Lionel Shriver first tried to get publishers interested in her book, The New Republic, in 1998, but her “lousy sales record” was going against her. The subject matter, terrorism, was also a problem. At that point, it wasn’t much on Americans minds. The events of 9/11 changed that, but The New Republic is darkly humorous and Americans were not ready for terrorism humor (Kurt Anderson famously said 9/11 marked “the death of irony.”)

The book finally releases tomorrow. Both the LA Times and Entertainment Weekly praise the satire, but not so much the plot. As the latter puts it,

The story is baggy and idling, with an ending that thuds.  The dialogue zings, though, and the writing is jazzy…The author can toss off a sharp sketch of a passing character in a phrase, and she’s got a gimlet eye for what’s phony, or affected, or even touchingly vain in human behavior.

By the way, Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence, tells O magazine that We Need to Talk about Kevin is one of the “books that made a difference” in her life. Her range is broad; she also includes The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory and J.D. Salinger’s Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters.

The New Republic Lionel Shriver Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover 400 pages Publisher: Harper – (2012-03-27) ISBN 9780062103321

Thorndike Large Type; Dreamscape Audio

The Today Show site offers “The Draper Papers,” a list of six titles that give a sense of that era, including two by ad execs. The contrast between the period covers and the updated versions demonstrates how much the show has stylized the past. (See also our earlier roundup of new titles by some other real mad men, and one woman.)

From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor: Front Line Dispatches from the Advertising War, Jerry Della Femina (S&S)

“For a nonfiction take on Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce’s three-martini lunches, office dalliances, and innovative ad campaigns, Della Femina’s frank and funny book is just the ticket. “Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner even cites the memoir as an inspiration for the series.”

Confessions of an Advertising Man, David Ogilvy, (current edition, Southbank Publishing)

“Unlike Della Femina’s book, Confessions of an Advertising Man is more of an advertising handbook, dispensing advice and wisdom from Madison Avenue wunderkind David Ogilvy. Regarded as the father of modern advertising, Ogilvy lays down some mind-blowing concepts that can benefit many industries and business professionals.”

CBS Sunday Morning‘s profile of Bell Labs, draws on Jon Gertner’s book, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation (Penguin, 3/15). After the show aired, the book rose to #36 on Amazon’s sales rankings (as of this post, it’s moved down a bit to #63). Several libraries are showing heavy holds on light ordering.

Reviewing it in the NYT last week, Michiko Kakutani said,

Mr. Gertner’s portraits of … the cadre of talented scientists who worked at Bell Labs are animated by a journalistic ability to make their discoveries and inventions utterly comprehensible — indeed, thrilling — to the lay reader. And they showcase, too, his novelistic sense of character and intuitive understanding of the odd ways in which clashing or compatible personalities can combine to foster intensely creative collaborations.

Hollywood enjoys playing with numbers.

Deadline reports that, as of Friday night, Hunger Games brought in $68.25 million at North American box offices.

That puts the film on track for a $140 million opening weekend. While many thought it would have the highest opening weekend ever, that number puts it behind Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, The Dark Knight, Spider-Man 3 and The Twilight Saga: New Moon. [UPDATE: The movie actually took in $155 million, putting it behind just the first two movies]

However, it is set to achieve several other milestones:

• Highest non-sequel opening weekend ever
• Highest debut single day for a non-sequel ever
• Highest March opening ever
• 5th highest opening day ever

Deadline also reports that, “Between the release of the first Hunger Games trailer in November 2011 and January 2012, the number of Collins’ books sold nearly doubled”

Jennifer Lawrence, once considered an imperfect fit for the role of Katniss (so much so that author Suzanne Collins felt the need to publicly defend the choice), is now being hailed for carrying the movie.

Lawrence is scheduled to appear in two more movies this year, including the horror movie, The House as the End of the Street, in September. She switches to an older role for a film based on The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick (Macmillan/FSG/SarahCrichton, 2008), playing a widow in her 30s’s, obsessed by the character played by Bradley Cooper. It is scheduled for release on Nov. 21 of this year.The book is a favorite of Nancy Pearl’s.

She has also signed to play the title role in the movie Serena, based on the acclaimed novel by Ron Rash (HarperCollins/Ecco; 2009). It is currently in pre-production.

With the launch of The Hunger Games movie this week, Hollywood is in full publicity mode to remind viewers that more dystopian sci-fi is coming their way. The production blog for the film adaptation of  Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game launched this week. It hits screens next year, on March 15, starring Hailee Steinfeld, Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley, Viola Davis and Abigail Breslin. The publicity is already giving a sales boost to the book, which moved up the Amazon’s rankings, from #351 to #199.

Also released this week, the teaser trailer for Stephenie Meyer’s adult sci-fi title, The Host (with Meyer in the production role); it will be shown before screenings of The Hunger Games this weekend. Audiences may be baffled by it. In terms of how little it gives away about the movie, it rivals the first John Carter trailers.

It’s scheduled to open two weeks after Ender’s Game, on March 29, 2013. Stills of the movie, starring Saoirse Ronan (The Lovely Bones) and Max Irons (Red Riding Hood), are featured in the new issue of People.

Featuring appropriately bright colors (the book is set in Miami), the cover of Tom Wolfe’s next, Back to Blood, was unveiled this week. With this title, Wolfe leaves  his long-time publisher, FSG to move to Little, Brown. He returns, however to editor Pat Strachan, who worked with Wolfe at FSG on several books, including Bonfire of the Vanities and The Right Stuff and is now at Little, Brown.

Below is the publisher’s description of the book scheduled for release is October.

As a police launch speeds across Miami’s Biscayne Bay-with officer Nestor Camacho on board-Tom Wolfe is off and running. Into the feverous landscape of the city, he introduces the Cuban mayor, the black police chief, a wanna-go-muckraking young journalist and his Yale-marinated editor; an Anglo sex-addiction psychiatrist and his Latina nurse by day, loin lock by night-until lately, the love of Nestor’s life; a refined, and oh-so-light-skinned young woman from Haiti and her Creole-spouting, black-gang-banger-stylin’ little brother; a billionaire porn addict, crack dealers in the ‘hoods, “de-skilled” conceptual artists at the Miami Art Basel Fair, “spectators” at the annual Biscayne Bay regatta looking only for that night’s orgy, yenta-heavy ex-New Yorkers at an “Active Adult” condo, and a nest of shady Russians. Based on the same sort of detailed, on-scene, high-energy reporting that powered Tom Wolfe’s previous bestselling novels, Back to Blood is another brilliant, spot-on, scrupulous, and often hilarious reckoning with our times.

Back to Blood: A Novel Tom Wolfe Retail Price: $30.00 Hardcover: 608 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2012-10-23) ISBN / EAN: 0316036315 / 9780316036313

Hachette Audio

In the following video, librarians present the case for  ebooks in libraries to major publishers at last week’s Association of American Publishers annual meeting (via Publishers Marketplace). The speakers are ALA President Molly Raphael; Jim Neal, Columbia University libraries; and Tony Marx, NYPL. In the audience  are the heads of most of the largest houses in publishing, including many that do not sell ebooks to libraries.

Video streaming by Ustream

Hunger Games is already expected to be a huge success when it opens tomorrow.The Hollywood Reporter says it “has the potential to score one of the top debuts of all time at the domestic box office.”  Rotten Tomatoes shows a 90% approval rating from critics — holdouts include Time magazine and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

 Slate jumps ahead to the final book in the trilogy, Mockingjay, warning it will “force filmmakers to turn massacre and despair into blockbuster entertainment.”

That trouble could be double; the third book in the series may be split in to two films. No release dates have been announced, but the second in the series, Catching Fire, is scheduled for Nov. 23, 2013.

Jeff Kinney and Abrams’ Amulet Book announced at  the Bologna Children’s Book Fair yesterday that the next Diary of a Wimpy Kid is coming on Nov. 13. It’s listed simply as Book 7, with the tagline “Love is in the Air.”

Love may be in the air, but, based on the cover (click on it to see a larger version), it seems Rodrick isn’t having much luck with it.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book 7 Jeff Kinney Retail Price: $13.95 Hardcover: 224 pages Publisher: Abrams/Amulet- (2012-11-13) ISBN / EAN: 1419705849 / 9781419705847

On NPR’s Fresh Air, reviewer Maureen Corrigan says she is often asked to recommend a suspense story like Caleb Carr’s The Alienist. Nearly twenty years after that book was a best seller, she has finally discovered “one of the worthiest successors yet,” Lyndsay Faye’s The Gods of Gotham.

The NYT review notes, this is the “riveting first installment of a planned series of crime thrillers.”

It is also available on audio from Dreamscape, which is downloadable from OverDrive.

The Gods of Gotham Lyndsay Faye Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 432 pages Publisher: Penguin/Putnam/Amy Einhorn Books – (2012-03-15) ISBN / EAN: 0399158375 / 9780399158377

Washington Post journalist Liza Mundy’s new book, The Richer Sex, asserts that women will soon inherit that title.

PW‘s prediction that the book “is sure to create a stir”  is coming true; it’s received major media attention; the cover of the new issue of Time magazine, a feature on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday and an appearance on CBS This Morning last week.

Holds in libraries are modest, but all copies are circulating.

The Richer Sex: How the New Majority of Female Breadwinners Is Transforming Sex, Love and Family Liza Mundy Retail Price: $27.00 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Simon & Schuster – (2012-03-20) ISBN / EAN: 1439197717 / 9781439197714

Tantor Audio

One of the titles in our roundup of books by a few of the real Mad Men (and one woman) rose to #100 on Amazon after the author was interviewed on NPR’s Morning Edition. Damn Good Advice (For People With Talent!): How To Unleash Your Creative Potential By America’s Master Communicator (Phaidon) by George Lois appears to be owned in just a handful of libraries.

Damn Good Advice (For People with Talent!): How To Unleash Your Creative Potential by America’s Master Communicator, George Lois George Lois Retail Price: $9.95 Paperback: 192 pages Publisher: Phaidon Press – (2012-03-12) ISBN / EAN: 0714863483 / 9780714863481

The new issue of Newsweek goes retro-modern, to celebrate the new season of Mad Men. Included is a comparison of what people were reading in 1966 vs. today (the #1 NYT Fiction best sellers, above). The earlier era is deemed superior, but several of those titles warrant spots on AwfulLibraryBooks.net.

The AMC series, Mad Men, returns for its 5th season on Sunday, after 17 long months. How accurate is the show? Former copy writer Jane Maas, often called “the real-life Peggy Olson,” writes about the era in Mad Women: The Other Side of Life on Madison Avenue in the ’60s and Beyond (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press; Tantor Audio).

On Saturday’s CBS This Morning, the 80-year-old says, “Whatever they did on the show, we did more…The only thing they got wrong is that women copy writers wore hats all the time, even in the ladies’ room.”

Andrew Cracknell also has first-hand knowledge of that world. He focuses less on tales of drinking and debauchery and more on the creativity that fueled a revolution in the formerly humdrum business in The Real Mad Men: The Renegades of Madison Avenue and the Golden Age of Advertising (Perseus/Running Press).  PW is a fan; “Advertising geeks will gobble this up, but even those completely unaware of Don Draper and Sterling Cooper will appreciate this lively and spirited account” and Adweek calls it “a thoughtful paean about the creative people who pioneered modern advertising and the dynamic cultural environment that influenced them.” Get a taste of it here.

Today, NPR’s Morning Edition interviewed one of the men behind that revolution, George Lois. His new book is Damn Good Advice (For People With Talent!): How To Unleash Your Creative Potential By America’s Master Communicator (Phaidon). The book’s trailer demonstrates Lois’s belief that any problem can be solved through creativity.

The AMC site includes a list of other Mad Men inspired books and the New York Public Library’s Billy Parrott is keeping a list of the books mentioned on the show.

It’s gone from whispered conversations and furtive downloads to best seller lists and mainstream coverage. The erotic novel dubbed “Mommy porn,” Fifty Shades of Grey, hits the upcoming NYT Trade Paperback Fiction Best Seller list at #1 (the ebook version continues at #1 on that list after its debut last week; the other two books in the trilogy are also on the lists in both formats). Entertainment Weekly gives it a surprisingly high B+  (the review is by a woman; it seems that men have more problems with the book  than women– see “It’s All Porn to Me, One Man’s Review of 50 Shades of Grey,” Jesse Kornbluth’s article,  “S&M for Dummies” in the Huffington Post and Dr. Drew repeatedly shaking his head over it — has Rush Limbaugh weighed in yet?).

It’s also featured as a “Buzz Book” in the new issue of People, which notes the author’s “clunky writing,” NPR examines into the book’s origin as Twilight fan fiction, Hollywood is buzzing about a movie rights auction (causing Entertainment Weekly‘s “PopWatch” blog to speculate on casting — Rupert Friend as the billionaire with a bondage fixation who seduces an innocent  young women played by Rooney Mara).

Those libraries that have ordered it are now showing heavy holds. The RH/Vintage print edition is listed as releasing on April 3 and  is currently available in ebook from OverDrive. The original print edition, from the small Australian publisher The Writer’s Coffee Shop is POD, ISBN 9781612130293. It’s been difficult to obtain, raising the question of how the it landed on the NYT list (UPDATE: the NYT list is now posted; Fifty Shades, at  #1, is followed by the second and third titles in the trilogy, at #17 and #18. All are listed as the Vintage print editions, which supposedly are not available yet. Curiouser and curiouser.)