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.
Links on the far right of the site offer information useful to readers advisors.
Hope to see you during our next chat,
GalleyChatters
On Sunday, the Amazon Top 100 list suddenly was all graphic novels in expensive hardcover versions. Our GN contributor, Robin Brenner, discovered that a pricing glitch suddenly caused prices to drop. Word traveled via Twitter and blogs, and fans began snapping them up.
Sorry, the “sale” is over; the glitch has now been fixed.
Lots of authors on tap for the week:
Mon, 3/8 — Harry Markopolos — the man who led an investigation that brought down Bernie Madoff.
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ebook available from OverDrive
Tues, 3/9 — Marc Thiessen who says, “Barack Obama did arguably more damage to America’s national security in his first 100 days of office than any president in American history.”
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Wed, 3/10 — Eamon Javers on the world of business warfare.
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ebook available on OverDrive
Tues, 3/9 — Annie Leonard. Her video, The Story of Stuff has been downloaded millions of times.
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S&S Audio; UNABR; 9780743599153; $26
Wed, 3/10 — Sean Carroll; ideas from the cutting edge of theoretical physics
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Tantor Audio:
Trade; 9781400115655; 13 Audio CD; $39.99
Library; 9781400145652; 13 Audio CD; $79.99
MP3; 9781400165650; 2 MP3-CD; $29.99
Thurs, 3/11 — David Aaronov on conspiracy theories.
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Tantor Audio
Trade; 9781400115921; 12 Audio CD; $39.99
Library; 9781400145928; 12 Audio CD; $79.99
MP3; 9781400165926; 2 MP3-CD; $29.99
Happy Monday!
Since your mind may be a little clouded from Oscar night (see our roundup of Oscar tie-ins), here’s a quick wrap-up of what else you need to know from the weekend:
Hurrah! This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All by Marilyn Johnson gets a great review in the 3/7 NYT Book Review and rises to #150 on Amazon (it’s now at #170 and, dare we say, that’s an amazingly high position for a book about a profession generally not considered that fascinating by the general public. We may actually see it on the 3/21 NYT Nonfiction best seller list).
The cover of the NYT BR features Angelology by Danielle Trussoni; remarkable because the BR rarely features a new popular-interest title with marketing muscle behind it (in what may be a first, both the NYT BR AND the People book section lead with a review of the same title). Despite some serious reservations, reviewer Susann Cokal calls it a “rousing story.” The book rose to #44; it’s destined for bestsellerdom.
In a brilliant move, the Book Review assigned Alexander McCall Smith to review Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson. Perhaps it’s no surprise that he loves this updating of the English village novel (too bad about the goofy illustration). The book has been receiving accolades from all over (we’re expecting it to be a sleeper success).
Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland topped the box office and Dorling Kindersley’s Disney’s Alice in Wonderland: The Visual Guide hit the 3/17 NYT BR Childrens Picture Books best seller list. Another Alice-related title rising on Amazon is The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition by Lewis Carroll, Martin Gardner, John Tenniel (W.W. Norton). Interest is coming from a different source; last week Lost featured the book. The original has been featured many times before on the show.
Making Toast by Roger Rosenblatt (Ecco) hits the 3/17 NYT Nonfiction list at #14. It has been bringing tears to many reviewer’s eyes; including this one in Sunday’s L.A. Times.
Little Bee goes to #1 on the Paperback Trade Fiction list, surging ahead of The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks (although it’s still at #1 on the Paperback Mass-Market Fiction list). Congrats to Santa Monica for making it their One City pick.
The NYT Magazine cover story “Building a Better Teacher” mentioned the following books, which rose on Amazon as a result:
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ebook available on OverDrive |
The following titles also rose over the weekend on Amazon (this information is from Saturday; on Sunday, a computer glitch caused graphic novels to dominate the list):
#2 (now at #23) — Now Eat This!: 150 of America’s Favorite Comfort Foods, All Under 350 Calories by Rocco DiSpirito (Ballantine Books)
#11 (now at #35) — Courage and Consequence by Karl Rove (Threshold Editions)
#21 (now at #52) — The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It by Scott Patterson (Crown Business). It was featured on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Thursday.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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#50 (was 962; now at #107) — Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan, 1942-1945 by Barrett Tillman (S&S) — WSJ review
#59 (now at #190) — The Coming Insurrection
As Publishers Weekly reports, Glenn Beck has been giving unwitting support to this book since he began ranting against it in July.
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#65 (was 215; now at #86)
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Martin was on NPR Weekend Edition Sat. (listen here) as well as on Comedy Central’s Colbert Report the week before (watch here). USA Today wrote about him on Wednesday — Jesuit priest James Martin moves in Mass, mass media.
The L.A. Times notes today that adults are reading Y.A. books; Young adult lit comes of age.
One telling, but unsourced stat:
Where adult hardcover sales were down 17.8% for the first half of 2009 versus the same period in 2008, children’s/young adult hardcovers were up 30.7%
Actually, the latest figures from the AAP show Adult Hardcover sales up 6.9 percent, year-end ’09 over the previous year and Children’s/YA Hardcover category down by 5.0 percent for the same period. However, that masks the fact that children’s and YA has been the bright spot in publishing for most of the decade.
Books and authors cited are:
- Stephenie Meyer, Twilight saga
- Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games trilogy
- Rick Riordan, Percy Jackson and the Olympians series
- Markus Zusak, The Book Thief and I Am the Messenger
- J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter series
- Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied
- Maggie Stiefvater, Shiver
- Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
- Anne Brashares, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series
- Adult authors who also write for YA — James Patterson, Carl Hiaasen, Francine Prose and Terry Pratchett
- Garth Nix, Sabriel
- Cecil Castellucci, Boy Proof and Beige
Below are the movies either based on books, or with tie-ins that won Academy Awards last night (for the books, go to our listing of movies In Theaters Now — with Tie-ins).
The Blind Side — Best Actress (Sandra Bullock)
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Crazy Heart — Best Actor (Jeff Bridges) and Best Song (The Weary Kind)
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Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire — Best Supporting Actress (Mo’Nique), Best Adapted Screenplay
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El secreto de sus ojos — Best Foreign Film — Eduardo Sacheri’s novel La pregunta de sus ojos (The Question In Their Eyes), Buenos Aires : Galerna, 2005.
Hurt Locker — Best Picture, Best Director (Kathryn Bigelow), Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing
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Avatar — Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects
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Star Trek — Best Makeup
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Up — Best Animated Feature, Best Music
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A couple of new vampire series have joined the many others on the NYT children’s lists. Cynthia Leitich Smith’s second YA dark fantasy, Eternal, debuts on the 3/14 NYT Children’s Paperback best seller list at #5.
The NYT annotation reads, “Vampires plus fallen angels equal romance.” Horn Book puts it this way,
Teen readers have lapped up the steady outpouring of vampire books, most of which feature a forbidden mortal/immortal romance. Here Smith creatively revamps the star-crossed pair as a “newly risen” eternal (read vampire), adolescent Miranda, and her fallen guardian angel, Zachary.
She also brings a refreshing touch of humor to the mix.
Eternal is a companion book to the author’s earlier title Tantilize (Candlewick, 2007). Coming next year is Blessed, in which the casts from the previous two books will cross over.
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Audio from Listening Library; UNABR; 9780739385616
Audio and ebook available from OverDrive
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Audio from Listening Library; UNABR; 9780739363997
Audio and ebook available from OverDrive
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Heather Brewer’s Chronicles of Vladimir Tod entered the competitive Series Books list at #5 two weeks ago and is now at #7. The series began with Eighth Grade Bites (Dutton, 2007). The fourth book in the series, Eleventh Grade Burns came out in hardcover last month and the paperback of Tenth Grade Bleeds came out in January, with Twelfth Grade Kills scheduled for September.
Brilliance is releasing the series in audio this summer.
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ebook available from OverDrive.
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ebook available from OverDrive.
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Stretching a bit to zombies, Carrie Ryan debuts on the Series Books list with The Forest of Hands and Teeth. The second book in the series, The Dead-Tossed Waves was just released. PW said the new book, “…functions as something of a retelling of [the previous] story, albeit with a different protagonist.”
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The paperback of the first volume was released last month.
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USA Today asks the burning question of the hour — with all the literary mashups already published and more on the way, will readers lose interest?
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, released last year from small publisher Quirk Books seemed, pardon the expression, like a quirk, but it now has over a million copies in print. Author Seth Grahame-Smith just released his second monster mash-up, this time with publisher Grand Central and using a historical figure, rather than a classic novel, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. The L.A. Times reviews it today and is wowed, saying that, freed from updating “a revered literary gem, the writer delivers a well-constructed, surprisingly satisfying narrative.”
It was announced this week that Honest Abe, V.H, is on the road to the big screen.
Below is USA Today’s selection of forthcoming titles; several publishers have followed Quirk Books in to the genre, including Del Rey, Pocket and HarperTeen.
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Releasing on Tuesday is Karl Rove’s memoir Courage and Consequence. The book is embargoed, but news began breaking about it this week (see NYT story, “Ultimate Bush Insider Lifts Veil on Presidency“). It is currently at #52 on Amazon.
Since there were no prepub reviews, you may want to check your holdings. However, most of the libraries we checked own it, with fewer than 1 hold per copy ordered.
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S&S Audio; ABRIDGED; 9781442334069; $29.99
Next week, The Story of Stuff, by environmentalist Annie Leonard, launches with the author’s appearance on the Colbert Report on Tuesday and an interview with Christine Amanpour on CNN.
Many know the author’s work because of her online video with the same title, which has been viewed by millions and has been used by teachers as a way to get students to think about sustainability. It achieved the ultimate compliment when it was banned by a Montana school board after a parent complained the video’s message is anti-capitalist. It was featured on the front page of the New York Times last May. The author wrote the book to answer questions she received from people had viewed the video online and wanted to know more.
The book received starred reviews in both LJ and Booklist; the PW and Kirkus reviews were also strong.
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S&S Audio; UNABR; 9780743599153; $26
Just posted on the NPR site, a review of Marilyn Johnson’s This Book is Overdue (warning: some librarian stereotypes, but used to illustrate how outdated they are).
We’re also expecting a review in the upcoming 3/7 NYT Book Review.
The book hit #130 last week, its highest point to date on Amazon sales rankings. Clearly, the general public is more interested in us than we imagined.
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Audio: Tantor; 2/22/10
Trade: 9781400116348; 7 CD’s; $34.99
Library: 9781400146345; 7 CD’s; $69.99
MP3: 9781400166343; 1 MP3-CD; $24.99
Earlier, we wrote that a book by the son of one of the founders of Hamas was making headlines around the world in advance of publication. The book is published by the Christian press Tyndale House. The author, a convert to Christianity, writes in the book about his new faith, but what is making headlines is his claim that he fed Hamas secrets to the Israelis.
News stories continue to break now that the book has been released. An interview with Christine Amanpour is running on CNN today.
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Tyndale Audio; 3/2; 9781414333090; $29.99
In the Washington Post this week, Patrick Anderson gave a glowing review to A Night Too Dark, by Dana Stabenow, the author’s 17th mystery, set in the wilds of Alaska.
He says that Stabenow “… is one of those regional crime novelists who too often don’t achieve national attention, ” adding, “Once you’ve met the strange characters who inhabit [these] novels, Sarah Palin becomes easier to comprehend.”
It’s clear that Stabenow is not unrecognized in libraries in the lower 48. It might surprise Anderson to learn that holds in libraries we checked are as high as 155 on 40 copies, with and additional 40 on 7 copies of the audio.
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Macmillan Audio; UNABR CD; 9781427208880; $39.99
Audio available from OverDrive
The IACP (International Assoc. of Culinary Professionals) has just announced the finalists for their 2010 Awards.
Publishers Wiley and Oxmoor House were neck and neck, with five nominations each (Oxmoor received nominations for 3 of its books in the Williams-Sonoma series). They were closely followed Artisan, with 4 nominations.
Most of the titles will make your mouth water;
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But one reminds us there is a serious side to food;
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Rising on Amazon; now at #24 is a new parenting book, Raising Happiness.
The book’s author, Christine Carter, writes the blog “Half Full: Science for Raising Happy Kids.”
The book wasn’t reviewed prepub (check to see if you’ve ordered it; several libraries we checked hadn’t yet). It’s covered in these consumer magazines:
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ebook available from OverDrive
Like the movie The Titanic, the ten-part HBO series The Pacific, beginning March 14, is likely to make bestsellers of dozens of books by many publishers (as some said about The Titanic‘s effect on publishing, “it raised all boats”).
The producers based their earlier series, Band of Brothers, on the book of the same title by Stephen Ambrose. But they couldn’t find one single volume that gave them a story line that worked for The Pacific. According to the L.A. Times, screenwriter Bruce McKenna came up with the idea of following several main characters. He interviewed dozens of veterans and read nearly 50 books; one of the titles that emerged was the 1957 memoir by Robert Leckie, Helmet for My Pillow.
Leckie, who was a writer before the war, became one of the main characters in the series. ABC News singles out Leckie’s role as “perhaps the most pivotal… because of the insight the character brings to so many situations,” and gives actor James Badge Dale special note for his portrayal, “Not once does Dale falter.”
In the following, Tom Hanks calls Helmet for My Pillow “a magnificient piece of prose… almost like a long poem.”
Helmet for my Pillow, is being released as a tie-in (see earlier post, with other tie-ins and related titles).
Leckie went on to write 30 more books, including Okinawa, an account of that battle, which Penguin books is re-releasing to coincide with the series.
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eBook available from OverDrive
DeCapo Press is also re-releasing his Strong Men Armed, which Library Journal described as his “carefully researched history of the Marines from Guadalcanal to Okinawa.”
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ebook available from OverDrive
