The former head of the Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Prize in Literature, Horace Engdahl, said in 2008, “The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining,”

As if to refute that accusation, Americans sent translations of the new Nobel Prize winner, Mo Yan’s books, zooming up Amazon’s sales rankings, one of them well ahead of all the recently announced National Book Award finalists.

Red Sorghum: a Novel of China (Penguin/Viking) rose to #16 this morning. The highest ranking NBA finalist, This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz, rose to #44 on the news of its nomination. Red Sorghum was featured as the lead-in to an interview with Mo’s primary English translator, Howard Goldblatt, on NPR’s All Things Considered yesterday.

Also on the rise are the following, published by Arcade Publishing. Norton, which distributes Arcade, has alerted us that reprints will be available on Monday through wholesalers:

#73 (was #114,315) — Life and Death are Wearing Me Out 

#129 (previously unranked) —  The Garlic Ballads 

#165 (was #239,260) — Big Breasts and Wide Hips

Unranked (listed on Amazon as out of print; reprint coming on Monday) — The Republic of Wine, (excerpted in the Wall Street Journal this week).

In an appraisal of the author’s work in today’s New York Times, Howard Goldblatt, described as “Mr. Mo’s adroit translator,” offers this advice to people who want to read Mo’s books,

If you like Poe, you’ll love the forthcoming Sandalwood Death [University of Oklahoma Press; early January 2013]; if you’re more Rabelaisian, The Republic of Wine will appeal, and if you’re fond of a fabulist, I recommend Life and Death are Wearing Me Out.

The NYT also offers brief excerpts from the books.

As we noted earlier, the Guardian gives a handy rundown of “Mo Yan’s best books — in pictures.”

As media attention on the election heats up, publishers are playing it safe with no-brainers, like the Rolling Stones 50, a tribute to the decades-old British rock band, and a home design book by talk show host Nate Berkus, or review-driven titles like historian Henry Wiencek’s new look at Thomas Jefferson and his slaves.  In fiction, Justin Cronin‘s followup to his blockbuster post-apocalyptic vampire novel is eagerly awaited, but is already disappointing a few reviewers. A title to watch is a cozy English novel about the Queen playing hooky. Usual suspects include Nelson DeMille, Iris Johansen, Patricia Cornwell and YA author P.C. Cast. Plus movie tie-ins to Twilight, Silver Linings and Spielberg’s Lincoln.

Watch List

Mrs. Queen Takes the Train by William Kuhn (HarperCollins; Dreamscape Audio) finds the bored Queen of England leaving the palace on a walkabout, in search of fun. It has been popular among librarians on our GalleyChat on Twitter, one of whom said, “It’s jam packed full with great Palace insider gossip and details. In the year of the Diamond Jubilee, royal watchers will eat this up! It’s fun and light.”

The Twelve by Justin Cronin (RH/Ballantine; BOT Audio;  Wheeler Large Print) is the second installment in the trilogy that began with the hit The Passage, a post-apocalyptic vampire novel by an author previously known for his quiet literary novels. This one is getting early press attention, including a profile in last week’s NYT Magazine. The L.A. Times warns, however, “even the most devoted fans may notice a bit of a sophomore slump.” The Washington Post‘s Ron Charles, says the previous title was “the scariest, most entertaining novel I’d read in a long time…Now, finally, comes the long-awaited second volume, and as much as it pains me to say it, The Twelve bites.” Entertainment Weekly is more generous, giving it a B+, even though it “doesn’t always match The Passage‘s dexterous storytelling and almost-plausible world creation…it’s still an unnerving and mostly satisfying tale of existential-threat disaster and its harrowing aftermath.”

Usual Suspects

The Panther by Nelson DeMille (Hachette/Grand Central; Hachette Audio; Hachette Large Print) finds Former NYPD detective John Corey and his FBI agent wife, Kate Mayfield, hunting a mastermind of the Al Qaeda attack on the USS Cole in 2000. Kirkus calls it, “quintessential DeMille: action-adventure flavored with double-dealing and covert conspiracy.”

Sleep No More by Iris Johansen (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; Thorndike Large Print) is the 14th Eve Duncan novel. This time the forensic sculptor, who has spent many novels investigating the disappearance of her daughter, discovers that she has a half-sister. PW says, “Series fans will be pleased to discover that Beth, like Eve, is a strong woman who has endured many trials in her past.”

The Bone Bed by Patricia Cornwell (Penguin/Putnam; Penguin Audio; Thorndike Large Print) finds forensic expert Kay Scarpetta digging into a case involving a missing paleontologist. LJ says, “Cornwell has been struggling lately; see what happens, and buy for her fans.”

Angel’s Ink: The Asylum Tales (Harper Voyager trade pbk original) marks the launch of The Asylum Tales, a new series by the New York Times bestselling author of the Dark Days novels. This one features a magical tattoo artist. An ebook-only short story (available on OverDrive), The Asylum Interviews: Trixie came out in September to whet appetites.

The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton (S&S/Atria) has been big on GalleyChat. Some think it’s her best; “Family secrets, suspense. Another winner.” This week’s People magazine concurs, giving it 4 of 4 stars and saying,”Morton weaves an intriguing mystery, shifting between past and present and among fully realized characters harboring deep secrets.”

Young Adult

Hidden by P.C. Cast, Kristin Cast (St. Martin’s Griffin; Macmillan Audio; Thorndike Large Print) is the 10th installment in the House of Night series by this mother-daughter writing team.

Nonfiction

The Rolling Stones 50 by The Rolling Stones with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood (Hyperion) commemorates the band’s long history and survival in photos. Kirkus says it’s a “soulless corporate birthday party that sheds no new light on its well-traveled subjects.”

Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves by Henry Wiencek (Macmillan/FSG ; HighBridge Audio) is the latest from the 1999 National Book Critics Circle Award winner for The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White. Here, Wiencek “deftly explores the economic calculus behind Jefferson’s gradual cooling toward emancipation and eventual acceptance of human capital as a great ‘investment opportunity,” according to LJ.

The Things That Matter by Nate Berkus (Speigel & Grau) is an illustrated guide to creating a home full of meaningful things, by the designer who got a push from Oprah and now has his own talk show.

Movie Tie-Ins

The Twilight Saga: The Complete Film Archive: Memories, Mementos, and Other Treasures from the Creative Team Behind the Beloved Motion Pictures ties into the November 16 release of (can you believe it?) the the last installment in the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn, Part 2.

The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick (Macmillan/FSG/Sarah Crichton Books) ties in to the movie to be released on November 21, starring Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert DeNiro. It won the top prize at the Toronto Interntional Film Festival.

Team of Rivals; Lincoln Film Tie-in Edition by Doris Kearns Goodwin (S&S trade paperback; S&S audio tie-in) ties in to Stephen Spielberg’s Lincoln, starring Daniel Day Lewis. It opens in a limited run on November 9, releasing nationwide on November 16, and is based on the later sections of  Team of Rivals.

The “gateway book” to the Nobel winner’s work

Mo Yan became the first Chinese writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature today, confounding expectations of UK bettors, who had him running well behind the lead, Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami.

According to the citation, “Through a mixture of fantasy and reality, historical and social perspectives, Mo Yan has created a world reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez, at the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition.”

The Guardian gives a handy rundown of “Mo Yan’s best books — in pictures.”

According to a scholar quoted by the Guardian, the author is “probably the most translated living Chinese writer.” Several of his titles are published here by Arcade Publishing (distributed by Norton; UPDATE: the publisher sent out an alert that reprints are in the works):

Big Breasts and Wide Hips; the Guardian notes, “Mo Yan’s most recent novel, tells of the consequences of the single-child policy implemented in China through the story of a rural gynaecologist.”

Life and Death are Wearing Me Out; called “a brilliant extended fable” by translator Howard Goldblatt

The Garlic Ballads; an earlier edition from Penguin/Viking is owned by many libraries. According to the Guardian, “Nobel permanent secretary Peter Englund picked out The Garlic Ballads, first published in English in 1995, as Mo Yan’s gateway book.”

The Republic of Wine  — the 2000 Arcade edition is owned many libraries;  translator, Goldblatt says this “may be the most technically innovative and sophisticated novel from China I’ve read.”

Shifu, You’ll Do Anything for a Laugh  –– the 2001 Arcade edition is owned by many libraries; a collection of short stories that “ranges from comedy to tragedy via fantasy and fable.”

The following title is published by Penguin/Viking:

Red Sorghum: a Novel of China — the Guardian says this is “Mo Yan’s best-known work in the west, thanks to Zhang Yimou’s 1987 film, which was based on the first two chapters of the novel, Red Sorghum follows three generations of a family as they survive all the horrors that the 20th century unleashed on rural China.”

A few of the nominees for the National Book Awards moved up Amazon’s sales rankings after yesterday’s announcement. The lesser-known, or most recently released titles made the greatest leaps.

Only two of the finalists are currently in the Amazon top ten. Junot Diaz’s This Is How You Lose Her (Penguin/Riverhead) is at #44 (up slightly from the day before). It’s moved down since a high of #16 after a string of reviews, culminating in the 9/20 NYT Book Review

The Round House, by Louise Erdrich, Harper is at #82. The nomination came shortly after its publication on 10/2 and a week of multiple reviews (Minneapolis Star Tribune, Kansas City Star, USA Today, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Miami Herald).

Third in sales rankings of the nominees is The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers, (Hachette/ Little, Brown), at #169, up slightly from the previous day and down from a high of #80 after this Sunday’s cover review in the  NYT BR.

After the jump, all the  finalists by Amazon Sales Rankings, excluding poetry, as of this morning (gathered via Publishers Marketplace‘s Book Tracker tool). Note that the NBA has far less effect on sales rankings for children’s titles than the Newbery/Caldecott/Printz Awards. Most of those winners and honorees moved into the top 100 immediately following their announcements.

National Book Award Finalists by Amazon Rankings (as of 8 a.m. 10/11/12)

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Below is the video of yesterday’s announcement of the National Book Awards finalists.

Let’s hope the Today Show takes the hint and returns to featuring the Newbery/Caldecott winners the day after they are announced.

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The Poetry Finalists, just announced on Morning Joe: (annotations from the National Book Foundation)

David Ferry
Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations
University of Chicago Press

The passionate nature and originality of Ferry’s poems modulates beautifully between plainspoken high eloquence and colloquial vigor, making his distinctive speech one of the most interesting and ravishing achievements of the past half century

Cynthia Huntington
Heavenly Bodies
Southern Illinois University Press

In this blistering collection of lyric poems, Cynthia Huntington gives an intimate view of the sexual revolution and rebellion in a time before the rise of feminism.

Tim Seibles
Fast Animal
Etruscan Press

The newest collection from one of America’s foremost African-American poets threads the journey from youthful innocence to the whittled-hard awareness of adulthood

Alan Shapiro
Night of the Republic
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

In Night of the Republic, Alan Shapiro takes us on an unsettling night tour of America’s public places―a gas station restroom, a shoe store, a convention hall, and a race track, among other locations―and in stark, Edward Hopper-like imagery reveals the surreal and dreamlike features of these familiar but empty night spaces.

Susan Wheeler
Meme
University of Iowa Press

A meme is a unit of thought replicated by imitation. Occupy Wall Street is a meme, as are internet ideas and images that go viral. But what could be more potent memes than those passed down by parents to their children? Susan Wheeler reconstructs her mother’s voice—down to its cynicism and its mid-twentieth-century Midwestern vernacular—in “The Maud Poems,” a voice that takes a more aggressive, vituperative turn in “The Devil—or —The Introjects.”

The Nonfiction Finalists, just announced on Morning Joe: (annotations from the National Book Foundation)

Anne Applebaum
Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945-1956
RH/Doubleday

Iron Curtain describes how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete, how political parties, the church, the media, young people’s organizations―the institutions of civil society on every level―were eviscerated, how the secret police services were organized, how ethnic cleansing was carried out, and how some people were forced to collaborate while others managed to resist.

Katherine Boo
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
Random House

Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport. As India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope: Individual stories of courage set against the backdrop of tensions over religion, caste, sex, power and economic envy.

Robert A. Caro
The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 4
RH/Knopf

The fourth installment in Robert Caro’s monumental work on President Lyndon Johnson, The Passage of Power follows Johnson through both the most frustrating and the most triumphant periods of his career: 1958 to 1964

Domingo Martinez
The Boy Kings of Texas
Globe Pequot Press/Lyons Press

Domingo Martinez lays bare his interior and exterior worlds as he struggles to make sense of the violent and the ugly, along with the beautiful and the loving, in a Texas border town in the 1980s. First Book

Anthony Shadid
House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

In the spring of 2011, when Anthony Shadid—one of four New York Times reporters captured in Libya as the region erupted—was freed, he went to his ancestral home, Marjayoun, Lebanon…to an ancient estate built by his great-grandfather, a place filled with memories of a lost era when the Middle East was a world of grace, grandeur, and unexpected departures, and tells the story of the house’s re-creation, revealing its mysteries and recovering the lives that have passed through it. Shadid died on February 16, 2012 from an asthma attack while on assignment on the Syrian border.

Just announced on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, the National Book Awards finalists for fiction (annotations from the National Book Foundation):

This Is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz, Penguin/Riverhead

Diaz’s second collection of short stories featuring the alter ego “Yunior”, who as a boy and young man was the central character in his first collection “Drown”. His voice is distinctive, mixing popular and high culture, comic books and literature.

The Yellow Birds, Kevin Powers, Hachette/ Little, Brown

In Al Tafar, Iraq, twenty-one-year-old Private Bartle and eighteen-year-old Private Murphy cling to life as their platoon launches a bloody battle for the city. First Novel

The Round House, Louise Erdrich, Harper

One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe.

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Ben Fountain, HarperCollins/Ecco

After a ferocious firefight with Iraqi insurgents at “the battle of Al-Ansakar Canal”—three minutes and forty-three seconds of intense warfare caught on tape by an embedded Fox News crew—has transformed the eight surviving men of Bravo Squad into America’s most sought-after heroes, the Bush administration has sent them on a media-intensive nationwide Victory Tour to reinvigorate public support for the war, including being featured as part of the halftime show at a Dallas Cowboys game, alongside the superstar pop group Destiny’s Child. First Novel

A Hologram for the King, Dave Eggers, McSweeney’s Books

In a rising Saudi Arabian city, far from weary, recession-scarred America, a struggling businessman pursues a last-ditch attempt to stave off foreclosure, pay his daughter’s college tuition, and finally do something great, with mixed results.

The finalists for the National Book Awards are being announced on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

First up, the kids titles (sorry “Young People’s Literature”). Annotations from the National Book Foundation:

Goblin Secrets, William Alexander, S&S.Margaret K. McElderry

Rownie, the youngest in Graba the witchworker’s household of stray children, escapes and goes looking for his missing brother. Along the way he falls in with a troupe of theatrical goblins and learns the secret origins of masks.

Out of Reach, Carrie Arcos, S&S/Simon Pulse

Rachel has always idolized her older brother Micah. He struggles with addiction, but she tells herself that he’s in control. And she almost believes it. Until the night that Micah doesn’t come home.

Never Fall Down,  Patricia McCormick, HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray

When the Khmer Rouge arrive at his hometown in Cambodia, Arn is just a kid, dancing to rock ‘n’ roll, hustling for spare change, and selling ice cream with his brother. But after the soldiers march the entire population into the countryside, Arn is separated from his family and assigned to a labor camp. One day, the soldiers ask if any of the kids can play an instrument. In order to survive, Arn must quickly master the strange revolutionary songs the soldiers demand. This will save his life, but it will also pull him into the very center of what we know today as the Killing Fields.

Endangered, Eliot Schrefer, Scholastic

When Sophie has to visit her mother at her sanctuary for bonobos in Congo, she’s not thrilled to be there. It’s her mother’s passion, and Sophie doesn’t want to have anything to do with it. At least not until Otto, an infant bonobo, comes into her life, and for the first time she feels the bond a human can have with an animal.

Bomb: The Race to Build–and Steal–the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon, Steve Sheinkin, Macmillan/Flash Point

In December of 1938, a chemist in a German laboratory made a shocking discovery: When placed next to radioactive material, a Uranium atom split in two. That simple discovery launched a scientific race that spanned three continents. This is the story of the plotting, risk-taking, deceit, and genius that created the world’s most formidable weapon. This is the story of the atomic bomb.

Former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky was sentenced to at least 30 years in prison today for child molestation.

A memoir, Silent No More, (RH/Ballantine), written by “Victim One” along with his mother and pyschologist, is being released on Oct. 23rd. “Victim One” testified dramatically at the Sandusky trial. His identity has been kept a secret (thus no cover is available yet), but will be revealed when he is interviewed by ABC’s Chris Cuomo on the day of the book’s release. The interview will air on World News and Nightline that night and on Good Morning America the following day.

In a recorded prison statement released yesterday, Sandusky referred to Victim #1, saying “A young man who was dramatic, a veteran accuser who always sought attention started everything. He was joined by a well-orchestrated effort of the media, investigators, the system, Penn State, psychologists, civil attorneys and other accusers.”

The National Book Awards gets some needed media attention tomorrow. Although MSNBC’s Morning Joe, isn’t known for its book coverage, it will be the venue for the announcement of the Awards finalists tomorrow, by David Steinberger, publisher of Perseus Books, and chair of the National Book Foundation’s Board of Directors. The winners will be announced on Nov. 14.

No news on time; the show airs from 6:00 to 9:00 am ET. We will post the video when it is available

GoodReads proves once again that reading stats can be fun (click on the image, or here, to find out which side is more likely to  be a fan of Atlas Shrugged).

From space to vaginas to the super-rich, Colbert shows quite a range this week.

Tonight, Oct. 8

Former astronaut Mark Kelly on his new children’s book, Mousetronaut: Based on a (Partially) True Story (Simon & Schuster/Wiseman; 10/9/12).

Wednesday, Oct. 9

Naomi Wolf, Vagina: A New Biography (Harper/Ecco; 8/24/12).

Thursday, Oct. 10

Chrystia Freeland, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else (Penguin Press, 10/11/12).

Songwriter/guitarist for The Who, Pete Townshend talked about his memoir, Who I Am, which releases today (Harper; HarperAudio; and, how telling is this? It is also available in larger print from HarperLuxe) on the Today Show this morning.

For those who want the shorthand version, the Daily Beast offers a “speed read” of the book’s highlights.

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One of the buzz books from BEA, the debut novel, The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers (Hachette/Little, Brown; Thorndike Press; Hachette Audio) was featured on the cover of Sunday’s New York Times Book Review. The author enlisted in the Army at 17 and served in Iraq. The novel features a young American soldier’s life in the Army, from basic training, through fighting in Iraq, confinement in a military prison and his difficult reentry into civilian life.

The review is not completely positive, but ends, “Kevin Powers has something to say, something deeply moving about the frailty of man and the brutality of war, and we should all lean closer and listen.”

The author also appeared on the PBS NewsHour on Friday.

The Yellow Birds rose to #101 on Amazon’s sales rankings over the weekend. Some libraries are showing heavy holds.

Watch Conversation: Kevin Powers, Author of ‘The Yellow Birds’ on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Powers also read from his book on the show, watch the video here.