Continuing on its streak of success, the Scandinavian thriller Three Seconds, has just been optioned for a movie by New Regency.

The book #15 on the NYT Fiction best seller list, after three weeks, slipping from a high of #8 last week.

Three Seconds is the very first book from the new imprint, Silver Oak, a joint deal between six-year-old British Quercus Publishing (publishers of Stieg Larsson’s books in the UK) and Sterling Publishing in the U.S.

Three Seconds Anders Roslund, Borge Hellstrom Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 496 pages Publisher: SilverOak – (2011-01-04) ISBN / EAN: 1402785925 / 9781402785924

Brilliance Audio; Unabridged Lib Ed; 9781455807222; 13 CD’s; $79.97

Yesterday’s GalleyChat was like readers advisory for readers advisers and raised several titles to the top of participants’ TBR piles.

Debuts

Among the debut novels, The Tiger’s Wife, by Téa Obreht, won a prediction that it will be one of the biggest books of the year. At 25, Obreht’s the youngest of the New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 fiction writers, as well as the National Book Foundation’s 5 under 35 (selected by no less than Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin). The Village Voice said what many of us were thinking when they called her the “Best New York Writer Young Enough to Make You Slit Your Wrists.”

All of that acclaim arrived months before her first book, coming in March (a chapter was published in The New Yorker in 2009 and another story, “Blue Water Djinn” in Aug — subscription required for both).

The Tiger’s Wife: A Novel Tea Obreht Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: Random House – (2011-03-08) ISBN / EAN: 0385343833 / 9780385343831

Another debut getting several nods is So Much Pretty, which also comes with a rave from Booklist, and an unlikely comparison, “A mixture of The Lovely Bones and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

So Much Pretty: A Novel Cara Hoffman Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Simon & Schuster – (2011-03-15) ISBN / EAN: 1451616759 / 9781451616750

The debut psychological thriller, Before I Go To Sleep, is about a woman who has lost her memory. The husband she wakes up with each morning is thus a perplexing stranger, as is the face in the mirror. One GalleyChatter warns, “you’ll never see the end coming!” Be sure to check out HarperCollins Director of Library Marketing, Virginia Stanley, presenting it at the HarperCollins Spring Summer Buzz session.

Before I Go To Sleep: A Novel S. J. Watson Retail Price: $25.99 Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher: Harper – (2011-06-01) ISBN / EAN: 0062060554 / 9780062060556

Memoirs

Several memoirs were mentioned (it’s probably the sheer number of memoirs that brought about Sunday’s rant about “oversharing” in the NYT BR).

My own favorite is Andre Dubus’s Townie. After his riveting speech at Midwinter (he managed to make you feel that he was not only talking directly to you, but he was actually flirting with you), I knew Townie would be my plane reading. Not only did it live up to my heightened expectations, but it made a cross-country flight in a middle seat almost bearable.

Given the current fascination with both memoirs and  chefs, it’s no surprise that there are several chef memoirs on the horizon.

Grant Achatz, writes about founding Alinea and overcoming tongue cancer in Life, on the Line. (Gotham/Penguin, March)

Season to Taste by Molly Birnbaum (also featured in HarperCollins Book Buzz) is by an aspiring chef who loses her sense of smell (Ecco, June).

Blood, Bones and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, by Gabrielle Hamilton (RH, March);  one  GalleyChat participant called it  “amazing” and a book she is still talking about. It also arrives with stellar prepub reviews (Booklist, “lusty, rollicking, engaging-from-page-one memoir”).

Please join us for the next GalleyChat on Tuesday, March 1, 4 to 5 p.m., Eastern (details here).

On the Colbert Report last night, Michael Lewis explained why investing in nickels may be a good idea (4:15 in to the segment).

Lewis’s book on the U.S. financial crisis, The Big Short, came out in trade paperback yesterday; many libraries are still showing significant hold ratios on the title.

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Lewis’s next book, coming in June, is Bomerang. It explores how financial bubbles have turned other countries, such as Ireland, into “the new third world.”

Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World Michael Lewis Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 224 pages Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company – (2011-06-13) ISBN / EAN: 0393081818 / 9780393081817

One of the key opposition leaders in Egypt is Mohamed ElBaradei. In March of 2010, he signed a deal with Holt’s Metropolitan Books imprint to publish a book on nuclear diplomacy in Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

Originally scheduled for release in June, the publisher just announced that the release date has been moved to April 26th; several blogs, including the Washington Post‘s Political Bookworm and  the NYT ArtsBeat, have reported the news.

The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times Mohamed ElBaradei Retail Price: $27.00 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Metropolitan Books – (2011-04-26) ISBN / EAN: 0805093508 / 9780805093506

The movie version of the best-selling book Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, directed by Timur Bekmanbetov, with Tim Burton as one of the producers, is being called one of the hottest projects in Hollywood right now. Last week, Benjamin Walker was announced as the lead; yesterday, it was reported that Joaquin Phoenix is the front runner for the part of Henry Sturgess, Honest Abe’s vampire-killing mentor.

Two other film takes on our 16th president are also in the works. Steven Spielberg is set to direct Lincoln, based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, with Daniel Day-Lewis in the lead.

Coming April 15 is the Robert Redford film Conspirator, about Mary Surratt, the lone woman accused of conspiring in the assassination plot. Robin Wright plays Surratt, Evan Rachel Wood her daughter Anna and Kevin Kline plays Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Lincoln is played by Lincoln impersonator Gerald Bestron. Since the majority of the film’s story takes place after the assassination, however, his screen time will be relatively short.

Conspirator is not based on a specific book, although, of course, there are many books on the assassination and several on Surratt specifically.

Official Movie Web Site: ConspiratorTheMovie.com

Abraham Verghese’s Cutting for Stone, at #4 the NYT Paperback Trade Fiction Best Seller list after 52 weeks, has just been optioned for a movie by Anonymous Content, the production group behind the Oscar Best Picture nominee, Winters Bone.

Librarians embraced the book, beginning with Verghese appearance at ALA Midwinter 2009 in Denver, where he spoke at the Breakfast and BookTalk sponsored by the AAP Trade Libraries Committee.

Cutting for Stone Abraham Verghese Retail Price: $15.95 Paperback: 688 pages Publisher: Vintage – (2010-01-26) ISBN / EAN: 0375714367 / 9780375714368

NPR announces that they are starting a “a book-club-meets-social-media experiment.”

Via Facebook, Twitter and NPR.org throughout February, readers of Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken can join guided discussions about the book (details at npr.org/bookclub). At the end of the month, there will be a live chat with Hillenbrand.

The NPR site also mentions, that you can “join in to discuss the book in your own community,” which may be an interesting opportunity for library book clubs. More details are promised soon.

Here at EarlyWord, we’re continuing our own experiment in social networking with GalleyChat the first Tuesday of every month. Please join us today, 4 to 5 p.m., Eastern, to find out whichmnew galleys other librarians are reading. Details at earlyword.com/galleychat.

How about you? Are you using social networking for book discussions or other library activities? Tell us what you are doing in the comments section.