USA Today leads up to Oprah’s interview with Ayana Matthis, the author of her latest Book Club 2.0 pick, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, (RH/Knopf), with one of their own (click through for video).

Oprah’s interview appears on OWN network’s  Super Soul Sunday, this week, February 3, at 11 a.m. ET/PT.

Promo for the show also promises “OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB 2.0 NEWS!” which may mean the announcement of a new title.

A taste of Oprah’s interview below:

NPR backs up raves on GalleyChat for The Dinner by Dutch author Herman Koch (RH/Hogarth; AudioGo; Thorndike Large Print coming soon), by giving it an “Exclusive First Read” on their Web site. It’s about two brothers and their wives  who get together for a fancy dinner in Amsterdam. This is not a celebratory dinner, however; they have come together to discuss a grisly crime perpetrated by their sons, for which they remain uncaught. As the meal progresses, the parents regress, revealing carefully hidden insecurities and resentments. When it was published in the UK in August, The Economist headlined its review, “The best beach read of the season is finally published in English.” It also notes that the translation is “seamless.”

It was featured at the Random House MidWinter Buzz session and is  available as a digital review copy on Edelweiss, as are many of the other RH Buzz titles.

If you’ve ever tried to talk someone into reading short stories, here’s some tips from George Saunders, author of The Tenth of December, (Random House; BOT), from his appearance on The Colbert Report last night. It seems to have worked; the book is on the rise again on Amazon’s Sales Rankings, moving from #25 to #7.

If you doubt Colbert’s claim that Sunders appeared on the show five years ago, here’s proof, an appearance to promote his collection of his nonfiction pieces, The Brain-Dead Megaphone, (Penguin/Riverhead, 2007):

Yesterday, Al Gore visited the Today Show to promote his just-released book, entitled, grandly, The Future, (Random House; RH Audio; BOT). Lauer took him to task for selling his Current TV channel to al Jazeera, which some regard as hypocritical in light of the accusation in his book that “Virtually every news and political commentary program on television is sponsored in part by oil, coal, and gas companies … with messages designed to soothe and reassure the audience that everything is fine, the global environment is not threatened.”

Unsuprisingly, it appears this will be a common theme on talk shows; it also came up during MSNBC’s Morning Joe interview today. We’ll see if Jon Stewart addresses it when Gore appears on The Daily Show tonight.

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In the midst of a media blitz for his book, Hitmaker, (Hachette/Grand Central), music mogul Tommy Mottola appeared on the Today Show with Matt Lauer yesterday. Gossip columnists (and Lauer) are fascinated with the section of the book in which he apologizes to ex-wife Mariah Carey, but his career is as legendary as his personal life (check the Huffington Post interview and the New York Observer story).

The book is rising on Amazon Sales Rankings (currently at #143), but libraries are not showing holds.

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Maurice Sendak’s final completed book, My Brother’s Book, (HarperCollins) arrives this coming Tuesday. The Vanity Fair Web Site heralds it with a slide show of five non-consecutive spreads, with this annotation:

The author’s beautifully illustrated narrative tells the story of his brother’s journey to the end of life, a deeply personal tale inspired by his brother Jack’s death, in 1995. Written in verse that echoes Shakespeare and William Blake, Sendak’s longing to be reunited with his deceased sibling serves as a suiting good-bye from the beloved Where the Wild Things Are author. As longtime friend Tony Kushner notes in the book’s jacket, “We’ll miss him forever.”

Pre-pub reviews are ecstatic, with Horn Book noting, “As the ultimate not-for-little-children Sendak, this profoundly personal book about loss and healing should find its audience among thoughtful adults (and perhaps some teenagers).”

We’re a bit late with the Radar this week; ALA MidWinter got in the way.

Watch List

Fresh Off the Boat, Eddie Huang, (RH/Spiegel & Grau; RH Audio; BOT)

The founder of the popular East Village food shop Baohaus got an early push for his “brash, leading-edge, and unapologetically hip” memoir (Publishers Weekly), with a profle last week in the NYT‘s “Fashion & Style” section, followed by a review in the “Books” section by Dwight Garner, who clearly enjoyed the ride, concluding, “It’s a rowdy and, in its way, vital counterpoint to the many dignified and more self-consciously literary memoirs we have about immigration and assimilation. It’s a book about fitting in by not fitting in at all.”

The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won’t Tell You About What They’ve Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War, Kevin Sites, (Harper Perennial; Blackstone Audio)

Pre-pub reviews have been strong on this original trade paperback, which profiles 11 soldiers. The author is an award-winning journalist and former soldier. PW calls it a “riveting and emotionally raw debut.”

Returning Favorites

Here I Go Again, Jen Lancaster, (Penguin/NAL)

The author of six memoirs and this, returns with her second novel, (more on her earlier books, here), Lancaster has endeared herself to fans with her humorous takes on her own shortcomings (check her blog post on joining a gym). The novel, about going back to high school to right wrongs, sounds like an exercise in wish fulfillment. The trailer, below, gives the idea:

Lancaster performs another kind of exercise in her upcoming, The Tao of Martha (as in, Stewart). Subtitled, My Year of LIVING; Or, Why I’m Never Getting All That Glitter Off of the Dog, it is about her efforts to live like the domestic goddess and is the basis for a possible TV series of the same name, exec. produced by Martha (as in, Stewart).

News from Heaven: The Bakerton Stories, Jennifer Haigh, (Harper; Dreamscape Audio; Thorndike Large Print)

Richard Russo compares librarian favorite Haigh’s new book to Sherwood Anderson’s classic:

The characters … are so vividly drawn, the inner lives revealed so deftly, with such intelligence and sympathy, that fictional Bakerton, Pennsylvania, takes on the additional weight of, say, Winesburg, Ohio.”

Usual Suspects

Until the End of Time, Danielle Steel, (RH/Delacorte; Brilliance Audio; RH Large Print);  Steel with a spiritual twist; two intertwined love stories, the second (between an Amish woman writer and her publisher), a possible reincarnation of the first.

Speaking from Among the Bones, Alan Bradley, (RH/Delacorte; RH Audio; BOT; Thorndike); in the fifth Flavia de Luce novel, the main character remains eternally eleven-years-old (as she will in the next five titles in the series). Director Sam Mendes (American Beauty and Revolutionary Road) has optioned the books for a possible TV series.

Insane City, Dave Barry, (Penguin/Putnam; Penguin Audio; Wheeler Large Print); An IndieNext selection for February, Barry’s first adult novel in ten years is about a destination wedding that goes off the rails (you may entertain thoughts of The Hangover).

Keep your eye out for these titles for kids and young adults, arriving this week.

Younger Children

Lick!, Matthew Van Fleet, Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books

Libraries participating in Every Child Ready to Read programs will want to own multiple copies of this heavy stock interactive title, the second in the new series that began with Sniff!. There are never enough truly engaging interactive books for the just toddling set and this new series is groundbreaking as was Van Fleet’s Tails.

Happy Birthday, Amelia Bedelia!

Amelia Bedelia Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, Peggy Parish illustrated by Fritz Siebel 1/29

Amelia Bedelia Chapter Book #1: Amelia Bedelia Means Business, Herman Parish and  Lynne Avril, (HarperCollins/Greenwillow Books)

Amelia Bedelia Chapter Book #2: Amelia Bedelia Unleashed Herman Parish and  Lynne Avril, (HarperCollins/Greenwillow Books)

Amelia Bedelia Hits the Trail; I Can Read, Level 1, Herman Parish and  Lynne Avril, (HarperCollins/Greenwillow Books)

It has been five decades since the literally minded housekeeper first arrived on the scene and grabbed pen and paper to “draw the curtains” and get some little clothes to “dress the chicken.” Early readers have loved her for generations and we rejoice that this series continues with Peggy’s nephew, Herman Parish who has carried on the misadventures of Amelia Bedelia with a new leveled reader and two chapter books.

Older Kids

Fans of Smile by Raina Telgemeier (Scholastic, 2010) will go nuts for Peanut (RH/Schwartz & Wade; paper original; ages 11 to 14) a graphic novel by Ayun Halliday, illustrated by Paul Hoppe. It’s the story of Sadie, who decides to try to win friends via a deception. Of course, she ends up weaving a tangled web.

Public and school libraries won’t want to miss Courage Has No Color: The True Story of the Triple Nickles, Americas First Black Paratroopers, by Sibert Winner Tanya Lee Stone (Candlewick; ages 10 and up), out just in time for Black History Month.

An “exclusive peek” at Kate DiCamillo’s next book, Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures (Candlewick, 9780763660406, 9/24/13; Listening Library), appears in USA Today. The accompanying article notes, “The 240-page novel, which tackles issues like loss and grief with humor, is interspersed with comic-style graphic sequences and illustrations by K.G. Campbell.”  USA Today also interviews DiCamillo.

Below is the excerpt (available via Scribd., so we don’t feel that we’re breaking USA Today’s exclusivity):

Cathy Marie Buchanan’s The Painted Girls, (Penguin/Riverhead; coming in large print from Wheeler), reminded many of  Susan Vreeland’s Luncheon of the Boating Party, (Penguin/Viking, 2007). Both books are based on a work by an artist involved in the Impressionist circle (Renoir’s painting in Vreeland’s book, Degas’s Little Dancer Aged Fourteen in Buchanan’s).

The Washington Post makes the connection, too, assigning the review of Painted Girls to … Susan Vreeland. She heaps praise on Buchanan’s book, saying she  “paints the girls who spring from the page as vibrantly as a dancer’s leap across a stage.” As fascinating as Paris during th Belle Epoque Paris is, says Vreeland, it’s the characters, three poor sisters trying to make it in the ballet, that hold the story together, “Through their bad decisions, lying, thieving and prostitution of one sort or another, one reads on, compelled by love for these girls whom Buchanan describes so compassionately.”

Holds continue to build in libraries. People magazine designated it one of their picks last week, it is also an Indie Next Jan pick and the author was interviewed on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday (causing the Canadian Globe and Mail to headline their interview with Buchanan, “How to make your publicist swoon.”)

Getting a large boost from the latest of Tina Brown’s “Must Reads” segments on NPR’s Morning Edition is Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds by Ping Fu and MeiMei Fox (Penguin/Portfolio, 12/21/12). Now at #33, it is moving up Amazon’s Sales Rankings and shows increased holds in libraries on modest ordering.

At eight years old, Ping Fu was taken from her parents during China’s Cultural Revolution and placed in a re-education camp, where she ate dung and dirt and endured gang rape. She survived, wrote a thesis about infanticide in China and, as a result, was forced out of the country. She came to the U.S. with next to nothing and went on to become a tech entrepreneur.

She was interviewed about her business on the Daily Beast yesterday:

 
Brown says of the book,”Her philosophical thoughts … her stoic ability to understand the patient lessons that she learned and apply them to her thoughts about survival and love … it’s very, very moving, indeed.”

Departing from his series characters, Joe Pike and Elvis Cole, Robert Crais’s new book, Suspect, (Penguin/Putnam; Brilliance Audio; Wheeler Large Print; Brilliance Audio), features a character of the canine persuasion; a military dog named Maggie, who is traumatized after losing her handler in an explosion.

Crais tells USA Today that Maggie is inspired by his own close relationship with a dog. He wants the book to bring attention to an often overlooked group, but says,

First and foremost I am a commercial writer and I hope to entertain people. But having said that, I’m in love with the relationship between humans and dogs, and the more I learned about what our military working dogs are doing, I wanted to at least share with people what an important role these animals have in all our lives.

The book may not remain a standalone for long. Says Crais, ” I have this horrible weakness. I fall in love with my characters. Suspect started as a one-shot, but I just love Maggie so much, and I love Maggie and Scott and what they have going.”.”

Lawrence Wright, the author of an investigative book on Scientology, Going Clear: Scientology, Celebrity, and the Prison of Belief, (RH/Knopf; RH Audio) appeared on The Today Show this morning.

The segment is a promo for a two-part story that begins on NBC’s Rock Center tonight. It opens with a clip of former Scientology member, the director Paul Haggis (Crash).

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The book is called “enthralling” by Laura Miller on Salon.com. Janet Maslin in the New York Times on Monday called it “hotly compelling,” although “minutiae-packed.”

Holds are rising on The Dude and the Zen Master, (Penguin/Blue Rider). Co-author, and Dude, Jeff Bridges has ready access to the media, of course, and has appeared on dozens of shows to promote the book. Most of the interviews, including the Today Show‘s with Bridges and co-author, Zen Master Bernie Glassman, lend credence to Kirkus‘s comment that the book “borders on self-parody.”

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A review on NPR’s All Things Considered last night, however,  gives the book much more credit, calling it a “delightful, whimsical little text with a very serious intention.”

Holds are rising on Cathy Marie Buchanan’s novel, The Painted Girls, (Penguin/Riverhead; soon to be available as Wheeler Large Print), after she was was interviewed on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday.

Based on the true story of the three young sisters, one of whom, a rising ballerina, posed for Edgar Degas’ sculpture, “Little Dancer Aged Fourteen” in 1881, it challenges romantic images of Belle Epoque Paris, describing the poverty and sexual predations the dancers suffered. Designated a “People Pick” in the current issue, it is called a “deeply moving and inventive historical novel…[that is] ultimately a tribute to the beauty of sisterly love.”

It is also an Indie Next Jan pick; “this novel delivers great atmosphere and fully realized characters who weave through the harsh yet rich tapestry of the times and tell a story of family, romance, degradation, and fulfillment.”