The IACP (International Assoc. of Culinary Professionals) has just announced the finalists for their 2010 Awards.

Publishers Wiley and Oxmoor House were neck and neck, with five nominations each (Oxmoor received nominations for 3 of its books in the Williams-Sonoma series). They were closely followed Artisan, with 4 nominations.

Most of the titles will make your mouth water;

Category — Baking: Sweet or Savory

Rose’s Heavenly Cakes Rose Levy Beranbaum Retail Price: $39.95 Hardcover: 512 pages Publisher: Wiley – (2009-09-22) ISBN / EAN: 0471781738 / 9780471781738

Category — Baking: Sweet or Savory

My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method Jim Lahey Retail Price: $29.95 Hardcover: 224 pages Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company – (2009-10-05) ISBN / EAN: 0393066304 / 9780393066302

Category — International

Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way Francis Mallmann, Peter Kaminsky Retail Price: $35.00 Hardcover: 278 pages Publisher: Artisan – (2009-05-12) ISBN / EAN: 1579653545 / 9781579653545

But one reminds us there is a serious side to food;

Category – Literary Food Writing

Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal Tristram Stuart Retail Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 480 pages Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. – (2009-10-12) ISBN / EAN: 0393068366 / 9780393068368

I’ll be interviewing Kristin Cashore (Fire, Graceling) at Symphony Space in Manhattan, a week from Sunday (Feb. 28th) at 1 p.m.

And, I have a special offer for EarlyWord readers; for a free ticket, email Jenny Brennan or call her at 212-864-1414, ext. 206 and say Lisa from EarlyWord sent you.

Hope to see you there!

Michael Pollan’s paperback original title, Food Rules, has been on the Amazon top five since Jan. 5, It got a boost to #1 from a recommendation by Jane Brody in the New York Times “Health” column on Monday,

In the more than four decades that I have been reading and writing about the findings of nutritional science, I have come across nothing more intelligent, sensible and simple to follow than the 64 principles outlined in a slender, easy-to-digest new book called Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, by Michael Pollan.

Libraries are showing holds as high as 420 on 45 copies.

Here’s a rare thing; an inexpensive bestseller. It’s a great opportunity to buy more and make your customers happy.

Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual Michael Pollan Retail Price: $11.00 Paperback: 112 pages Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) – (2009-12-29) ISBN / EAN: 014311638X / 9780143116387

ebook available from OverDrive

Patti Smith can now sing “I’m on the cover of the New York Times Book Review.”

Well, maybe it doesn’t scan as well, or have the cache of “on the Cover of The Rolling Stone,” but she’s already achieved that milestone.

And, perhaps it doesn’t mean as much as the fact that her book, Just Kids, about her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe debuts at #7 on the new NYT nonfiction best seller list, or that holds are heavy in libraries and building fast.

The review says that  Just Kids,

…is the most spellbinding and diverting portrait of funky-but-chic New York in the late ’60s and early ’70s that any alumnus has committed to print. The tone is at once flinty and hilarious, which figures: she’s always been both tough and funny, two real saving graces in an artist this prone to excess. What’s sure to make her account a cornucopia for cultural historians, however, is that the atmosphere, personalities and mores of the time are so astutely observed.

The Washington Post was equally laudatory, in a review that makes you regret the book isn’t on your nightstand right now.

As part of her book tour, she appears at the Chicago Public Library on February 21.

Just Kids Patti Smith Retail Price: $27.00 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Ecco – (2010-01-01) ISBN / EAN: 006621131X / 9780066211312