The book “positioned to be the big literary read of the summer,” according to the Wall Street Journal, Philipp Meyer’s second novel, The Son (HarperCollins/Ecco; HarperAudio; HarperLuxe) has been a big success with critics and now arrives at #10 on the 6/16 NYT hardcover best seller list during its first week on sale. Some libraries are showing heavy holds on modest orders.

The book has been praised by national newspaper critics Ron Charles at The Washington Post and Bob Minzesheimer USA Today (the NYT hasn’t weighed in yet) as well as by many of their colleagues at local newspapers:

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Minneapolis Star Tribune

Cleveland Plain Dealer

Kansas City Star

The author was profiled in Texas Monthly recently (the Baltimore native now lives in Texas, the setting for The Son), in a story with an attention-getting headline, “Hog Hunting With Texas’s Next Literary Giant” (Meyer tells the article’s author that hunting and writing are the two most important activities in his life). The article quotes “one of the foremost scholars of Texas literature,” calling The Son, “the most ambitious Texas novel in thirty years—since at least Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian or Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove.”

Below, John Green, accepting the Indie Prize given by the American Booksellers Association to writers who best represent commitment to independent book stores, calls “bullshit” to the concept that authors like him, who speak directly to their readers via social media, don’t “need the value-sucking middlemen of bookstores and publishers and in the future … no one will stand between author and reader except possibly an e-commerce site that takes just a tiny little percentage of each transaction.”

He hates being held up as an example of an author who doesn’t need support from publishers, editors, librarians and booksellers and ends by saying,”We built … the book business, the idea-sharing, consciousness-expanding business together … and we’re going to keep building this together.”

His comment about Ayn Rand is worth an award in itself.

Called an “often breathtakingly dark and crazy satire on modern American life ” by The Guardian, AM Homes’ novel, May We Be Forgiven won the Women’s Prize for Fiction (formerly  The Orange Prize), announced in London yesterday, confounding the bookmakers (the favorite was Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel), winning against a group of  finalists that also included Zadie Smith and Kate Atkinson.

The Prize has secured a new sponsor and will soon be called the Bailey’s Prize for Fiction. Perhaps Bailey’s is courting reading groups.

Our Summer Beach Read Challenge, asks whether you agree that Lauren Beukes’s The Shining Girls, (Hachette/Mulholland), is, as the NYT‘s Janet Maslin says, “a strong contender for the role of this summer’s universal beach read.”

USA Today is not so sure, saying that Beukes needs to hone her craft before, like Gillian Flynn, she achieves “universal beach read” status. This book, says reviewer Charles Finch author of six mysteries, the latest, A Death in the Small Hours, “feels as if it’s the book before The Book. It is not entirely successful in its execution, but its author is so profusely talented – capable of wit, darkness, and emotion on a single page – that a blockbuster seems inevitable. Here’s your chance to get in on the ground floor.”

The book was released today. One large library system has a holds ratio of 6:1 on modest ordering.

Meanwhile, Hollywood has given its accolade. Leonardo Dicaprio has bought the rights and may adapt it as a TV series.

If you’ve read The Shining Girls, be sure to let fellow librarians know if it’s time to order more, or if they should hold off, in the comments section of the earlier post. Opinions are fifty-fifty at this point.

Fairyland, the title of journalist Alysia Abbott‘s memoir, is an ironic comment on her childhood; she was raised in San Francisco in the 1970’s by her gay father, sometimes sharing an apartment with drag queens. Interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday, she expressed sympathy for her father, juggling the exhilaration of the newly liberated gay lifestyle in San Francisco while raising a young daughter.

The book is now rising on Amazon’s sales rankings (currently at #127, up  from #2,311

The often hard-to-please NYT book reviewer, Michiko Kakutani, is won over by debut novelist Anton DiSclafani’s The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls (Penguin/Riverhead), released today. About a teenaged girl who is sent away to a riding camp for mysterious reasons, Kakutani says, “By cutting back and forth between the events that took Thea to Yonahlossee and her experiences in school, Ms. DiSclafani methodically builds suspense … Some of these developments may feel like plot twists from a sepia-toned soap opera, but the reader’s attention rarely wavers, thanks to Ms. DiSclafani’s knowledge of how to keep her foot on her story’s gas pedal, and her sympathy for her spirited, unbridled heroine.”

The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls is part of First Flights, the Penguin Debut Author program for librarians (read the author’s chat with librarians here and learn more about the program here).

After all the buzz programs, author presentations, and hours walking the floor at BEA, what impressed librarians most? The Librarians’ Shout ‘n’ Share panel, organized by the AAP and Library Journal is a good indicator. In just one hour, librarians buzzed nearly 75 titles. Many of them are available on Edelweiss or NetGalley, so you can play along at home. Below are titles that were on many librarians’ lips (a full list of all the titles from Shout ‘n’ Share, including ordering information and which are currently available as digital ARCs, through Edelweiss and/or NetGalley, is on our downloadable spreadsheet Shout-n-Share-BEA 2013).

Bringing cheers from the audience when it was mentioned was The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic (Penguin/Dorman, Aug. 1), a debut by Emily Croy Barker. Angela Carstensen, SLJ‘s “Adult Books For Teens” columnist noted, “Pamela Dorman’s pitch at LJ‘s Day of Dialog was incredibly persuasive. She called it The Magicians for girls and Jane Eyre crossed with Harry Potter.” Digital ARC’s are availalble on Edelweiss and on NetGalley (the book is also part of First Flights, the Penguin Debut Author program — more information is here).

John Searles clearly won fans during the AAP librarian’s dinner. His Help for the Haunted, (HarperCollins/Morrow, Sept. 17) was mentioned wherever librarians gathered. Kaite Stover, the female half of Booklist‘s described its appeal; “Deftly shifting between a traumatic past and present, Help for the Haunted delivers the gripping story of recently orphaned Sylvie Mason,whose parents aided souls with paranormal afflictions before their sudden death in an abandoned church. Immediately prior to their deaths, Sylvie’s parents were searching for her sister, Rose, who later becomes Sylvie’s guardian and may even have had a hand in their parents’ death. The novel explores the tension between the two sisters as Sylvie with the help of a detective struggles to remember what exactly happened the night of her parents’ death. Murky, and yet straightforward, Help for the Haunted haunts the reader from cover to cover, drawing her deeper into the investigation as the detective and Sylvie circle the conclusion of the case.” Download Kaite’s full presentation here: BEA Shout n Share – K. Stover

Among Alene Moroni picks was  Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital (RH/Crown), which explores what happened to many of the patients and the heart-breaking decisions the staff of a New Orleans hospital had to make after Katrina.  It was also one of the titles featured in the closely-watched “Edtiors’ Buzz Panel,” (see USA Today story).

Doug Lord, LJ‘s “Books for Dudes” columnist was enthusiastic about The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay (RH/Doubleday, Sept. 10), a memoir by an Iranian-American who not only decided to move to Tehran during a particularly turbulent year, but also brought his blonde, blue-eyed wife and young son with him.

Robin Nesbitt of Columbus [OH] Metropolian Library said her collection development goal this year is to raise circulation through books, (not DVD’s), so she is searching out titles that will connect with her public. Thus, Night Film, by Marisha Pessl, (Random House, Aug. 20) is on her radar. The author, whose 2007 debut, Special Topics In Calamity Physics was structured around a syllabus for a college literature course, switches focus to a different art form in a literary thriller about a reclusive movie director.

Librarians were also buzzing about a novelty board book they discovered in the aisles, Little Penis, which incorporates a puppet (the subtitle; A Finger Puppet Parody Book). Published in January, it will be followed this fall by “the perfect stoccking stuffer,” Little Penis Santa Clause, (both by Craig Yoe, published by S&S/Cider Mill Press). For some reason, neither was picked by the panel, although Stop Tweeting Boring Sh*t: The New Rules of Work (Chronicle, July 23) was. It just may be more workplace appropriate.

The sequel to Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs (Quirk Books) arrives this coming January. Entertainment Weekly reveals the title, Hollow City, (Quirk Books, 9781594746123, pbk, $17.99; AudioGo) along with a preview (no photos and no cover, however).

As to Miss Peregrine, the movie, a  screenwriter was assigned in December of 2011. Tim Burton was rumored to be interested in directing it, but there’s been no recent news and Burton is now at work on a biopic about painter Margaret Keane, whose kitschy portraits of kids with enormous eyes were popular in the ’60’s. It’s being called, of course, Big Eyes.

On his Web site, Riggs announces that he is going on tour in June for the paperback of Miss Peregrine, which will also include some extra photos and the first chapter of Hollow City.

Below is the book trailer for Miss Peregrine.

Director Thor Freudenthal (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) replaces Chris Columbus (the first two Harry Potter movies) for the second Percy Jackson movie, which opens on August 7.

Official Web Site: PercyJacksonTheMovie.com

The tie-in edition arrives in July:

Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book Two The Sea of Monsters (Movie Tie-In Edition), Rick Riordan

Disney/Hyperion, 9781423160076, 142316007X $7.99 US / $8.99 Can

Underscoring the title, the remake of Endless Love, based on the 1979 best seller by Scott Spencer (HarperCollins), has been scheduled to open on 2/14/14.

The original movie was directed by Franco Zeffrelli in 1981 and starred Brooke Shields and Martin Hewitt. The new version stars Alex Pettyfer, who starred in two  movies based on teen novels, I Am Number Four and Beastly. and Gabriella Wilde appeared in The Three Musketeers.

The book is also available in e-book from Open Road Media, through library e-book vendors.

It will be a big weekend for book-related movies. Also opening on that date are The Maze Runner and Vampire Academy: Blood Sister.

The NYT‘s Janet Maslin has declared The Shining Girls, (Hachette/Mulholland) by Lauren Beukes “a strong contender for the role of this summer’s universal beach read” (i.e., the next Gone Girl). Cuyahoga P.L. buyer Wendy Bartlett is a bit skeptical. Cautioning that she’s not yet read it, she says, “as cool as the plot sounds, it involves a killer who time travels and for most of our customers, time travel is an acquired taste.”

She’s issued a challenge to the Cuyahoga staff to read the galley and let her know whether she’s right or she needs to buy additional copies (she’s ordered a modest 19 copies for Cuyahoga’s 28 branches; most libraries around the country have also placed modest orders).

We’re inviting you to join in. E-galleys are on Edelweiss and NetGalley. Request the book (but hurry, e-galleys will only be available through Monday), read it and tell Wendy what you think in the comments section below.

If you’re not convinced that this is the Book of the Summer, which one are you betting on?’

Those clever young ‘uns, Bill Barnes and Gene Ambum, over at the library-based comic, Unshelved have started something that may catch on — @bookblrb, tweet-sized blurbs for some of their favorite books. They even have a Facebook page.

As Bill puts it,

Writing very concise copy like this is surprisingly hard, and we think we are the right people to do it. After all, cartooning is basically the art of trimming away every unnecessary word (and every possible drop of ink) to let the joke come through. We have been doing this for a while with our comic strip book reviews, all we’ve done here is crank up the volume to 11, and the number of characters down to 117.

Tweets by @bookblrb

The BBC is about to begin filming a three-part adaptation of P.D. James’s Death Comes to Pemberley  (RH/Knopf), a murder mystery featuring some of Jane Austen’s most beloved characters, Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, who began married life in a house named Pemberley.

When the book was released in 2011, USA Today praised it saying, “Countless authors writing in a plethora of genres have tried to re-create Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, but James’ new novel is incomparably perfect.”  NPR’s Fresh Air called it “a glorious plum pudding of a whodunit.”

Matthew Rhys plays Darcy, Anna Maxwell Martin is Elizabeth and Matthew Goode is Wickham [Sorry for the earlier mistake — we said the actors are Americans, but they are all British. Thanks for the corrections!].

Deadline reports that filming starts next month in Yorkshire, with the series expected to begin at the end of the year in the UK (no word yet on when it may appear here).

Interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday, Stephen King explained why he chose a small independent publisher for his next book, Joyland, arriving on Tuesday,

Hard Case Crime is a throwback to the books that I loved as a kid. We lived way out in the country, and my mother would go once a week shopping, and she would go to the Red & White or the A&P to pick up her groceries. And I would immediately beat feet to Robert’s Drugstore, where they had a couple of those turn-around wire racks with the hard-boiled paperbacks that usually featured a girl with scanty clothing on the front. … The teaser line that I always loved the most was for a novel called Liz where it said, “She hit the gutter and bounced lower.” … I loved that, and the one on the front of Joyland says, “Who dares enter the funhouse of fear?”

This is the second book King has published with Hard Case Crime, after 2005’s The Colorado Kid. In addition to original titles, Hard Case is known for bringing back to print crime novels from the ’40’s and ’50’s, with the kind of covers King remembers so fondly.

Reviewing Joyland in the new issue, Entertainment Weekly gives it a B+, marking it down for  being “really an overgrown short story,” but adding that it “features some of King’s most graceful writing … a relatively straightforward story of a young man’s adventure … it’s written in the complicated voice of a much older man’s memory: ruminative, amused, digressive, marvelously unaffected, and finally, devastatingly sad.”

Coming this fall is King’s Doctor Sleep, (S&S/Scribner), the sequel to The Shining.

Philippa Gregory’s novels in The Cousins’ War series, set during Great Britain’s War of the Roses, have been adapted into a ten-part tv series that will premiere on STARZ cable network on Saturday, August 10th at 9pm ET/PT. Titled The White Queen, the BBC/STARZ production is actually based on the first three books [UPDATE: the fourth title, The Kingmaker’s Daughter is also being released as a tie-in], which are being released as trade paperback tie-ins in early July by S&S/Touchstone.

The White Queen,9781476735481

The Red Queen, 9781476746302

Lady of the Rivers, 9781476746319

The Kingmaker’s Daughter, 9781476746326

It stars Max Irons (son of Jeremy Irons, he appeared in the movie Red Riding Hood), Amanda Hale (The Crimson Petal & The White), James Frain (The Tudors). Newcomer Rebecca Ferguson plays the Elizabeth Woodville, the White Queen. Amanda Hale is Margaret Beufort, the Red Queen and Faye Marsay is Anne Neville, the Lady of the Rivers. Gregory is an executive producer on the project.

The two teasers give quite different impressions of what to expect (see if you can guess which is the STARZ promo and which the BBC without looking at the credits).

First:

Second:

The next book in the series, The White Princess, (S&S/Touchstone; S&S Audio) will be published on July 23.