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 AOL’s DailyFinance blog, Sarah Weinman surveys the many devices and formats for eBooks in “How to Navigate the Confusing E-Book Landscape” and warns,
…device makers must be on guard that the constant confusion and lack of consistency may precipitate a crash akin to the Great Video Game Crash of 1983. The e-book market may be a lot more mature than it was a decade ago, but it still has a long way to go before it fully grows up.
The most emailed and viewed story on the NYT Web site currently is “The Science of a Happy Marriage,” by Tara Parker-Pope on the Well blog.
Parker-Pope has just released a book with a similar subtitle, For Better: The Science of a Good Marriage. Newsweek says it “may be the most credible and interesting marital self-help book of all time.” The book has received considerable attention; a long piece in the New Yorker, and reviews in the L.A. Times, San Francisco Chronicle and one by Susan Jane Gilman on NPR (naturally, the author of the brilliantly titled Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress has an inspired headline, “Chemistry Set for The Science of a Good Marriage”). Those who are skeptical about scientific studies of something as elusive as happy marriages, will be amused by Carolyn See‘s contrarian review in The Washington Post.
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HighBridge Audio; UNABR; 9781615730940; $26.95
WMA Audiobook from OverDrive
On the eve of Julie Bosman taking over as the publishing beat reporter for The New York Times (Motoko Rich is moving on to covering the economy for the Times), Sarah Weinman analyzes book publishing coverage in various newspapers.
We enjoyed the last one so much, that we’re doing it again, tomorrow at 4 p.m., Eastern.
Here’s your opportunity to let your fellow librarians know what galleys to move to the top (or bottom) of their To Be Read piles. Log on to Twitter at 4 p.m.; hashtag is #ewgc (for more explicit directions, click here).
Some of you may have more to add about the titles that came up last time (see Galley Chat!). Here’s a few others you may have received lately:
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One of the authors who will be featured at the AAP’s Librarian Lunch coming up at BEA.
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Author is appearing at the ALTAFF Tea at ALA next month.
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One of the Harper Buzz titles (check it out here). It sounded great even before we got to see this terrific cover.
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She was a riot grossing us out at the AAP Breakfast at PLA (everything floats at zero gravity, including dead skin — like being in a snow globe). Let’s see how she handles Jon Stewart, who is the MC of BEA’s Author Breakfast on Thurs, May 27th.
Uh oh, Michiko Kakutani is bored. She calls Martin Amis’ new novel The Pregnant Widow “remarkably tedious,” in today’s NYT. In fact, it reminds her of Jane Smiley’s Ten Days in the Hills, which, come to think of it, she found “tiresome.”
Amis can comfort himself with the New York Post review; it calls the book “sparkling.” The L.A. Times devoted a long piece to it on Sunday (which was more about Amis than the book).
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BBC Audio; UNABR; 978-0-7927-7269-9; 12 CD’s; $99.95
WMA Audiobook from OverDrive
It’s likely to be the most talked about nonfiction title of the season; NPR featured Sebastian Junger’s War on Morning Edition today (listen here). It’s also reviewed in today’s USA Today and Sunday’s Washington Post.
Junger will also appear on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart tonight.
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Large Print; Hachette; hardcover; ISBN 9780446566971; $28.99
Hachette Audio; UNABR CD; ISBN 9781607881988; $29.98
BBC Audio; UNABR; 9781607885344; 10 CD’s; $74.99
Adobe EPUB eBook and WMA Audiobook from OverDrive
USA Today features a new book about three Manhattan friends who chucked everything to travel the world in an effort find themselves, and they did it before reading Eat, Pray, Love.
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Adobe EPUB eBook avilable from OverDrive.
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Large Print; Hachette; hardcover; ISBN 9780446566971; $28.99
Hachette Audio; UNABR CD; ISBN 9781607881988; $29.98
BBC Audio; UNABR; 9781607885344; 10 CD’s; $74.99
Adobe EPUB eBook and WMA Audiobook from OverDrive
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Random House Audio; UNABR; 978-0-7393-5892-4; $45
OverDrive WMA Audiobook
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Harper Audio;9780061988509; $29.99
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The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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She’s already made a best seller of Women, Food and God by featuring the book in her magazine. Now she’ll send it even higher by featuring it on her Wednesday show, headlined “Why Oprah Says She’ll Never Diet Again!”
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S&S Audio; UNABR; 9781442336605; $29.99
The Frozen Rabbi by Steve Stern (Algonquin). Yes, this is a novel about a frozen rabbi who thaws in the late 20th century after being found by Bernie Karp, of Memphis, Tenn., in his parents’ freezer.
A starred Booklist review says “an uproarious and trouncing romp through the anguish and ironies of the Jewish diaspora matches mysticism with mayhem, beatitude with organized crime, creativity with crassness.”
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Miracle on the 17th Green, by James Patterson & Peter De Jonge, Little, Brown. UPDATE: This is a rerelease of an earlier Patterson title. The publisher’s catalog, p. 22, says, “Just in time for the golf season and Father’s Day…James Patterson’s classic golf novel is beautifully repackaged here as the perfect gift for a new generation of golfers.” An audio version is being released for the first time (Hachette Audio; UNABR; 978-1-60788-202-2; $24.98).
Wanna Get Lucky?, by Deborah Coonts, (Forge Books). Booklist says, “this is chick-lit gone wild and sexy, lightly wrapped in mystery and tied up with a brilliantly flashing neon bow. As the first in a series, Wanna Get Lucky? hits the proverbial jackpot.” The author, who is also the wife of Stephen Coonts, will be featured at the AAP Librarian Lunch at the BEA.
The Good Son, by Michael Gruber, (Holt). LJ says the author’s “latest high-stakes thriller, good from start to finish, will enhance his reputation.”
My Name is Mary Sutter, by Robin Oliveira, (Viking). This historical novel about a young midwife who becomes a surgeon’s assistant during the Civil War is a “graceful, assured portrayal of a courageous woman shines through in [Oliveira’s] outstanding debut novel,” according to Booklist. It is also a featured pick for May by independent booksellers.
Fever Dream by Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston (Grand Central). The 10th thriller starring FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast.
Heart of the Matter by Emily Giffin (St. Martin’s) explores the adulterous temptations facing a pediatric surgeon.
The Nearest Exit by Olen Steinhauer (Minotaur) follows a recently imprisoned CIA agent forced to reassert his loyalty through difficult test missions.
Executive Intent by Dale Brown (HarperCollins). A”near-future” political thriller.
The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis, Knopf. Amis lives up to his reputation for shocking; the book even gets reviewed by The New York Post.
The Marrowbone Marble Company by Glenn Taylor (Ecco). The literary heavyweight of the month, by an NBCC-award winner.
The Cardturner by Louis Sachar (Delacorte) tells the story of a high school student whose parents force him to drive his elderly rich uncle to bridge games.
Excerpts from a new book about Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, in the new issue of Fortune magazine have caused the business press to go all Page Six (yes, we enjoy the weirdness of that concept, too), and the book, due out next month, to rise on Amazon. The gossip focuses on the story of Zuckerberg crying in a restaurant’s bathroom floor during negotiations to buy the company and the Animal House atmosphere of Facebook’s early days.
The influential Wall Street Journal blog, All Things D, interviews author David Kirkpatrick.
The timing of the book is good; an IPO is expected some time this year.
An earlier, unauthorized book about the founding of Facebook, The Accidental Billionaires, by Ben Mezrich (Doubleday, 2009) has been made into a movie, The Social Network, and is scheduled for release on Oct. 15.
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Among the nonfiction titles going on sale next week, War by Sebastian Junger is poised to get the lion’s share of media attention. Holds are mounting at libraries we checked, undoubtedly helped by the advance publicity for this account of a platoon fighting in Afghanistan, which includes a New York Times op-ed by Junger and an excerpt from the book in Newsweek.
Junger will kick off his media tour with an interview on Good Morning America next Tuesday, May 11.
PW says that “Junger mixes visceral combat scenes raptly aware of his own fear and exhaustion with quieter reportage and insightful discussions of the physiology, social psychology, and even genetics of soldiering. The result is an unforgettable portrait of men under fire.”
Kirkus finds the book “often harrowing, though mostly conventional.”
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Large Print; Hachette; hardcover; ISBN 9780446566971; $28.99
Hachette Audio; UNABR CD; ISBN 9781607881988; $29.98
BBC Audio; UNABR; 9781607885344; 10 CD’s; $74.99
Adobe EPUB eBook and WMA Audiobook from OverDrive
Storm Warning: Whether Global Recession, Terrorist Threats, or Devastating Natural Disasters, These Ominous Shadows Must Bring Us Back to the Gospel by Billy Graham is the Christian evangelist’s latest examination of America’s problems. Though it’s the top pick on B&N.com’s “Coming Soon” list for next week, three out of four libraries we checked do not have it.
Toward a True Kinship of Faiths: How the World’s Religions Can Come Together by the Dalai Lama (Doubleday) advocates peaceful coexistence based on shared human experience. Not all libraries we checked had this one either.
The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies and a Company Called DreamWorks by Nicole LaPorte (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) is a behind-the-scenes look at the Hollywood studio formed in 1994 by Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg. Entertainment Weekly gives it a B-, saying that “LaPorte offers sharp critiques of business blunders made by DreamWorks’ founders… but with her blow-by-blow tale running well over 400 pages, it’s clear that she could learn a thing or two from the man about storytelling.”
Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance by Nouriel Roubini and Stephen Mihm (Penguin) gets a positive review from hard-to-please Michiko Kakutani at the New York Times: “Roubini, a professor of economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business, uses his gifts as a teacher to give the lay reader a succinct, lucid and compelling account of the causes and consequences of the great meltdown of 2008.”
Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball by Bill Madden (Harper) gets thumbs up from Kirkus: “Having covered the Yankees for 30 years, and with access to previously unavailable material, Madden provides a definitive and captivating biography of ‘The Boss.’ “
Today’s NY Times previews an NPR’s Radio Diaries documentary, Willie McGee and the Traveling Electric Chair, airing tomorrow.
McGee, an African-American handyman, was accused of raping a white woman in Mississippi in 1945 and convicted by all-white juries in three separate trials. Despite protests from many well-known people, his appeal was finally rejected by the Supreme Court and he was executed. The execution was covered live on the radio.
The article also covers a new book The Eyes of Willie McGee, coming next week. The author, Alex Heard, first heard a tape of the radio coverage in college. He went on to become a reporter and a Civil Rights activist. Haunted for years by what he heard in the recording, he began looking into the story and discovered that it had never been covered in depth.
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Books on Tape; UNABR; 11 CD’s; 9780307737083; $45
OverDrive WMA Audiobook
