s sold a more modest, but still very strong 52,000. The publisher is about to release it in paperback, with a 200,000 copy printing.

The book is the first in Stieg Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy, which is so popular that in Stockholm, fans walk in the steps of the fictional characters.

The Times describes Girl with the Dragon Tattoo this way,

The protagonists of Dragon Tattoo are a remarkably well-drawn duo; disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist and youthful computer hacker Lisbeth Salander. Salander, in particular, is something completely new in crime fiction; she has an alienating appearance (facial jewellery, ill-matched clothes and the dragon tattoo of the title). But despite her forbidding appearance, she is immensely vulnerable, struggling with personal demons. As she and her journalist colleague investigate the disappearance of the niece of an ailing tycoon, readers realised that Salander was an irresistible new character in the genre.

The second title in the trilogy, The Girl Who Played with Fire, landed at #10 in France and the third, Castles in the Sky, is now #1 in Sweden.

Unfortunately, Larsson only lived long enough to see his first book become a success in Sweden. He died at the age of 50 in 2004 from an apparent heart attack (there are some who suspect foul play; he was a journalist who had made some scary enemies).

LJ’s Willy Williams gave it a strong review (LJ review, 8/15) and blogged about it shortly after BEA (we also hear it’s the book she told her boss she had to take with her on vacation).

The originally annouced 100,000 first printing is now up to 150,000, indicating that accounts responded well to it.  A bookseller for BookPeople in Austin, TX makes it a  “Top Shelf Pick” on the indie’s weg site and discovered that fellow booksellers in the midwest can’t stop raving about it.

European hits often don’t translate to the US and there are elements in the book that may not appeal to Americans (the novel, titled “Men Who Hate Women” in Sweden, focuses on the serial abuse of women). A reviewer in the Charleston City Paper (the only American newspaper review to date) is so put off by the book, that she suggests Larsson himself was a man who hated women.

Several of the libraries I’ve checked have not ordered it; the rest have ordered it in modest quantities, with some holds.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson and Reg Keeland

• Hardcover: $24.95; 480 pages
• Publisher: Knopf (September 16, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0307269752
• ISBN-13: 978-0307269751

• Audio CD: Abridged edition, $29.95
• Publisher: Random House Audio;  (September 16, 2008)
• Reader: Martin Wenner
• ISBN-10: 0739370642
• ISBN-13: 978-0739370643