In this Sunday’s NYT Magazine Frank Bruni profiles Katie Lee, aspiring food celebrity.

She appears regularly on The Early Show. Her cooking column, Eat This Up, appears monthly in Cosmopolitan. She’s published books; a requirement for any food celebrity. The first book even landed her a spot on Oprah (perhaps largely because her husband at the time, Billy Joel, appeared with her).

Sales of Lee’s second book, minus the Oprah effect, have been modest. Lee observes to Bruni that the cookbooks that sell the best are by people who have their own show. Having failed to sell an earlier pilot, she is now working on another one. She also has a contract with S&S for a novel, loosely based on her life with Billy Joel.

Trying to become famous must be exhausting.

The Comfort Table: Recipes for Everyday Occasions Katie Lee Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 272 pages Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment – (2009-10-20) ISBN / EAN: 1439126747 / 9781439126745

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The Comfort Table Katie Lee Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment – (2008-04-01) ISBN / EAN: 141694835X / 9781416948353

After dozens of high-profile best selling titles about various aspects of the financial crisis, the most anticipated title, and the one the may be the most accessible to the broadest audience is…

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine Michael Lewis Retail Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company – (2010-03-15) ISBN / EAN: 0393072231 / 9780393072235

It arrives with much fanfare; an excerpt in Vanity Fair, appearances on Sixty Minutes (Sunday), the Today Show, NPR’s All Things Considered, and Jon Stewart, among others on Monday, followed by Fresh Air and Charlie Rose on Tuesday.

Holds in libraries are surprisingly light; all the publicity could change that.

Viking’s big early spring debut, Angelology, is bringing hosannas from some and pitchforks from others.

Viking wasn’t the only publisher to see potential in the book; they were one of seven houses to bid on it last year, and won with a rumored six-figure deal, (Publishers Weekly, 1/28/09). Shortly after, movie rights were sold for $1 million to Columbia (see our earlier story).

USA Today gives it the love in the current issue,

What do you get when an Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate and critically acclaimed memoirist [Falling Through the Earth, 2006] trolls for the same readers who loved Dan Brown’s search for the grail of best-sellerdom in The Da Vinci Code? In the case of Danielle Trussoni’s Angelology, a spellbinding quest novel.

And, further,

[Trussoni] has worked out her fantasy scheme brilliantly. Her literary riddles resolve with the aesthetically pleasing precision of a well-oiled antique clock. She offers up intriguing characters, lyrical nature descriptions, hidden clues, secret codes, hidden manuscripts and treasure hunts, creating a sumptuous and surprising novel.

As we noted earlier, both People and the NYT BR featured Angelology as their lead reviews last week and both were won over. The Chicago Tribune is not so appreciative, saying that the plot is “so convoluted it makes The Da Vinci Code look like a model of clarity” and the reviewer notes regretfully that Trussoni is at work on a sequel. In the daily NYT, Janet Maslin says it’s “prettily written,” but goes on to detail the book’s “nonsenical” story line. Perhaps most damning, she notes that “Ms. Trussoni does not even tie up this book’s loose ends. She leaves her story in virtual midair…”

In the libraries we checked, holds are averaging just 3:1 on light ordering.

Angelology Danielle Trussoni Retail Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 464 pages Publisher: Viking Adult – (2010-03-09) ISBN / EAN: 0670021474 / 9780670021475

Penguin Audiobooks: 03/09/2010; $39.95; ISBN 9780143145264

…is heeeere!

The movie opens June 30th. The official site is here.

On Tuesday night, Jon Stewart interviewed Mark Thiessen on Comedy Central’s Daily Show. Going in, you had to know, simply from the title of the book, Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack, that the interview would be contentious.

The extended interview continues in two additional parts:

• Marc Thiessen Extended Interview Pt. 2
• Marc Thiessen Extended Interview Pt. 3

Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack Marc A. Thiessen Retail Price: $29.95 Hardcover: 376 pages Publisher: Regnery Press – (2010-01-18) ISBN / EAN: 1596986034 / 9781596986039

As an NPR correspondent covering Iraq, Deborah Amos became interested in talking to Iraqis, not an easy task under Saddam, when they feared talking, or now, as violence has made communication nearly impossible. Nonetheless, she never tires of Iraq. As she told Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air last night (listen here),

I actually love the culture. I love the food, and the people — and I’m comfortable there. … I’m always happy when I get off the plane, and it hardly matters where I land.

Her new book is about the forced migration of the Sunnis.

Eclipse of the Sunnis: Power, Exile, and Upheaval in the Middle East Deborah Amos Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: PublicAffairs – (2010-03-09) ISBN / EAN: 1586486497 / 9781586486495

Today’s Oprah Show repeats the January segment that launched Alicia Silverstone’s vegetarian book, The Kind Diet, which is still on the NYT Hardcover Advice list, currently at #2. Also on the show is Michael Pollan, discussing his book, Food Rules, which is at #1 on the Paperback Advice list.

Jonathan Safran Foer appeared on the The Ellen DeGeneres show yesterday; as a result, his book on vegetarianism, Eating Animals, rose from #383 on Amazon to #6.

It’s amazing to realize that there was a time before consulting firms and endless talk about business strategy. The former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review writes about how we got here in Lords of Strategy. It’s currently rising on Amazon (now at #308), even though the listing indicates it won’t be published for three more weeks (the publisher listing, however, shows a 3/3/10 pub date).

It was just reviewed in the The Wall Street Journal, “Big Think In the Boardroom“;

…a clear, deft and cogent portrait of what the author calls the most powerful business idea of the past half-century: the realization that corporate leaders needed to abandon their go-it-alone focus on their company’s fortunes and instead pursue policies based on a detailed study of the competitive environment and of broader business trends.

The author was interviewed earlier in Business Week; “Lords of Strategy: A Talk with Walter Kiechel.”

The Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World Walter Kiechel Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Harvard Business School Press – (2010-03-03) ISBN / EAN: 1591397820 / 9781591397823

Check your holdings; it wasn’t review prepub and the libraries we checked have not ordered it yet.

Harry Markopolos, a Boston deratives analyst, was asked by his boss to look into a very successful hedge fund and try to figure out why it was doing so well. He instantly realized that it was a fraud and tried many times to blow the whistle on it. He wasn’t subtle; in 2000, he sent a memo to the SEC  titled “The World’s Largest Hedge Fund is a Fraud.” Fittingly, his book about the experience is titled No One Would Listen.

That fund was, of course, Bernie Madoff’s. In an interview with Jon Stewart on Monday night, Markopolos was clear about his distain for the SEC, causing Stewart to burst out, “You are an angry dude; you’re just rippin‘ these guys.”

The book rose to #18 on Amazon (it’s now at #21) and has heavy holds in libraries.

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No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller Harry Markopolos Retail Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 376 pages Publisher: Wiley – (2010-03-02) ISBN / EAN: 0470553731 / 9780470553732

ebook available from OverDrive

In a first novel by award-winning short story writer Eric Puchner, a California real estate developer is going broke and hiding that fact from his family. Alan Cheuse reviews the book, Model Home, on NPR’s All Things Considered (listen here), saying,

I came to feel so deeply for [the characters] that the book now and then became almost excruciating to read: the feckless parents, the desperate kids struggling to stay alive and in love with a home world crumbling around them.

People gave it their highest accolade, 4 of a possible 4 stars. It was also reviewed by,

• SF Chronicle ‘Model Home,’ by Eric Puchner
• NYT Nightmare on Easy Street

Model Home Eric Puchner Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher: Scribner – (2010-02-09) ISBN / EAN: 0743270487 / 9780743270489

Audio from Tantor:

On Sale Date: 04/05/2010
Trade 9781400116522 12 Audio CDs $39.99
Library 9781400146529 12 Audio CDs $79.99
MP3 9781400166527 2 MP3-CD $29.99

The movie based on Neil Gaiman’s Coraline was nominated for an Academy Award, but did not win. CBS Sunday Morning must have expected a different outcome; they ran a piece about Gaiman the day of the awards.

The author’s characteristic charm is on full display.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

As we noted Monday, an Amazon computer glitch caused some pricey comics titles to drop precipitously in price and sales to skyrocket (the Amazon Top 100 were all comic titles at one point).

Publishers Weekly reported yesterday that some buyers received their purchases, while others received cancellation letters. Distributor Diamond Comics is in discussions with Amazon; “No doubt, they are also discussing who will take the economic hit if they honor some of these orders, a hit that could amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars,” says PW.

As Terry Gross says in her interview with Melissa Febos on NPR’s Fresh Air last night, “this may be the first memoir by a dominatrix who grew up listening to NPR,” a reflection of her obvious intelligence which is behind the book’s clever title, Whip Smart (listen to the interview here).

Why did she become a dominatrix? She couldn’t get a job in publishing.

The book rose to #77 (from 10,630) on Amazon.

Whip Smart: A Memoir Melissa Febos Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books – (2010-03-02) ISBN / EAN: 0312561024 / 9780312561024

Three books are the reviewers’ darlings of the moment. Oddly, they all have extremely short titles; Surrendered by Chang-rae Lee, Infinities by Jon Banville and The Ask by Sam Lipsyte.

Leading the pack in number of holds is The Ask. It was ordered in the lowest quantities, so it also has the highest ratio of holds, averaging 8:1 in libraries we checked. Booklist starred this “darkly humorous story.” It received equally strong reviews from Kirkus and PW, but LJ felt that, despite being a “A treasure trove of brilliant asides and one-liners,” it “never really comes together as a coherent novel.”

The consumer press is also divided,

• NYT BR, 3/7, Lydia Millett; “Lipsyte is not only a smooth sentence-maker, he’s also a gifted critic of power…What makes The Ask work so well is the way it dovetails its characters’ self-loathing with their self-consciousness…And that’s why this book is a success: not only the belly laughs but also the sadness attendant upon the cultural failure it describes.”

• LA Times, Misery loves company: Sam Lipsyte’s LipSite; “The Ask delivers its articulation of class rage in a sometimes mean-spirited package.”

The author is also being featured in interviews,

• WSJ, Slouching Toward Success; “Having made failure the signature theme of his fiction, Mr. Lipsyte seems especially unprepared for the critical success of his new novel, The Ask.”

• The Daily Beast, The Slacker Generation’s Swift

• New York magazine, “The Loser Chronicles: With his new novel, The Ask, Sam Lipsyte finds the funny in failure.”

The Ask: A Novel Sam Lipsyte Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux – (2010-03-02) ISBN / EAN: 0374298912 / 9780374298913

BBC Audio; UNABR; 9780792770794; 7 CD’s;  $89.95

Audio available from OverDrive

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The Surrendered is the second in number of holds, but, because of an average of twice as many copies on order, hold ratios are less than 3:1. Michiko Kakutani gives it a strong review in the NYT today, ending with a Michiko-style back-hand compliment,

If the reader stops and thinks about it, there are lots of infelicities of craft in this novel…But Mr. Lee writes with such intimate knowledge of his characters’ inner lives and such an understanding of the echoing fallout of war that most readers won’t pause to consider such lapses — they will be swept up in the power of The Surrendered and its characters’ aching and indelible stories.

The Surrendered Chang-rae Lee Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 480 pages Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover – (2010-03-09) ISBN / EAN: 1594489769 / 9781594489761

ebook available from OverDrive

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Infinities, by John Banville has been reviewed nearly everywhere but is described most memorably by Laura Miller in Sunday’s NYT BR,

If The Infinities has the bones of a novel of ideas, it’s fleshed out and robed as a novel of sensibility and style. Its drapery is velvet and brocade — sumptuous and at times over-heavy.

Other reviewers agree with her assessment that,

Fortunately, lavish demonstrations of literary virtuosity don’t bog down The Infinities, as they often did with The Sea, the novel that won Banville the Man Booker Prize in 2005.

Library holds, however, are modest.

The Infinities John Banville Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Knopf – (2010-02-23) ISBN / EAN: 0307272796 / 9780307272799

RH Audio; UNABR; 9780307706652; $35

More national press is arriving for Letters to Jackie (see our earlier story).

The AP ran a story that was picked up by many news outlets today. Author Ellen Fitzpatrick and two of the letter writers in the book will appear on CBS Evening News tonight and the New York Times is running a story in the “National” section tomorrow. The book rose to #195 on Amazon today.

Letters to Jackie: Condolences from a Grieving Nation Ellen Fitzpatrick Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Ecco – (2010-03-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061969842 / 9780061969843

ebook available from OverDrive.