GalleyChat favorite, Family Fang by Kevin Wilson, which arrives next week, gets a good start with a strong review by Janet Maslin in todays NYT as well as a B+ from Entertainment Weekly. Wilson is respected for his short stories, gathered in the collection Tunneling to the Center of the Earth. Family Fang is his first novel, the story of performance artists who force their kids into the “family business” of protesting American superficiality by creating events in shopping malls that result in chaos. The parents call this art, their two children,  call it “making a mess.” GalleyChatters appreciated Wilson’s sly humor and flights of fantasy, employed to explore how parents’ ambitions can affect their children, making it a good candidate for book discussions. In a starred review, Booklist said, “Don’t be surprised if this becomes one of the most discussed novels of the year.” This is borne out by the number of times the book has come up on GalleyChat since it was first discussed back in February.

The Family Fang: A Novel Kevin Wilson Retail Price: $18.99 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Ecco – (2011-08-09) ISBN / EAN: /780061579035/ 006157903

I’m not making this up. A forthcoming movie is described by Deadline as an “action epic battle between good and evil that is inspired by the John Milton poem [Paradise Lost].” Benjamin Walker is in talks to play archangel Michael, who “will go mano a mano against Bradley Cooper’s Lucifer…the film will have cutting-edge visual effects that will make these battles resemble 300 meets Lord of the Rings– but with winged warriors.” Plans are to begin shooting in January, with the film possibly debuting at the end of 2013.

Bradley Cooper, who starred in The Hangover has been literary lately. He just finished filming as the lead in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and is about to begin shooting The Silver Linings Playbook, based on the debut novel by Matthew Quick, which was one of Nancy Pearl’s picks for summer reading, 2009).

Five years after it was first signed, the movie that was understatedly described as “not the easiest film adaptation,” will see the light of day by the end of the year. Warner Bros. is releasing Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, in a limited, Oscar-qualifying run beginning Christmas day, followed by openings in more cities on Jan. 20th. It’s directed by Stephen Daldry who has tackled serious literary fare before in The Hours and The Reader.

Thirteen-year-old Jeopardy winner, Thomas Horn will play Oskar, a nine-year old whose  father died in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks play his parents and John Goodman is the doorman who helps the boy  search Manhattan, looking for the  lock that matches a key his father left behind.

A tie-in is scheduled for November.

J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore.com Web site launches in October, but a tiny segment of Harry Potter fans (just one million) will be granted early access. To select winners, the site is running The Magical Quill challenge. Each day, a clue appears on the site. Those who guess it correctly will be directed to the registration page (if it is still open that day). The contest began on Sunday and runs through this Saturday, August 6.

USA Today interviews director Cameron Crowe on the set of We Bought a Zoo, starring Matt Damon and Scarlett Johansson, and based on the memoir by Benjamin Mee (Weinstein Books, 2008).

The movie opens Dec. 23,. USA Today notes the timing is an indicator of the studio’s belief in the movies, since it is during the holiday rush and at the height of Oscar season.

Blackstone released an audio version in June. A media tie-in edition is coming in November

We Bought a Zoo: The Amazing True Story of a Young Family, a Broken Down Zoo, and the 200 Wild Animals that Changed Their Lives Forever Benjamin Mee Retail Price: $14.99 Paperback: 304 pages Publisher: Weinstein Books – (2011-11-08) ISBN / EAN: 1602861579 / 9781602861572

Audio and ebook on OverDrive.

Actress Tilda Swinton’s dramatic looks are the basis for an equally dramatic fashion spread in the August issue of W Magazine. She stars in a movie based on Lionel Shrivers’ novel, We Need to Talk About Kevin, which was the talk of the Cannes film festival in May.

The movie is scheduled to open in New York and Los Angeles on Dec. 2, qualifying it for the Academy Awards.

In an interview that accompanies the photo shoot, Swinton discusses the movie’s “taboo subject: the idea of a less than perfect mother.” She says, ” I knew that, when an audience watched the film, there would be a gag reflex at some point. But I was fascinated by the subject—it scared me, and that interested me.”

Shriver’s book won the Orange Prize in 2006. A movie tie-in will be published on 11/29/11.

Holds are heavy in many libraries for Alice LaPlante’s debut novel, Turn of Mind  (Atlantic Monthly, 7/5; Audio, Brilliance; Large Print, Thorndike). The author will appear on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show today.

The book has been rising on the IndieBound Fiction Bestseller list and is now at #9. It debuted on the 8/7 extended NYT Hardcover Fiction list at #35.

NPR’s Morning Edition jumps the gun by interviewing George Pelecanos a month in advance of the release of his next novel, The Cut.

The Cut (Spero Lucas) George Pelecanos Retail Price: $12.99 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Reagan Arthur Books – (2011-08-29) ISBN / EAN: /

Hachette Audio; AudioGo

NPR adds their kudos to a growing list for the debut Rules of Civility by Amor Towles (Viking, 7/26;  Books on Tape; Penguin Audio; audio on OverDrive), calling it a “stylish, elegant and deliberately anachronistic debut novel.”

Several libraries are showing heavy holds on modest orders.

Friday’s Washington Post review of Conquistadora by Esmeralda Santiago (Knopf, 7/12) reads like a fan letter. The novel features Ana Cubillas, a female sugar plantation owner in Puerto Rico during the mid-19th C. With lines like the following, it’s no wonder that the book rose on Amazon’s sales rankings;

Santiago’s storytelling is thrilling, and her descriptions of the island and its multinational denizens are luminous. Her characters’ complexities emerge and collide while the plot twists like tropical vines.

Given the time and place and her main character’s position, author Santiago had to come to grips with the fact that Ana would have owned slaves. She tells USA Today that she “never thought she would create or love a heroine who owned slaves.” The NYT Book Review focuses on this aspect of the novel “The book’s strength is its Rubik’s Cube portrait of Ana, an unconventional, ambitious woman whose attitudes toward children, slaves and lovers perplex and engross.” People (which makes it a a People Pick in the 7/12 issue) hits that note more clearly,

With her tough portrait of a female planter, Santiago speculates, charitably but unromantically, about those who didn’t speak [about slavery[. Ana is emotionally intelligent enough to imagine how slaves might feel, to understand their longing for freedom, yet ruthless enough to use and punish them in order to flourish herself. Neither white witch nor angel, she is convincing despite her contradictions — indeed, because of them.

Conquistadora Esmeralda Santiago Retail Price: $27.50 Hardcover: 432 pages Publisher: Knopf – (2011-07-12) ISBN 9780307268327

Audio, Books on Tape;  Random House Audio;  Spanish, Suma/antillana
Audio and ebook on OverDrive

The major question on librarians’ minds at OverDrive’s Digipalooza, which concluded yesterday, was when Kindle users will be able to download from OverDrive. The debut is viewed with a mixture of excitement and anxiety. Librarians look forward to being able to serve Kindle users, but worry about being able to buy enough copies to meet the increased demand.

Throughout the conference, CEO Steve Potash, looking like a kid with a delicious secret, kept saying “soon” and, “I’m not allowed to announce a date yer.” During the final session, he delivered a broad hint,  by summarizing the main points of his “Crystal Ball Report” :

Streamlining (both downloading and ordering)
Explosion (we have gone from two reading devices to 85 and more are coming)
Premium (the library catalog as the most premium, value-added site on the Web)
Traffic (enormous growth coming by year’s end)

But Potash delivered a larger and more revolutionary vision in his report; the library website as the first place to go to find in-copyright ebooks with the WIN platform enhancements. For a title that the library does not own, users can recommend that the library buy it or buy it themselves from ebook retailers (including independent stores). As a result, Potash predicted, the value of owning a library card will grow exponentially and traffic will make last year’s increases look like “small fry.” To prepare, he has put his staff on “Maximum OverDrive” to ensure the system will be able to handle demand 100 times greater than last year.