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
Suze Orman’s four-part PBS series, The Money Class, began last night. The tie-in book rose to #7 on Amazon.
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Orman also appeared on the Today Show.
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We predicted that The Paris Wife would land in the top five on the 3/13 NYT Print Hardcover Fiction Best Seller list. It didn’t; it debuted at #9 after its first week on sale, which is still a good showing for a debut title (and, it arrived at #1 on the National Indie Bestsellers list).
There are just two other debuts on the list: A Discovery of Witches, now at #4 after 3 weeks and The Help at #8, marking its 100th week on the list (the NYT BR offers a chart of some of the books that stayed on their lists for over 100 weeks; Scott Peck’s ’90’s hit, The Road Less Traveled tops them at 694 weeks). The Help, by the way, entered the list at a lowly #16 (it was tied with Christopher Moore’s Fool at #15).
Catherine Hardwicke, the director of the first Twilight movie, releases her next film, Red Riding Hood on Friday. The tie-in novelization has been on the NYT children’s paperback bestseller list since it came out in January, debuting at #1. The L.A. Times today gives the back story on how the book came to be. Far more than just writing the introduction, Hardwicke was the moving force behind the book.
The ebook version “includes video interviews with Hardwicke and her many collaborators, an animated short film, audio discussion about the set design and props, costume sketches and Hardwicke’s hand-drawn maps of the world where Red Riding Hood takes place, among other things.”
Unfortunately, it is not available for library lending.
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In a time when Alzheimer’s is considered an epidemic, it’s no surprise that a book about memory fascinates people. After covering the U.S.A. Memory Championship, journalist Joshua Foer became so enamored of his subject that he spent a year working with a memory coach. He won the next event and wrote a book about the experience, with the memorable title Moonwalking with Einstein. It is drawing holds; one large library system shows 215 on 15 copies.
In the NYT yesterday, Michiko Kakutani practically sputters well-known comparisons in her review,
…Joshua Foer tackles the subject of memory the way George Plimpton tackled pro football and boxing…[his book] has a lot in common with Malcolm Gladwell’s best sellers…His narrative is smart and funny and, like the work of Dr. Oliver Sacks, it’s informed by a humanism that enables its author to place the mysteries of the brain within a larger philosophical and cultural context.
The author appeared on Comedy Central’s Colbert Report last night.
And, yes, he is the younger brother of Jonathan Safran Foer.
Jeff Greenfield is the Chief Political Correspondent for CBS News, so it’s no surprise that he was featured on the CBS Early Show today for his book on what might have happened if not for some simple twists of fate. If it had rained in Dallas when JFK was there in 1963, he would not have traveled in an open car and may not have been shot (curiously, Stephen King’s next book, titled 11/22/63 is about time travelers who try to prevent the Kennedy assassination).
Greenfield will also appear on The Colbert Report on Thursday.
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The writer Trevanian spoofed the spy genre in the 1970’s with a series of four novels; The Eiger Sanction, The Loo Sanction, The Main and Shibumi.
Nicholai Hel, a handsome and charming assassin who is fascinated with Eastern culture, is the main character in the cult classic Shibumi. He reappears today in a prequel, Satori by Don Winslow (Savages). The Wall Street Journal interviews Savage about reimagining this classic.
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The earlier book was re-released in 2005.
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Publishers have been searching for him all over Scandinavia, but maybe the next Stieg Larsson actually resides on this continent, in Dallas, Texas. And, maybe he’s a she.
USA Today thinks so. Reviewer Carol Memmot (who, back in January, called Three Seconds by Scandinavians Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom a worthy Larsson successor. It then hit the NYT Hardcover Fiction list) says that the main character in American Taylor Stevens’ debut thriller The Informationist, “evokes the spirit and intelligence of th gutsy, damaged Salander, but she’s far from derivative.”
She adds, “Thank goodness a sequel to this fiery novel is in the works.”
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Large Type: Thorndike; 9781410438027; June 2011; $31.99
On NPR’s Morning Edition today, Lynn Neary interviewed Jonahan Evison, His novel, West of Here, is told from the perspectives of settlers in Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula and modern-day residents. How did Evison do his research?
…by poking around in the local libraries of towns up and down the Olympic Peninsula: “I found that at all these little libraries in Port Angeles and Sequim and Shelton and all these peninsula towns, you can find all these wonderful little tape-bound manuscripts. Some of them are 15 pages long, some of them are 100 pages long, but they’re personalized, first-person accounts of frontier living.”
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Audio; Highbridge; 9781615731169; $39.95
As we noted in our look-ahead to this week’s big books, two chef’s memoirs hit the shelves. Each received media coverage yesterday.
Grant Achatz was interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air about recovering from tongue cancer and his book, Life, On the Line (Gotham/Penguin). As a result, it rose to #42 (from #155) on Amazon.
Gabrielle Hamilton’s Blood, Bones and Butter (Random House), has been doing well all week (see our heavy holds alert) and is now at #18 on Amazon. The author appeared on the Today show.
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Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, author of The Dressmaker of Khair Khana: Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe, will receive major media exposure next week. She has written the cover story about Hilary Clinton for Tina Brown’s newly-redesigned Newsweek, which debuts next week (with a weekly book section!). The book will be featured on several NPR shows, including Morning Edition, it will be excerpted in USA Today and several reviews are scheduled.
Lemmon’s book is the story of an Afghan woman who became an entrepreneur under the Taliban, employing over 100 women, despite being banned from schools and offices, in the vein of Three Cups of Tea.
Libraries are showing modest reserves on modest orders, but interest could increase as Lemmon makes her media rounds.
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The Source of All Things: A Memoir by Tracy Ross (Free Press) is an exploration of the author’s childhood sexual abuse. Kirkus says, “Ross’s seesawing of emotions left her in a constant state of flux, but this uncertainty of emotion is one of the narrative’s primary strengths. Ross continually explores the boundaries of father-daughter intimacy, never demonizing her stepfather, but instead, humanizing him—a far more difficult task.”
The Money Class: Learn to Create Your New American Dream by Suze Orman (Spiegel and Grau) reassesses the American Dream — home, family, career, retirement — in view of current economic realities.
Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan by Jeff Greenfield (Putnam) is the veteran CBS News reporter and commentator’s journey in what-ifs, based on his extensive research, and has a 100,000 printing. PW calls it “fun but insubstantial.”
Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions by Guy Kawasaki (Portfolio) offers a new perspective on the art of influence, by the author of bestseller The Art of the Start.
Altar of Bones by Philip Carter (Gallery Press) is a thriller by an “internationally renowned author” writing under a pseudonym (OK, so it doesn’t really count as a debut) with a 200,000-copy printing, about a mysteriously powerful altar in Siberia, the San Francisco lawyer who inherits it, and the ex-special ops agent who protects her from those who wish to control it. Library Journal says the “chase and fight scenes are adrenaline-charged, breath-holding sensations,” but Kirkus calls it a “a competent and action-filled story, if one without much attention to detail,” and PW slammed it, saying, “by the time the unsurprising ending rolls around, all suspense has been drained from the action.”
The Informationist by Taylor Stevens (Crown), is, says the publisher, a “blazingly brilliant debut [that] introduces a great new action heroine, Vanessa Michael Munroe, who doesn’t have to kick over a hornet’s nest to get attention, though her feral, take-no-prisoners attitude reflects the fire of Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander.” Kirkus adds, “the writing is stellar, the heroine grittier than Lara Croft and the African setting so vivid that readers can smell the jungle and feel the heat—a gifted debut with much promise.”
The 
Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht (Random House) is the season’s (and, perhaps, the year’s) major literary debut. It comes with high expectations; Obreht is the youngest of the New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 fiction writers. LJ, Booklist and PW all call it varying degrees of brilliant. Boolist‘s starred review goes the furthest; “Every word, every scene, every thought is blazingly alive in this many-faceted, spellbinding, and rending novel of death, succor, and remembrance.” Only Kirkus introduces a caution; “…at times at times a bit too dense and confusing.” Laura Miller in Salon this week, finds the book too heavy on descripiton, “…no sooner does Obreht’s narrative work up a little momentum or present a masterful scene than it hits a patch of long, dozy paragraphs filled with way too much detail about the scenery.”
Holds are mounting on light ordering for next week’s release of Carol Edgarian’s second novel, Three Stages of Amazement. This exploration of how privleged people cope (or don’t) when fate turns against them, pivots on a seemingly perfect, 40ish Bay Area couple who run into trouble when the surgeon husband needs financing for a new medical invention and gets it from his wife’s dashing and successful ex-boyfriend.
In the New York Times, Janet Maslin calls it “a fiery, deeply involving book with an eccentric streak that keeps it constantly surprising,” and compares it favorably to Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, saying it handles its “high-strung, hot-blooded, restless people conflating their own private crises with the political and economic turmoil of their times” in half the space Franzen does, “with less loftiness but more soap-operatic plot tricks.” O Magazine finds it “generous and graceful and true.”
The Jungle by Clive Cussler and Jack Du Bruhl (Putnam), the eighth Oregon Files thriller, finds Juan Cabrillo and his crew of mercenaries engage in one daring rescue operation after another with progressively higher stakes. PW says, “The frenetic action moves from Afghanistan to Singapore and the Burmese jungle with lots of derring-do at sea before climaxing in a surprising locale in a fashion sure to delight series fans.”
Silent Mercy by Linda Fairstein (Dutton) finds Alexandra Cooper, the ADA who heads Manhattan’s Special Victims unit, investigating a fire at a Baptist church in Harlem. Kirkus says, “Above average for this bestselling series, though not up to the mark of Hell Gate (2010).”
Love You More by Lisa Gardner (Bantam) finds Detective D. D. Warren of the Boston police and Massachusetts state trooper Bobby Dodge together again, as partners in the investigation of a state trooper who shot and killed D.D.’s husband. Booklist gives it a starred review: “Winner of the 2010 International Thriller Award for The Neighbor, Gardner hits an even higher mark this time and will have a national marketing campaignauthor tour, TV advertising, online saturation bombing, etc.to support her.”
One of the most-discussed titles on Tuesday’s GalleyChat was Townie, the memoir by Andre Dubus (we also hear that in lands on the upcoming NYT Extended Nonfiction Hardcover list).
One of the chat participants, Angela Carstensen, writes about Townie on SLJ‘s Adult Books for Teens.
She also points out that segments of Dubus’s ALA presentation are available on YouTube. The videos give new meaning to the term “hand-held” (if you have a tendency towards dizziness, close your eyes and listen to the audio), but they give a good sense of the style of both the author and the book.
Below, he reads from the book (Dubus is the narrator for the audiobook, from Blackstone):
In the following segment, Dubus talks about why he loves libraries and how he became a “reluctant memoirist.”
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Audio: Blackstone; UNABR, simultaneous; read by the author
Gabrielle Hamilton, owner of Prune restaurant in New York City, is interviewed in the Dining & Wine section of today’s New York Times. Her memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter, which was released yesterday, is already in its third printing and received a rare near-rave from NYT critic Michiko Kakutani last week. Libraries are showing heavy holds on light ordering (who would expect a book by the owner of a restaurant that few people in the country have been to — it has only 30 seats — to be a hit?)
Says the interviewer,
On the page and in the kitchen, Ms. Hamilton can be charming, tempestuous, persnickety, vulgar, poetic, provocative and mothering, sometimes all in the course of a single flurry of sentences. Whatever scars she has, she is not inclined to cover them.
The prepub reviews back up that observation; Booklist calls it a “lusty, rollicking, engaging-from-page-one memoir.”
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Audio: Books on Tape; narrated by the author; 3/1/11
In the New York Times, Janet Maslin gives the minority opinion on The Paris Wife, Paula McLain’s novel based on the lives of Ernest Hemingway and his first wife in Paris after WW I, which has been enjoying ebullient prepub and consumer reviews. She agrees that the book shows a great deal of research, but parts ways on the book’s quality, nonetheless suggesting we, “Get ready for abundant debate on issues raised by The Paris Wife, because what it lacks in style is made up for in staying power. This is a work of literary tourism that expertly flatters its reader.”
In that, she may be right. The book is now at #37 on Amazon sales rankings and library holds are rising quickly. Expect to see it in the top five on the upcoming NYT hardcover fiction list. The March Oprah magazine also features it, along with reading questions.
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Audio; Random House and Books On Tape
OverDrive; WMA Audio and Adobe EPUB eBook
The debut to watch this week is Cleaning Nabokov’s House by Leslie Daniels (Touchstone). It follows a woman rebuilding her life after losing her children to her ex-husband. It’s an in-house favorite at S&S because it “hits the sweet spot of being both literary and commercial.” PW agrees, “Despite the curiosities of the grief-to-gumption plot, Daniels’s writing is slick and her characters richly detailed, and even when it dips into sheer goofiness, it’s still a pleasure to read.” Blackstone publishes the unabridged audio and a large print version is coming from Thorndike in July (9781410438478; $30.99). The author lives in Ithaca, NY.
Sing You Home by Jody Picoult (Atria) follows a custody battle for fertilized embryos between a lesbian couple and one of their newly religious ex-husbands. Booklist says “Picoult’s gripping novel explores all sides of the hot-button issue.” It has a 150,000 copy first printing, and includes a CD of songs that correspond to each chapter.
Minding Frankie by Maeve Binchy (Knopf) takes place in a closely knit Irish neighborhood where a young alcoholic struggles with unexpected fatherhood. Library Journal calls it “an enjoyable novel about life, love, and second chances.”
The Night Season by Chelsea Cain (Minotaur/Macmillan) is, amazingly, the fourth novel featuring Portland detective Archie Sheridan. The Wall Street Journal features the author today, calling the new book Cain’s “tamest to date” and says her “bid to reach a broad, mainstream audience without disappointing Gretchen fans may prove tricky.”
The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss (DAW) is a continuation of the 2007 fantasy novel The Name of the Wind, in which an innkeeper recalls a life of heroic deeds. Library Journal declares it “reminiscent in scope of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series and similar in feel to the narrative tour de force of The Arabian Nights, this masterpiece of storytelling will appeal to lovers of fantasy on a grand scale.”
Rodin’s Debutante by Ward Just (Houghton Mifflin) follows a boy’s adolescence and early adulthood in Chicago during the mid-20th century. Entertainment Weekly gives it an A-, “Don’t be misled by the title; this engaging coming-of-age tale has little to do with either Auguste Rodin or a debutante.”
River Marked by Patricia Briggs (Ace) is book six in the supernatural Mercy Thompson series.
Fancy Nancy: Aspiring Artist by Jane O’Connor and illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser (HarperCollins) is a children’s book about the artistic aspirations of a little girl with glitter markers.