Archive for March, 2010

The Religious Thriller

Monday, March 15th, 2010

Arriving at #28 on the 3/21 Extended NYT Fiction best seller list is Heresy by S.J. Parris, a pseudonym for Stephanie Merritt. It’s her first outing under this name, her first time writing an historical thriller, and her first time on the best seller list. The Washington Post recently pegged Heresy as part of a subgenre they call “the religious thriller”:

If proliferation is a sign of health, then the most vigorous member of the historical novel species must surely be the religious thriller. We know what to expect of these ecclesiastical romps: Sadistic clerics, heroic visionaries, ancient texts, torture chambers and a sprinkling of Latin are guaranteed whether the turmoil being depicted is the Protestant Reformation, the Roman Inquisition or some obscure schism.

Set in the 16th C. the book is about a real-life Italian monk who was excommunicated for believing that the earth revolves around the sun. Escaping to Oxford, he was recruited as a spy for Elizabeth I and become involved in trying to solve some grisly murders. Heresy was acquired as the first in a trilogy

Merritt/Parris recently wrote in the Guardian that she enjoyed writing this book more than any of her others,

The best crime and thriller novels, though they may work within certain parameters, can offer just as much scope for psychological depth, tenderness and a critical perspective on society as “serious” novels, and writers such as Robert Harris and Matthew Pearl prove that you don’t have to compromise on prose style to create a cracking plot.

Heresy
S.J. Parris
Retail Price: $25.95
Hardcover: 448 pages
Publisher: Doubleday – (2010-02-23)
ISBN / EAN: 0385531281 / 9780385531283

Random House audio; ABR; 9780307714299; $30
ebook available from OverDrive

NEON ANGEL To Big Screen

Monday, March 15th, 2010

Coming to theaters April 9th (debuting in a limited number of theaters on March 19) is The Runaways, a movie based on Cherie Curry’s 1989 memoir, Neon Angel, recently updated as a tie-in.

The movie was previewed in the NYT this weekend,

…a new film about the trailblazing bad-girl rock band from the 1970s that spawned Joan Jett, is how authentic it feels…One reason may be that the movie partly based on Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway (Harper Collins), a newly revamped autobiography by the group’s lead singer Cherie Currie, whose chillingly quick self-destruction is relived through Dakota Fanning.

Official Web site: RunawaysMovie.com


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Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway
Cherie Currie, Tony O’neill
Retail Price: $24.99
Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: It Books – (2010-03-01)
ISBN / EAN: 0061961353 / 9780061961359

Sunday, March 14th, 2010

Invitation to Awards Presentation

Saturday, March 13th, 2010

If you are in New York City on Thursday March 18th, please join us.

The Children’s Book Committee at Bank Street is being dragged kicking and screaming into the age of technology. For the first time in its 101 years of reviewing, selecting and annotating children’s books, the Best Books of the Year list will be available electronically.

The Children’s Book Committee
Bank Street College of Education

Cordially invites you to attend a breakfast celebrating the presentation of

The 2010 Children’s Book Awards to the authors and illustrators

Thursday, March 18, 2010
9:30 to 11:30 a.m.

Bank Street College of Education
The Evelyn Rome Tabas and Daniel Tabas Auditorium
610 West 112th Street
New York, NY 10025-1898

RSVP to bookcom@bankstreet.edu

The Josette Frank Award for fiction:

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate
Jacqueline Kelly
Retail Price: $16.99
Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) – (2009-05-12)
ISBN / EAN: 0805088415 / 9780805088410

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Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
Grace Lin
Retail Price: $16.99
Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers – (2009-07-01)
ISBN / EAN: 0316114278 / 9780316114271

The Flora Stieglitz Straus Award for nonfiction:

Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream
Tanya Lee Stone
Retail Price: $24.99
Hardcover: 144 pages
Publisher: Candlewick – (2009-02-24)
ISBN / EAN: 0763636118 / 9780763636111

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Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 (Richard Jackson Books (Atheneum Hardcover))
Brian Floca
Retail Price: $17.99
Hardcover: 48 pages
Publisher: Atheneum/Richard Jackson Books – (2009-04-07)
ISBN / EAN: 141695046X / 9781416950462

The Claudia Lewis Award for poetry:

Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors
Joyce Sidman
Retail Price: $16.00
Hardcover: 32 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children – (2009-04-06)
ISBN / EAN: 0547014945 / 9780547014944


For more information: 212.875.4540

The Children’s Book Committee is an affiliate of the Bank Street Center for Children’s Literature.

Saturday, March 13th, 2010

It’s Not Easy Becoming a Food Celebrity

Saturday, March 13th, 2010

In this Sunday’s NYT Magazine Frank Bruni profiles Katie Lee, aspiring food celebrity.

She appears regularly on The Early Show. Her cooking column, Eat This Up, appears monthly in Cosmopolitan. She’s published books; a requirement for any food celebrity. The first book even landed her a spot on Oprah (perhaps largely because her husband at the time, Billy Joel, appeared with her).

Sales of Lee’s second book, minus the Oprah effect, have been modest. Lee observes to Bruni that the cookbooks that sell the best are by people who have their own show. Having failed to sell an earlier pilot, she is now working on another one. She also has a contract with S&S for a novel, loosely based on her life with Billy Joel.

Trying to become famous must be exhausting.

The Comfort Table: Recipes for Everyday Occasions
Katie Lee
Retail Price: $26.00
Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment – (2009-10-20)
ISBN / EAN: 1439126747 / 9781439126745

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The Comfort Table
Katie Lee
Retail Price: $25.00
Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment – (2008-04-01)
ISBN / EAN: 141694835X / 9781416948353

THE Big Book of Next Week

Friday, March 12th, 2010

After dozens of high-profile best selling titles about various aspects of the financial crisis, the most anticipated title, and the one the may be the most accessible to the broadest audience is…

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
Michael Lewis
Retail Price: $27.95
Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company – (2010-03-15)
ISBN / EAN: 0393072231 / 9780393072235

It arrives with much fanfare; an excerpt in Vanity Fair, appearances on Sixty Minutes (Sunday), the Today Show, NPR’s All Things Considered, and Jon Stewart, among others on Monday, followed by Fresh Air and Charlie Rose on Tuesday.

Holds in libraries are surprisingly light; all the publicity could change that.

Friday, March 12th, 2010

ANGELOLOGY Divides The Critics

Friday, March 12th, 2010

Viking’s big early spring debut, Angelology, is bringing hosannas from some and pitchforks from others.

Viking wasn’t the only publisher to see potential in the book; they were one of seven houses to bid on it last year, and won with a rumored six-figure deal, (Publishers Weekly, 1/28/09). Shortly after, movie rights were sold for $1 million to Columbia (see our earlier story).

USA Today gives it the love in the current issue,

What do you get when an Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate and critically acclaimed memoirist [Falling Through the Earth, 2006] trolls for the same readers who loved Dan Brown’s search for the grail of best-sellerdom in The Da Vinci Code? In the case of Danielle Trussoni’s Angelology, a spellbinding quest novel.

And, further,

[Trussoni] has worked out her fantasy scheme brilliantly. Her literary riddles resolve with the aesthetically pleasing precision of a well-oiled antique clock. She offers up intriguing characters, lyrical nature descriptions, hidden clues, secret codes, hidden manuscripts and treasure hunts, creating a sumptuous and surprising novel.

As we noted earlier, both People and the NYT BR featured Angelology as their lead reviews last week and both were won over. The Chicago Tribune is not so appreciative, saying that the plot is “so convoluted it makes The Da Vinci Code look like a model of clarity” and the reviewer notes regretfully that Trussoni is at work on a sequel. In the daily NYT, Janet Maslin says it’s “prettily written,” but goes on to detail the book’s “nonsenical” story line. Perhaps most damning, she notes that “Ms. Trussoni does not even tie up this book’s loose ends. She leaves her story in virtual midair…”

In the libraries we checked, holds are averaging just 3:1 on light ordering.

Angelology
Danielle Trussoni
Retail Price: $27.95
Hardcover: 464 pages
Publisher: Viking Adult – (2010-03-09)
ISBN / EAN: 0670021474 / 9780670021475

Penguin Audiobooks: 03/09/2010; $39.95; ISBN 9780143145264

Fiction Watch List for Next Week

Friday, March 12th, 2010

Two novels to keep an eye on next week – Paolo Giordano’s The Solitude of Prime Numbers, an international bestseller that’s starting to draw media attention, and Sarah Addison Allen’s third novelThe Girl Who Chased the Moon, which has solid demand in libraries that have ordered it.

Paolo Giordano’s The Solitude of Prime Numbers is the saga of two misfit Italian schoolmates as they move through life.

Today’s NYT calls it, “…a mesmerizing portrait of a young man and woman whose injured natures draw them together over the years and inevitably pull them apart.”

It gets an A- in the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, which says,

We’re engrossed by the way in which a dreadful combination of faulty brain wiring and rotten luck propels each child’s future, like number sequences locking into place.

USA Today also mentions this debut novel by a 27 year old Italian physicist in an international roundup:

Don’t be frightened off by the author’s Ph.D. or the book’s title… Giordano’s passionate evocation of being young and in despair will resonate strongly with readers under 30. Alas, overbearing parents, special-needs siblings, cruel classmates, physical and sexual insecurities, guilt, loneliness and grief are universal plagues.

The Solitude of Prime Numbers
Paolo Giordano
Retail Price: $25.95
Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books – (2010-03-18)
ISBN / EAN: 0670021482 / 9780670021482

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The Girl Who Chased the Moon, the tale of a young woman’s seach for her roots in a small Southern town, received a starred review in Library Journal:

Allen’s warm characters and quirky setting are what will completely open readers’ hearts to this story. Nothing in it disappoints.

The Girl Who Chased the Moon
Sarah Addison Allen
Retail Price: $25.00
Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Bantam – (2010-03-16)
ISBN / EAN: 0553807218 / 9780553807219

Other Titles With Buzz On Sale Next Week

The Spellmans Strike Again (Spellman Files Series #4) by Lisa Lutz (Simon & Schuster)

Think Twice, by Lisa Scotoline, (St. Martin’s Press)

But the real news in fiction next week is in childrens and YA titles:

Stephenie Meyer‘s Twilight: The Graphic Novel (Yen Press) — Meyer’s first foray into Manga.

The Wimpy Kid Movie Diary by Jeff Kinney (Amulet Books) — the movie opens next week (see trailer here).

L.J. Smith’s The Vampire Diaries: The Return: Shadow Souls (HarperTeen) — fans are resting easier, now that the CW has announced that the series based on the books has been renewed for the fall.

James Patterson‘s Maximum Ride: Fang (Little Brown)

The ECLIPSE Movie Trailer…

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

…is heeeere!

The movie opens June 30th. The official site is here.

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Jon Stewart Loses His Cool

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

On Tuesday night, Jon Stewart interviewed Mark Thiessen on Comedy Central’s Daily Show. Going in, you had to know, simply from the title of the book, Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack, that the interview would be contentious.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Marc Thiessen
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes
Political Humor Health Care Reform

The extended interview continues in two additional parts:

Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack
Marc A. Thiessen
Retail Price: $29.95
Hardcover: 376 pages
Publisher: Regnery Press – (2010-01-18)
ISBN / EAN: 1596986034 / 9781596986039

ECLIPSE OF THE SUNNIS

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

As an NPR correspondent covering Iraq, Deborah Amos became interested in talking to Iraqis, not an easy task under Saddam, when they feared talking, or now, as violence has made communication nearly impossible. Nonetheless, she never tires of Iraq. As she told Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air last night (listen here),

I actually love the culture. I love the food, and the people — and I’m comfortable there. … I’m always happy when I get off the plane, and it hardly matters where I land.

Her new book is about the forced migration of the Sunnis.

Eclipse of the Sunnis: Power, Exile, and Upheaval in the Middle East
Deborah Amos
Retail Price: $25.95
Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: PublicAffairs – (2010-03-09)
ISBN / EAN: 1586486497 / 9781586486495

Food Obsessions

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Today’s Oprah Show repeats the January segment that launched Alicia Silverstone’s vegetarian book, The Kind Diet, which is still on the NYT Hardcover Advice list, currently at #2. Also on the show is Michael Pollan, discussing his book, Food Rules, which is at #1 on the Paperback Advice list.

Jonathan Safran Foer appeared on the The Ellen DeGeneres show yesterday; as a result, his book on vegetarianism, Eating Animals, rose from #383 on Amazon to #6.