The woman who created a storm with her 2011 book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,  is making headlines again with a new book co-written with her husband,  Jed Rubenfeld,  The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America (Penguin; Penguin Audio; Feb. 3).

The book has already received advance attention, including a segment on the Jan. 6 Today Show. The New York Post ran a review with a headline meant to amp-up the controversy, “Tiger Mom: Some Cultural Groups Are Superior.” On the other hand, New York magazine says this book is not nearly as proactive as  the previous one, calling it a “much blander, more conventional, and less sensational read, with more than a hundred pages of end notes; a detached, third-person, school-report style.”

Coming this Sunday, the New York Times magazine features a story about the couple (who also published an op-ed page last  Sunday, “What Drives Success“), noting that they claim to be appalled by the response to Tiger Mother, thus making their choice of subject for their new book, “either cynical or oblivious, or some uncanny combination of the two.”

Holds  currently are in line with cautious ordering in many libraries and are heavy where orders are low.

Released yesterday, Esther Earl’s book, This Star Won’t Go Out, (Penguin/Dutton Juvenile), published after the authors death at 16, is rising on Amazon sales rankings.

Esther was the inspiration for John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. Her fictional counterpart, Hazel, is portrayed by actress Shailene Woodley in the film version, coming to theaters June 6, 2014.

USA Today covered the story yesterday. The following video is included in the online version:

It’s going to be a long marketing campaign. The first poster for Fifty Shades of Grey, the movie, debuted on oversized billboards in several cities this weekend, even getting coverage on TV news programs.

Appropriately, it is in black and white (the movie will be color), with the tagline, “Mr. Grey will see you now.” Well, not exactly “now” — the movie arrives in a year, on Valentine’s Day, 2015.

The film is currently shooting in Vancouver,  Canada (which is standing in for the Seattle of the book); see images here. British singer Rita Ora, who plays Christian Grey’s adopted sister Mia, told MTV News at the Grammy’s that the movie will be an “amazing shock.”

She seems to mean that in a good way.

Currently dominating Amazon’s Movers and Shakers, the list of titles that have shown the greatest jumps in sales rank over the past 24 hours, are, of course, the books that were announced as winners of  the most heavily-covered ALA Youth Media Awards at Midwinter yesterday.

In the case of the Printz, however, one of the honor books, Eleanor & Park, rose higher than the Medalist, probably because, having already been a best seller, it has stronger name recognition.

Sales rank: 8 (was 630)
Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures, Kate DiCamilla, K.G. Campbell, Candlewick Press
Newbery Medalist

Sales rank: 14 (was 2,565)
Locomotive, Brian Floca, S&S/Atheneum
Caldecott Medalist

Sales rank: 116 (was 186)
Eleanor & Park, Rainbow Rowell
Printz Honor (the winner Midwinterblood, Marcus Sedgwick, Macmillan/Roaring Brook is at #630)

Sales rank: 210 (was 3,333)
The Year of Billy Miller, Kevin Henkes, HarperCollins/Greenwillow
Newbery Honor

Sales rank: 250 (was 36,725)
Flora and the Flamingo, Milly Idle, Chronicle Books
Caldecott Honor

Sales rank: 290 (was 20,872)
Paperboy, Vince Vawter, RH/Delacorte
Newbery Honor

Sales rank: 355 (was 15,495)
Doll Bones, Holly Black, S&S/ Margaret K. McElderry Books
Newbery Honor

Sales rank: 4 (was 5)
The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
The author won the Margaret A. Edwards Award; this book was already high on the list, both because it’s perennially popular and because of the movie, which is still in theaters.

Book Finder has released a list of the top 100 out-of-print titles.

At #1 is a title that will bring back memories for those who were working in libraries in the early ’90’s — Madonna’s Sex. If you still own copies (WorldCat shows 179 libraries own the original Warner Books edition), you may want to safe guard them so they don’t walk.

The list shows a wide range. At #4 is the Harvard Classics. and at #5, On the Nature and Existence of God, by Richard M. Gale.

Below is a video of the awards presentations at ALA Midwinter on Monday:

And the winners are:

Newbery Award

Medal Winner:
Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures, Kate DiCamilla, K.G. Campbell. Candlewick Press

Honor Books:
Doll Bones, Holly Black, S&S/ Margaret K. McElderry Books
The Year of Billy Miller, Kevin Henkes, HarperCollins/Greenwillow
One Came Home, Amy Timberlake, RH/Knopf
Paperboy, Vince Vawter, RH/Delacorte

Caldecott Award

Medal Winner:

Locomotive, Brian Floca, S&S/Atheneum

Honor Books:
Journey, Aaron Becker, Candlewick Press
Flora and the Flamingo, Milly Idle, Chronicle Books
Mr. Wuffles, David Wiesner, HMH/Clarion Books

Printz Award

Medal Winner:

Midwinterblood, Marcus Sedgwick, Macmillan/Roaring Brook

Honor Books:
Eleanor & Park, Rainbow Rowell, Macmillan/St. Martin’s Griffin Kingdom of Little Wounds, Susann Cokal, Candlewick
Maggot Moon,  Sally Gardner, illus. Julian Crouch, Candlewick Press
Navigating Early, Clare Vanderpool, RH/ Delacorte Books

The rest of the awards, after the jump:

(more…)

Several videos of authors speaking at Midwinter are available on YouTube, including Wes Moore (The Other Wes Moore, RH/Spiegel & Grau, 2010), Matthew Quick (Silver Linings Playbook; The Good Luck of Right Now, just published, Macmillan);  Kidir Nelson (Nelson Mandela; Baby Bear, HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray; 2013),  and David Baldacci (children’s title, The Finisher, coming March 4, Scholastic).

Below, is one of two videos of Ishmael Beah, (A Long Way Gone; Radiance of Tomorrow, Macmillan, Jan.), giving the Arthur Curley Memorial Lecture on Saturday.

The Sundance Film Festival ends this weekend and many of you may have figured out that the unifying theme of our book display challenge is “Books at Sundance,” the movies based on books that premiered at the festival.

Apparently, our contest was too obscure; nobody came up with the correct answer by Monday’s deadline. Many were partially right, that all the books are the basis for movies, but nobody caught the crucial timely element, that they will all be shown at Sundance. We are awarding some winners, nonetheless, who will receive copies of the coveted print galley of Rainbow Rowell’s forthcoming book, Landline (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press). If you didn’t win, you can comfort yourself by downloading the egalley.

How are the films doing with critics? Jamie Marks is Dead, based on One for Sorrow received a mixed review from Variety; Life Itself, based on Roger Ebert’s memoir, is called “enthralling” by Entertainment Weekly; Low Down, about a noted jazz pianist, fared well with Variety‘s reviewer, but less so with The Hollywood Reporter‘s; White Bird in a Blizzard is called a “sci-fi sex romp” by The Guardian; garnering the most attention is Philip Seymour Hoffman’s portrayal of a spy in A Most Wanted Man.

U. S. theatrical releases dates have not been announced for any of the films.

Titles (links are to WorldCat)

Life Itself, Roger Ebert, Hachette/Grand Central, 2011

One for Sorrow, Christopher Barzak, Bantam Books, 2007

Low Down: Junk, Jazz, and Other Fairy Tales From Childhood, A.J. Albany, Bloomsbury/Tin House, 2003

A Most Wanted Man, John le Carré, S&S/Scribner, 2008

White Bird in a Blizzard, Laura Kasischke, Hyperion, 1999

Robert Gates’s media blitz, from the Colbert Report to CBS Sunday Morning, for his book, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, (RH/Knopf) has had the desired effect. The book debuts at #1 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list. in its first week on sale.

Gates, who served as Defense secretary for both Presidents Bush and Obama. is sharply critical of many in government (an L.A. Times Op-Ed said, “Duty will go down as one of the most ill-tempered memoirs ever written by a former Cabinet secretary.”)

The first two images from the upcoming adaptation of Lois Lowry’s beloved book The Giver, (HMH), which recently recently wrapped in Cape Town, South Africa, are featured today on Entertainment Weekly‘s “Inside Movies” blog,

Jeff Bridges, who plays The Giver is pictured above, with Brenton Thwaites as Jonas. As fans of the book will note, this Jonas is much older, a decision that has been controversial. Bridges, who has shepherded this project for nearly 20 years, originally balked at the idea. He has since come around and now says “We were so lucky to have Thwaites play this role. He does a beautiful job.”  Entertainment Weekly notes that author Lowry is also on board and has worked closely with Bridges and Noyce, even costuming extras on the set.

The movie is set to arrive in theaters on August 15.

The Today Show Book Club, which has been quiet for a while, re-emerges with a new pick, Nancy Horan’s novel based on the story of Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van de Grift, Under The Wide and Starry Sky. (RH/Ballantine; released on Tuesday).

Describing the book, Savannah Guthrie says,”Think Downton Abbey with a twist.”

Stevenson’s name is in the air currently; it is also attached to the new STARZ series, Black Sails, billed a a “prequel” to the author’s classic, Treasure Island.

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This is the third pick since the club as announced in September. The others were:

1) The Bone Season, Samantha Shannon, (Macmillan/Bloomsbury)

2) Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, Helen Fielding, (RH/Knopf)

What galleys will librarians be looking for when the Midwinter show floor opens tomorrow night?

They may be on the lookout for titles have already received advance attention from the media, such as Walter Kirn’s Blood Will Out, (Norton/Liveright) which we wrote about yesterday, Emma Donoghue’s Frog Music, (Hachette/Grand Central — see our earlier story) and Jean Hanff Korelitz’s You Should Have Known, (Hachette/Grand Central) which, as we wrote earlier,  Entertainment Weekly calls “the thriller we’re obsessed with: a woman’s water-in-the face wakeup call from the author.”

To help you spot more of the galleys with buzz, we’ve culled Barbara Hoffert’s extensive LJ Midwinter 2014 Galley and Signing Guide for other titles and authors already being buzzed in the media and created the downloadable Midwinter Buzz Galleys (for those of you sitting out Midwinter, you may want to use it to hunt down egalleys).

What are fellow librarians looking forward to? We checked on the titles librarians are talking about on the Edelweiss community board and GalleyChat as well as those on the LibraryReads lists and added them in the spreadsheet.

One of the top titles on librarians’ lists is Rainbow Rowell’s Landline, coming in July from Macmillan. Librarians have adopted this author, making her YA title Fangirl the #1 pick for the inaugural LibraryReads list and are eager to get their hands on her latest, this one written for adults, but with crossover appeal. Copies will be available at the AAP Booktalk Breakfast on Monday and at her signing at the Macmillan booth, #622 on Sunday, 1/26, at 3:00 p.m.

Other titles with librarian buzz:

The Deepest Secret, Carla Buckley, (RH/Bantam, Booth #831)  — “much love” from librarians on Edelweiss. On GalleyChat it was described as, “A bit like Defending Jacob. How far a parent goes to protect a child.”

The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, Gabrielle Zevin, (Workman/Algonquin, Booth #740) — on GalleyChat, librarian Robin Beerbower enthused,  “Is it too soon to say my 2014 fave book is STORIED LIFE OF A.J. FIKRY (Zevin)? LOVED it.”

This Dark Road to Mercy, (HarperCollins/Morrow, Booth #731) — a favorite author on GalleyChat since his 2012 debut, A Land More Kind Than Home, we were pleased to see his second book on the latest LibraryReads list. Robin Nesbitt, Columbus [OH] Metropolitan Library says Cash’s new book is “as good as his first,” which says a lot. He is speaking at the AAP BookTalk Breakfast on Monday and will be signing in the booth (#713) after. Expect a warm reception; librarians love him and he loves them back (and he’s nuts about his cat).

One special tip: Fans of Gone Girl, The Husband’s Secret and The Silent Wife must go to the Penguin booth #935 on  Sunday, 10 to 11 a.m., to meet Sarah Weinman. Her book, Troubled Daughters. Twisted Wives: Stories from the Trailblazers of Domestic Suspense celebrates the grandmothers of the current hot genre, writers who, as Weinman says,  “take a scalpel to contemporary society and slice away until its dark essence reveals itself.” Weinman’s intro alone should be assigned reading for readers advisors

In addition, several of the authors who have been featured in First Flights, the Penguin Debut Authors program will be signing (see full schedule here), including Magnus Flyte, City of Lost Dreams; Emily Croy Barker, The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic and M.D. Waters, Archetype.

When a book is hotly anticipated by a  wide range of sources, our ears prick up. Walter Kirn’s Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade, (Norton/Liveright; March 3) is highlighted by  Library Journal‘s Barbara Hoffert in her extensive Midwinter 2014 Galley and Signing Guide. It is also one of USA Today‘s “10 Books Should You Read This Winter” and The Hollywood Reporter‘s “2014 Book Preview” as well as the more literary-inclined The Millions’ “Great 2014 Book Preview.”

The story of the con man who passed himself off as a member of the Rockefeller family has fascinated many. Mark Seal’s book, The Man in a Rockefeller Suit is in development for a movie by Walter Selles (The Motorcycle Diaries), and was the inspiration for the well-received novel, Schroder by Amity Gaige. Countless articles have also been written about him, including one last year in the New Yorker by Kirn himself, who was friends with the man he knew as “Clark Rockefeller” for fifteen years.

If you’re going to Midwinter, check for it at the Norton booth (#748). If not, you can request eARC’s through Edelweiss or print copies from the library marketing folks at Norton.

LibraryReads:
Collaborative Discovery for Librarians & Patrons
Saturday, January 25; 11:30–12:30
PCC 114 Lecture Hall

Presenters: Melissa DeWild, Kent District Library (MI), Miriam Tuliao, New York Public Library, Stephanie Anderson, Darien Library (CT), and Kaite Stover, Kansas City Public Library.

FREE Advance Readers Copies, courtesy of the LibraryReads publishing partners

When we saw the following headline, we immediately double-checked the story’s date. But, no, it’s dated Jan. 17, not April 1.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Amazon now has a patent for “anticipatory shipping.”

We’re working on a patent for anticipatory returns.

The fight to protect privacy continues to lose ground.