Friday, July 16th, 2010
Archive for July, 2010
Hot Summer Read
Friday, July 16th, 2010The Today Show “Hot Summer Reads” picks Frank Deford’s novel Bliss, Remembered.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
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Coming Next Week; Murder, Madness and College Diets
Friday, July 16th, 2010Based on library holds, the most anticipated title next week is the new thriller by Daniel Silva.
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This is the 10th in the author’s Gabriel Alon series. Alon, the former assassin for the Israeli secret service, is looking for peace and quiet on the Cornish coast, but, of course, trouble finds him as an art restorer is murdered while working on a recently discovered Rembrandt.
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Holds are also building for by Iris Johansen’s third outing with her son, Roy.
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Coming in plenty of time for kids who will be heading off to college in the Fall, a new edition of the 2006 best seller, by the daughter of Memet Oz (who provides the forward). Most libraries have the earlier edition, but have not yet ordered the new one.
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Geoffrey O’Brien’s The Fall of the House of Walworth is an L.A. Times summer reading pick; “O’Brien turns his acute eye onto a scandalous story of the 1870s, an act of patricide that destroyed a prominent family after the Civil War.” Booklist calls it a ” darkly mesmerizing true-crime tale.” A few libraries are showing holds. For those that don’t have holds, this sounds like a good readers advisory choice.
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How THE GIRL Got Her Cover
Friday, July 16th, 2010The Wall Street Journal investigates the process of designing the cover for the American version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.(with a slide show of 7 of the 50 rejected covers, including the one below).
ZOO STORY Is People Pick
Thursday, July 15th, 2010Earlier this week, Salon‘s Laura Miller made us want to read Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives by journalist Thomas French. People echoes Miller’s enthusiasm, giving the book 4 of a possible 4 stars and making it a People Pick in the new issue (July 26). Miller found the story fascinating but the writing a bit pedestrian. People has no such trouble, saying it is,
Told with breathtaking novelistic punch…from Herman the chimp, who’s hopelessly in love with blondes, to the ambitious zoo CEO whose dreams of expansion lead to his undoing, the book uncages a story about conservation, freedom and the line between heeding and exploiting the call of the wild.
Holds in several libraries are growing, on light ordering.
Who could resist that cover?
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Tantor Audio; Read by John Allen Nelson; UNABR; On Sale Date: 07/31/2010
Trade 9781400118830 9 Audio CDs $34.99
Library 9781400148837 9 Audio CDs $83.99
MP3 9781400168835 1 MP3-CD $24.99
MONEYBALL Is Rolling
Thursday, July 15th, 2010People magazine’s photo of a clean-shaven Brad Pitt, reveals that the long-delayed film of Michael Lewis’s Moneyball has finally begun shooting in L.A. Pitt plays Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane.
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Audio; Books on Tape
OverDrive WMA Audiobook
THE LONG WAY HOME
Thursday, July 15th, 2010I’ve been trying to figure out how to talk about Gail Caldwell’s wonderful memoir, Let’s Take the Long Way Home, about her friendship with Caroline Knapp (author of Drinking: A Love Story), coming in August. How do you recommend a book in which the author’s two best friends, one human and the other canine, both die?
Perhaps the best way is to simply read from it, as Caldwell does here (via Shelf Awareness):
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Tantor Audio; UNABR; Read by Joyce Bean; Simultaneous
Trade 9781400115600 6 Audio CDs $29.99
Library 9781400145607 6 Audio CDs $59.99
MP3 9781400165605 1 MP3-CD $19.99
ONE DAY Anointed
Thursday, July 15th, 2010Recently, we predicted that the Brit import One Day by David Nicholls would be the hit of the summer. Today, July 15th, the day referred to in the book’s title, the NYT‘s Janet Maslin anoits it not just the hit of the summer, but beyond; “Random House’s synergistic strategy for bringing One Day across the pond has been so successful that it’s likely to have lasting implications.”
The synergy Maslin refers to is Random House Films, a joint venture formed in 2005 between Random House, Inc. and film production and distribution company, Focus Features. It happens that, just as One Day was being released here, Random House Films announced Anne Hathaway would star in a movie based on the book. It’s difficult to know if that represents “synergy” or just a happy accident.
Nonetheless, it’s worth looking at the other projects RH Films has on tap. Back in May, it was announced (as reported by Deadline Hollywood) that they are developing the upcoming nonfiction adventure thriller The Tiger by John Vaillant. The story of the hunt for a man-eating tiger in Siberia in 1997, it received a starred review in PW.
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Random House Audio; 9780307715074; $40.00
Other films in development are Lay The Favorite, based the just-published Beth Raymer gambling memoir (Spiegel & Grau), with Stephen Frears set to direct and The Husband, based on the Dean Koontz thriller (Bantam, 2006). RH Films 2007 adaptation of Reservation Road, based on the book by John Burnham Schwartz, was not a box office success.
As to One Day, Maslin is a fan, not only of the marketing effort, but also of the book,
However widely One Day is imitated, it will be hard to match Mr. Nicholls’s easy blend of bumbling insecurities (Emma’s), overweening showbiz arrogance (Dexter’s, when he becomes a television star), slow but sure pacing, humorous though seldom outright funny dialogue and authentically troubling coming-of-age issues.
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Old Spice Guy on Libraries
Thursday, July 15th, 2010We’re not sure how much this will do for libraries, but thanks for the effort (and the great abs) Old Spice Guy.
Follett’s PILLARS to TV
Wednesday, July 14th, 2010Heavy promotion is beginning for the Starz networks 8-part series based on Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth, which begins Friday, July 23rd. The cast includes Ian McShane (Waleran) and Donald Sutherland (Bartholomew).
Official Web Site: Starz.com.Pillars
Tie in:
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From THE SECRET to THE POWER
Wednesday, July 14th, 2010Get ready for The Power, Rhonda Byrne’s follow-up to the Oprah-fueled The Secret.
The Atria imprint of Simon & Schuster announced yesterday that they plan to publish the book on Aug 17th, with a first printing of 2 million copies.
The news was picked up by several sources, including the NYT and the AP.
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S&S audio; 9781442337961; $23.95.
The SHELLS and the BEES
Wednesday, July 14th, 2010A 2003 novel from the University of Chicago Press made a leap in sales (from a lowly #646, 688 to #137), based on a recommendation from Sue Miller on NPR’s All Things Considered last night.
Miller picked McKay’s Bees by Thomas McMahon, for,
…its frequent hilarity; its occasional tender sexiness; the sheer erudition on display within its pages; and the modest, generous terms in which this last is offered. Do you want Darwin’s theory explained? Why, it’s about “the greenness of every living thing, its sexual purpose, and its mortal nature.” Do you want to know, say, how to divide and multiply bee hives? You’ll find it here. How to build a small funicular to get you upstairs without electricity? How to make a daguerreotype? Construct a kiln? All included for the price of admission, and all connected intimately to the foibles, the hopes, the aims, the character of the characters in this book.
Most libraries we checked do not own the book.
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The University of Chicago Press is doing well this week. The NYT reviewed its book on shell identification (including a stunning online slide show of images from the book), also causing a rise on Amazon.
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RIZZOLI & ISLES Kill
Wednesday, July 14th, 2010The TV series, Rizzoli & Isles, based on Tess Gerritsen’s series of mystery novels, debuted on Monday night on TNT. It ranked as “the most watched ad-supported cable series launch of all time,” according to Deadline Hollywood.
We could have guessed as much from how well Gerritsen’s books did on Amazon yesterday. Sales rankings showed significant bumps for the titles in the series, lead by the newest, just out in hardcover, Ice Cold.
The pilot is based on the second book of the series, which now sports a tie-in jacket in mass market.
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OverDrive, downloadable audio and ebook
Books on Tape; UNABR; 8CD’s; 9780736687638: $80
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The latest in the series, Ice Cold, features the TNT logo, as do the new mass market paperbacks of the series.
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Brilliance Audio
- UNABR; 9 CD’s; Read by Tanya Eby; 9781423392064; $97.97
- UNABR; MP3-CD; 978-1-4233-9208-8; $39.97
OverDrive WMA Audiobook
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The series, in order:
1. The Surgeon (2001)
2. The Apprentice (2002)
3. The Sinner (2003)
4. Body Double (2004)
5. Vanish (2005)
6. The Mephisto Club (2006)
7. The Keepsake (2008)
8. Ice Cold (2010)
Oprah, the Miniseries?
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010The Oprah Show will be leaving the networks in September, 2011, after 25 years.
But, we may be able to drown our sorrows with Oprah, the Miniseries. Producer Larry A. Thompson has purchased the rights to Kitty Kelley’s bio of the star and plans to produce either a TV movie, or miniseries to be aired the same month that The Oprah Show wraps, according to the movie news site, Deadline Hollywood.
Thompson says he is leaning towards tapping an unknown to play Oprah.
Guess that leaves Oprah herself out of the running.
