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.
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GalleyChatters
Who’s going to play Sarah Palin in the HBO adaptation of Game Change?
No, not Tina Fey.
According to Entertainment Weekly, that role just went to Julianne Moore.
No news yet on who will play John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.
NPR inaugurated a social networking book club experiment in January with Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken.
For March, they turn to a book that has been a long-lasting trade paperback best seller (currently at #2 after 57 weeks), Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese.
Adding a new twist, NPR invites books clubs to apply for the opportunity to receive a personal call or videochat from the author.
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OverDrive, Adobe EPUB eBook; Mobipocket eBook; WMA Audiobook
Audio; Books on Tape
Suze Orman’s four-part PBS series, The Money Class, began last night. The tie-in book rose to #7 on Amazon.
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Orman also appeared on the Today Show.
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Coming in second at the box office last weekend is The Adjustment Bureau (after the children’s animated feature, Rango) based on Philip K. Dick’s short story, “The Adjustment Team.”
The love interest, played by Emily Blunt in the film, was not in the original story. In the L.A. Times blog, Jacket Copy, Carolyn Kellogg explores the differences between the two versions.
Many successful films have been adapted from Dick’s novels and stories, including Blade Runner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) and Total Recall (a full list is available here).
The story “The Adjustment Team” is available in various anthologies, including the following and as an audio tie-in.
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Audio tie-in: Brilliance Audio; under the title “The Adjustment Bureau”; Read by Phil Gigante; $39.97
OverDrive; Selected Stores available in Adobe EPUB eBook
We predicted that The Paris Wife would land in the top five on the 3/13 NYT Print Hardcover Fiction Best Seller list. It didn’t; it debuted at #9 after its first week on sale, which is still a good showing for a debut title (and, it arrived at #1 on the National Indie Bestsellers list).
There are just two other debuts on the list: A Discovery of Witches, now at #4 after 3 weeks and The Help at #8, marking its 100th week on the list (the NYT BR offers a chart of some of the books that stayed on their lists for over 100 weeks; Scott Peck’s ’90’s hit, The Road Less Traveled tops them at 694 weeks). The Help, by the way, entered the list at a lowly #16 (it was tied with Christopher Moore’s Fool at #15).
According to the movie news site, Deadline, books are “the most ubiquitous source material among this year’s crop of broadcast pilots.”
Several are based on public domain titles; fairy tales (ABC’s Once Upon a Time and NBC’s Grimm), a drama about Edgar Allan Poe, and one that sets The Count of Monte Cristo in the present…
Catherine Hardwicke, the director of the first Twilight movie, releases her next film, Red Riding Hood on Friday. The tie-in novelization has been on the NYT children’s paperback bestseller list since it came out in January, debuting at #1. The L.A. Times today gives the back story on how the book came to be. Far more than just writing the introduction, Hardwicke was the moving force behind the book.
The ebook version “includes video interviews with Hardwicke and her many collaborators, an animated short film, audio discussion about the set design and props, costume sketches and Hardwicke’s hand-drawn maps of the world where Red Riding Hood takes place, among other things.”
Unfortunately, it is not available for library lending.
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The latest incarnation of Newsweek, under the editorship of Tina Brown, arrives on newsstand today. In her introductory editorial, Brown makes a valiant effort to explain why a print weekly still matters today.
Our focus is more narrow; what about books? In recent years, the weekly news magazines have cut back their review sections. On the other hand, Brown’s online publication, The Daily Beast, launched a book section early in 2009. We heard that the new Newsweek would include a book section in each issue, so we had hopes.
We haven’t gotten our hands on the print version yet, but in the online version, the book section is rather meager and buried. The only book feature is “Bookbag: Jodi Picoult’s Picks,” in which the bestselling author shines her light on three novels; Allison Pearson’s I Think I Love You (Knopf; Feb), Benjamin Hale’s The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore (Twelve/ Grand Central; Jan) and Caroline Leavitt’s Pictures of You (Algonquin; Jan).
Picoult calls Leavitt an “undiscovered jewel.” While not exactly “undiscovered” (Pictures of You was a Costco Pick and it was on the extended NYT Paperback Fiction list), Leavitt does deserve a broader audience (check out Carolyn See’s review in the Washington Post).
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OverDrive; Adobe EPUB eBook
Highbridge Audio; UNABR; 9781615736553; Library Edition, 9781611741025
In a time when Alzheimer’s is considered an epidemic, it’s no surprise that a book about memory fascinates people. After covering the U.S.A. Memory Championship, journalist Joshua Foer became so enamored of his subject that he spent a year working with a memory coach. He won the next event and wrote a book about the experience, with the memorable title Moonwalking with Einstein. It is drawing holds; one large library system shows 215 on 15 copies.
In the NYT yesterday, Michiko Kakutani practically sputters well-known comparisons in her review,
…Joshua Foer tackles the subject of memory the way George Plimpton tackled pro football and boxing…[his book] has a lot in common with Malcolm Gladwell’s best sellers…His narrative is smart and funny and, like the work of Dr. Oliver Sacks, it’s informed by a humanism that enables its author to place the mysteries of the brain within a larger philosophical and cultural context.
The author appeared on Comedy Central’s Colbert Report last night.
And, yes, he is the younger brother of Jonathan Safran Foer.
Jeff Greenfield is the Chief Political Correspondent for CBS News, so it’s no surprise that he was featured on the CBS Early Show today for his book on what might have happened if not for some simple twists of fate. If it had rained in Dallas when JFK was there in 1963, he would not have traveled in an open car and may not have been shot (curiously, Stephen King’s next book, titled 11/22/63 is about time travelers who try to prevent the Kennedy assassination).
Greenfield will also appear on The Colbert Report on Thursday.
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The writer Trevanian spoofed the spy genre in the 1970’s with a series of four novels; The Eiger Sanction, The Loo Sanction, The Main and Shibumi.
Nicholai Hel, a handsome and charming assassin who is fascinated with Eastern culture, is the main character in the cult classic Shibumi. He reappears today in a prequel, Satori by Don Winslow (Savages). The Wall Street Journal interviews Savage about reimagining this classic.
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The earlier book was re-released in 2005.
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Publishers have been searching for him all over Scandinavia, but maybe the next Stieg Larsson actually resides on this continent, in Dallas, Texas. And, maybe he’s a she.
USA Today thinks so. Reviewer Carol Memmot (who, back in January, called Three Seconds by Scandinavians Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom a worthy Larsson successor. It then hit the NYT Hardcover Fiction list) says that the main character in American Taylor Stevens’ debut thriller The Informationist, “evokes the spirit and intelligence of th gutsy, damaged Salander, but she’s far from derivative.”
She adds, “Thank goodness a sequel to this fiery novel is in the works.”
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Large Type: Thorndike; 9781410438027; June 2011; $31.99
On NPR’s Morning Edition today, Lynn Neary interviewed Jonahan Evison, His novel, West of Here, is told from the perspectives of settlers in Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula and modern-day residents. How did Evison do his research?
…by poking around in the local libraries of towns up and down the Olympic Peninsula: “I found that at all these little libraries in Port Angeles and Sequim and Shelton and all these peninsula towns, you can find all these wonderful little tape-bound manuscripts. Some of them are 15 pages long, some of them are 100 pages long, but they’re personalized, first-person accounts of frontier living.”
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Audio; Highbridge; 9781615731169; $39.95
As we noted in our look-ahead to this week’s big books, two chef’s memoirs hit the shelves. Each received media coverage yesterday.
Grant Achatz was interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air about recovering from tongue cancer and his book, Life, On the Line (Gotham/Penguin). As a result, it rose to #42 (from #155) on Amazon.
Gabrielle Hamilton’s Blood, Bones and Butter (Random House), has been doing well all week (see our heavy holds alert) and is now at #18 on Amazon. The author appeared on the Today show.
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