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
Clips are beginning to arrive online for films that will premiere at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival. The one below is from The Paperboy (via Rope of Silcon), based on National Book Award winning author Pete Dexter’s novel (Random House, 1995). It stars Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron, Matthew McConaughey and John Cusack and is directed by Lee Daniels (Precious). No US release date has been set, but it may appear in the late fall of this year.
Beautiful demonic serial killer Gretchen Lowell may materialize in a TV series. According to Deadline, FX has put Chelsea Cain’s books, Heartsick, Sweetheart and Evil At Heart, into development. No cast has been named.
On her blog, Cain says she is “over the moon” that the network responsible for Justified, American Horror Story and Sons of Anarchy has given the green light for the pilot, saying, “These people clearly buy fake blood in bulk and know how to use it.” If it succeeds, the network plans on doing three 13-episode seasons, each based on one of the titles.
After that, there’s more material to work with. The fifth book in the series is coming in August, following the fourth, Night Season, published last year.
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Macmillan audio; Thorndike released Evil at Heart and The Night Season in large type.
An Associated Press story released late yesterday uncovers more libraries withdrawing a #1 NYT Best seller weeks after it first arrived in that spot, Fifty Shades of Grey.
Earlier in the week, the Palm Beach Post published a story about Brevard County withdrawing their copies. The AP reports that three other libraries have removed their copies — Gwinnett County in Georgia, Leon County, Florida and an unnamed library system in Wisconsin. The story is being picked up widely. A Google search on “Fifty Shades Libraries” returns over 300 hits, from Gawker.com to the UK’s Guardian.
The majority of the 345 comments on the AP story express opposition to the action, such as this one from “GolfingSusan”:
I am glad I have the freedom to buy a book if I want it because I sure as hell don’t want some librarian deciding what I should or shouldn’t read. It’s none of her business! Having been to the library often, I can safely say, I find a lot of the “selections” offensive. There are a lot crappy books in there no one wants to check out!
A Brevard County resident has begun an online petition to have the books reinstated. It has 327 signatures so far.
Walter Salles’s film of Jack Kerouac’s Beat Generation classic On The Road is set to premiere at the upcoming Cannes film festival. Distribution rights have just been picked up, with plans to release it in the fall, which means it will be eligible for 2013 Oscar nominations.
The film includes so many marquee names that it will be difficult to fit them all on a single marquee, but the name dominating the headlines is Twilight‘s Kristen Stewart, who plays Mary Lou, Dean Moriarity’s 16-year-old bride. In addition to starring in the Twilight franchise, Stewart has starred in indie movies and was particularly powerful playing Joan Jett in The Runaways.
On The Road also stars
Garrett Hedlund … Dean Moriarty
Sam Riley — Sal Paradise
Kirsten Dunst … Camille
Amy Adams … Jane
Tom Sturridge … Carlo Marx
Danny Morgan … Ed Dunk
Alice Braga … Terry
Elisabeth Moss … Galatea Dunkel
Viggo Mortensen … Old Bull Lee
For information on various editions of the book, see our earlier post.
The Palm Beach Post reported Friday that the Brevard County, Florida, public library system has pulled all but “a handful” of copies of Fifty Shades of Grey from their shelves (via E! Online). That handful must have been withdrawn since; the library catalog currently shows none of the titles in the trilogy.
Library Director Cathy Schweinsberg says the move was not a result of public pressure, telling the paper,
Nobody asked us to take it off the shelves. But we bought some copies before we realized what it was. We looked at it, because it’s been called ‘mommy porn’ and ‘soft porn.’ We don’t collect porn.
Many librarians tell us that the only public pressure they’ve received about the book has been in the form of long holds lists (in some cases, over 1,000 requests for the print version and an additional 550 for the eBook).
The paper notes, however, “While the naughty novel doesn’t check out with local library officials, a quick look at the Brevard system’s online catalogue reveals a solid stash of some of the most erotic and enduring literature,” such as The Complete Kama Sutra, Fanny Hill, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Fear of Flying, Tropic of Cancer and Lolita.
The cover of the June issue of Vanity Fair features a photo from a new book about Marilyn Monroe (Lawrence Schiller’s Marilyn & Me: A Photographer’s Memories, RH/Doubleday/Nan A. Talese), but buzz is building about the magazine’s excerpt of another bio, David Maraniss’s Barack Obama: The Story.
It features “the untold story” of Obama’s post-grad romance with former girlfriend Genevieve Cook, including quotes from her diary. Does that sound like a bit of extraneous gossip aimed at selling books? US News responds with “Why Barack Obama’s Old Girlfriend Matters.”
Meanwhile, The Huffington Post is more interested in “Obama’s Thoughts On T.S. Eliot” and the NYT “City Room” blog sniffs, “Obama? Just the Forgettable 1980s Boyfriend of a Landlord’s Tenant.”
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Beloved children’s author, Maurice Sendak, died today at 83.
In tribute, NPR’s web site is rerunning an interview from Fresh Air (audio to be available at 5 p.m. ET today).
His iconoclastic humor was on full display in a recent appearance on the Stephen Colbert Report:
Part One:
Part Two (in which Sendak calls Colbert an “idiot” — watch to the end to find out what he thinks of eBooks):
A press release on Stephen King’s Web site announces that Dr. Sleep, the sequel to The Shining, is tentatively scheduled for publication on January 15 of next year. Update: S&S/Scribner; 9781451698848; $30; 544 pgs; on-sale date as 1/15/13.
In a recent interview with Neil Gaiman, King talks about Dr. Sleep and also says he is working on another new title, Joyland, about an amusement park serial killer.
King’s The Wind Through the Keyhole debuted at #1 on the NYT Fiction Hardcover Best Seller list this week.
Below, King reads from the first chapter of Dr. Sleep at the Savannah Book Fair in February (via Daily Dead). Last fall, he read from another segment at George Mason University.
Publisher description after the jump:
The big winner in this year’s James Beard Cookbook Awards is a big book; Modernist Cuisine was named the Cookbook of the Year, as well as winner in the Cooking from a Professional Point of View category. Just before the announcement, several publications, including the Wall Street Journal‘s SpeakEasy blog, covered the news that, despite its size (five volumes, 47 lbs) and cost ($450), it’s sold over 45,000 copies (a check of WorldCat reveals that few of those sales were to public libraries).
Below is the list, with book trailers where available.
Cookbook of the Year
Modernist Cuisine, by Nathan Myhrvold with Chris Young and Maxime Bilet, (The Cooking Lab)
Cookbook Hall of Fame
Laurie Colwin, Home Cooking (RH/Vintage) and More Home Cooking (Harper Perennial)
American Cooking
A New Turn in the South: Southern Flavors Reinvented for Your Kitchen, by Hugh Acheson
(RH/Clarkson Potter)
Baking and Dessert
Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home, by Jeni Britton Bauer, (Workman/Artisan)
Beverage
Bitters: A Spirited History of a Classic Cure-All, with Cocktails, Recipes, & Formulas, by Brad Thomas Parsons, (RH/Ten Speed Press)
Cooking from a Professional Point of View
Modernist Cuisine., by Nathan Myhrvold with Chris Young and Maxime Bilet, (The Cooking Lab)
General Cooking
Ruhlman’s Twenty, by Michael Ruhlman. (Chronicle Books)
Focus on Health
Super Natural Every Day: Well-Loved Recipes from My Natural Foods Kitchen, by Heidi Swanson, (RH/Ten Speed Press)
International
The Food of Morocco, by Paula Wolfert, (HarperCollins/Ecco)
Photography
Notes from a Kitchen: A Journey Inside Culinary Obsession, Artist/Photographer: Jeff Scott, (Tatroux)
Reference and Scholarship
Turning the Tables: Restaurants and the Rise of the American Middle Class, 1880-1920, by Andrew P. Haley
(The University of North Carolina Press)
Single Subject
All About Roasting, by Molly Stevens, (W.W. Norton & Company)
Writing and Literature
Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, by Gabrielle Hamilton, (Random House)
To celebrate the release of Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother?, Time magazine offers a slide show of ten other “unforgettable autobiographical comics,” beginning with Art Spiegelman’s Maus.
Several libraries are showing heavy holds on Bechdel’s title.
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Author Kiera Cash gushes on her blog today (time-stamped 12:02 a.m. — did she have to sit on the news until it was official?),
You guys! I’m totally a New York Times bestselling author! The Selection made it to #9 on the children’s list [the 5/13 NYT Chapter Books list]. My whole world is upside down! Thank you all so much for going out and buying my book. I hope you’re having as much fun reading it as I had writing it. THANK YOU!
It also just makes it on to the USA Today list at #150.
The first in a trilogy, The Selection is a dystopian novel with a difference. As made clear by the cover, this one is heavy on romance with no bloodsport. Of the pre-pub reviews, only Publishers Weekly gave it a thumbs-up. Kirkus called it a “probably harmless, entirely forgettable series opener,” and VOYA said, “readers who enjoy commonplace romances will gravitate to this novel while dystopian lovers who revel in series such as Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games and Uglies will be disappointed.”
That doesn’t seem to matter to readers; most libraries are showing holds, heavy in some areas.
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It comes comes with a trailer:
There are no surprises on the new Indie Fiction Best Seller list. Stephen King’s The Wind Through the Keyhole arrives at #1, moving Grisham’s baseball novel, Calico Joe to #2. The Paris Wife is enjoying the most longevity, at #8 after 62 weeks, (it was on our Crystal Ball back in March, 2011, but we had no idea it would last this long).
Popping back on to the list, at #15, after having moved to the extended list for a couple of weeks is The Night Circus. Meanwhile, another of the Big First Novels of last fall, Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding, is out in trade paperback and hits that list at #4.
On the Nonfiction list, Rachel Maddow’s book on how the US has outsourced war, Drift, continues at #1 after five weeks. Anna Quindlen’s memoir, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, debuts at #2 and Madeleine Albright’s, Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948 arrives at #5.
Debuting at #14, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael J. Sandel, questions our current obsession with marketplace solutions (such as schools paying kids to read books or companies making money from life insurance on their employees). It has gotten attention in the business press, with an admiring review from an unexpected source, The Wall Street Journal (noting, for readers who may be put off, that the author is “not a socialist, and his critique of markets is measured”). Several libraries are showing heavy holds on moderate ordering. It is also available in audio (Macmillan Audio).
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It’s always fun to see a book by a new author begin to take off, but even more so when you’ve had a chance to meet that author. Many of you joined us for a chat last week with Wiley Cash about his debut, A Land More Kind Than Home, (Harper). Several great things have happened for the book since then. It landed on the NYT Hardcover Fiction extended list at #33 in it’s first week on sale and Barnes and Noble just announced that it is one of their Discover Great New Writers Summer picks.
In conjunction, the Barnes & Noble Review ran an interview with the author. He was, of course, thoughtful and charming, but we’re partial to how well he used just 140 characters during our TwitterChat.
The author describes his book:
The novel tells the story of the bond between two young brothers and the evil they face in a small town in the mountains of N.C.
…which brought this response from a librarian:
That description just put it on my TBR list!
On the two brothers:
Kids do know and intuit a lot of things we don’t realize; Only diff is kids don’t know how to respond to that knowledge.
On the title (which comes from the last line in Thomas Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again):
The title hints at something beyond the present that awaits us, some kind of place that is more suited to who we are or want to be.
On the importance of North Carolina as the setting:
I’m a writer of place & a reader of place. It’s the most important thing in my life. I wrote LAND to recreate the place I love.
I love works w/setting as character: Winesburg OH, Their Eyes, Look Homeward Angel. Characters coming from a PLACE are fascinating.
I really wanted to take the reader there & have all the senses touched. W. NC is such a visceral place.
The thrill of seeing your book in a library:
My mom just sent me a text pic of my book in the library in Oak Island NC. God bless writers’ moms.
Seeing it all wrapped up in the library with a call number: that’s real.
Thanks to the library marketing team at HarperCollins for sponsoring the chat and for making Advance Readers copies available to many EarlyWord readers.
It’s been buzzed about for months, has an amazing cast already in place, but HBO announced yesterday that plans for the series based on Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections have been called to a halt.
Deadline reports, “Word is HBO brass liked the performances but the decision came down to adapting the book’s challenging narrative, which moves through time and cuts forwards and back…hampering the potential show’s accessibility.”
Unless someone releases the pilot, we will not get the chance to see Chris Cooper and Dianne Wiest as parents to the dysfunctional Lambert family, including their adult children, played by Ewan McGregor and Maggie Gyllenhaal.