EarlyWord

The eighth novel by British author Kate Atkinson, Life After Life, (Hachette/Little, Brown/Reagan Arthur; Hachette Audio; Hachette Large Print), debuts on this week’s NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Seller list at #3, the highest spot yet for the author. Her previous novel, Started Early, Took My Dog (2011) hit the extended list when it was published.

It has been reviewed widely in the U.S., including an early review by Janet Maslin in the daily New York Times, which states, “Life After Life is a big book that defies logic, chronology and even history in ways that underscore its author’s fully untethered imagination.” It is an IndieNext #1 pick for April and was much buzzed about by librarians on GalleyChat.

For one shining moment this weekend, Dante’s The Divine Comedy broke into the Amazon Top 100, getting a boost from NPR Weekend Edition Saturday‘s feature on a new translation by Clive James (Norton, published today).

Scott Simon introduces the story by saying that the The Divine Comedy, “is a 14th century poem that has never lost its edge. Dante Alighieri’s great work tells the tale of the author’s trail through hell — each and every circle of it — purgatory and heaven. It has become perhaps the world’s most cited allegorical epic about life, death, goodness, evil, damnation and reward.”

It’s a good time for a new translation. Dan Brown’s Inferno, (RH/Doubleday) which refers to the first section of The Divine Comedy, arrives next month. Libraries may want to have copies on hand for events featuring a livestream of the author’s single appearance for the book, at Lincoln Center on May 14.

Still at #1 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Seller list after 4 weeks, Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In (Random House) urges women to seek egalitarian marriages. Promoting a different approach, 90’s pro volleyball star Gabrielle Reece appeared on NBC’s Today Show and Rock Center on Friday to say that she rescued her marriage to pro surfer Laird Hamilton by becoming “submissive.”

Her book, My Foot Is Too Big for the Glass Slipper, (S&S/Scribner), which also outlines Reese’s views on fitness and parenting, arrives tomorrow. It’s now at #53 on Amazon sales rankings. Holds are heavy on light ordering in several libraries.

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No more mini-teasers. Here’s the first full-length trailer for The Hunger Games 2, which debuted on the MTV Movie Awards last night.

Michael Hainey’s memoir, After Visiting Friends, (S&S/Scribner) came out in February, was an IndieNext pick for March, racked up many admiring reviews, and is now gaining new fans. It was on the Today Show yesterday, and  will be reviewed in this Sunday’s NYT Book Review.

The book is about Hainey’s quest to find out what really happened to his father, a Chicago newspaperman, who died unexpectedly when the author was six years old. Reports simply stated that he had died “after visiting friends.”

Libraries are showing heavy holds on modest orders.

Next week brings a new opportunity to get boys excited about reading with a new title from the team of Griffiths and Denton. In picture books, get ready for another sure-fire bedtime book from the author and illustrator who created the enduring best seller, Good Night, Good Night, Construction Site. And, tie-ins are arriving for Lego’s latest theme.

All the titles highlighted here, and more, on our downloadable spreadsheet, Kids New Title Radar, Week of April 15.

Middle Grade

The 13-Story Treehouse, Andy Griffiths, Terry Denton, (Macmillan/Feiwel & Friends)

Last summer’s big debut from Random House was The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker, a crossover sci-fi novel about a girl growing up at the time of a developing disaster caused by the gradual slowing of the earth’s rotation. It became a librarian favorite and went on to appear on several best books lists.

Optioned before publication, the next step in the often rocky road to the screen has been announced; Catherine Hardwicke is now set to direct the adaptation. Hardwicke directed the first Twilight movie, as well as Red Riding Hood, Thirteen and Lords of Dogtown and was attached to direct The Maze Runner, but Word & Film reports she left that project in favor of The Age of Miracles. The Maze Runner is now moving ahead with Wes Ball as director.

Hardwicke was also once attached to direct a movie based on Gayle Foreman’s If I Stay, but that project is now in limbo. In January, the author told  Entertainment Weekly that Chloe Moretz might star, but admitted, “I feel like Hollywood is that boyfriend that keeps breaking my heart … I’ve heard things about dates and pre-production about when things were happening, but there’s been nothing that’s been certain. And I’ve heard it so many times before I don’t know.” Meanwhile, Moretz, who stars in the upcoming new adaptation of Carrie, is in talks to join Charlize Theron in the film of Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places.

In case you’ve had trouble imagining Michael Douglas as Liberace, below is a glimpse via the first trailer for HBO’s biopic about the entertainer, Behind the Candelabra.

Premiering on HBO on May 26th, it also stars Matt Damon as Liberace’s lover, Scott Thorson. It is based on Thorson’s 1988 memoir, Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace, which is being re-released by Tantor Audio in print, as well as audio and ebook on May 2.

Get an early peek at James Dashner’s forthcoming YA novel, which doesn’t hit shelves until Oct, The Eye of Minds (RH/Delacorte YR; Listening Library) on USA Today.com, where the first chapter is posted today (ARC’s have not been sent out yet, but RH Childrens tells us that they will have them at ALA).

It is the first in a new series, Mortality Doctrine, which is described as “a series set in a world of hyperadvanced technology, cyberterrorists, and gaming.” During a TwitterChat last month, Dashner said that it is “basically for the exact same people who love The Maze Runner. A very different story, as Dashner as you can get … but more intellectual and plot-driven than TMR” and that the main female character, Sarah, “is more central than Teresa was in TMR.”

Dashner is currently at work on the sequel titled The Rule of Thoughts.

A film of The Maze Runner, starring Kaya Scodelario, is scheduled for release on Valentine’s Day, 2014.

Pamela Paul, new editor of the NYT Book Review

What do we want from the NYT Book Review? Often discussed, that question takes on added interest now that Sam Tanenhaus is leaving his post as Editor after nine years.

He will be replaced by Pamela Paul, who has been the children’s books editor and the features editor for the Review. She is only the second woman to hold that position (Rebecca Sinkler was the first, from 1989 to 1995).

We have a simple (which is NOT synonymous with “easy”) request: do what good librarians do, approach books with passion and excitement:

Every week, make people say, “I gotta read that!”

Don’t be afraid to show your hand and champion certain titles (like the NYT Magazine did for George Saunders’ book of short stories, Tenth of December, with their cover declaring it “the best book you will read this year“)

A NYT Book Review cover from 2004

Make people look forward to each issue, wondering, “What’s going to be on the cover?”

Develop reviewers that people actively follow

Surprise us with a range of titles and don’t be afraid of the popular

There are reasons to think Pamela Paul may be up to that task:

She is a passionate reader — in an essay on YA books, she went way beyond the cliché of being so engrossed in a book that she missed her subway stop; she admitted to nearly ignoring her new-born because she was in the midst of The Hunger Games.

She appreciates a wide range of authors — her weekly Q&A column, “By the Book,” ranges from authors like Edward St. Aubyn to household names like Jackie Collins (who would have guessed that her favorite genre is ” tough male fiction”?)

She enjoys controversy — She stirred the waters by publishing a much-talked-about piece by Meg Wolitzer on the status of womens fiction

And, she clearly has stamina. In addition to her duties on the Book Review, she  has written for many other sections of the NYT, as well as other publications, and writes a weekly column on children’s books for the daily newspaper. She has also written three books and is raising three children.

She will need that strength. Previous editors have complained that it is a thankless job. When Chip McGrath left that position on 2003, he admitted to The New York Observer, “I have too thin a skin for this job … A lot of people feel that part of their job is to let you know in various ways how unhappy you’ve made them. That’s wearing.” John Leonard, the editor in the early 1970’s, often regarded as the “golden age” of the publication, chimed in, saying, “The job wears you out. I lasted five years. It’s not so much that the books keep coming, but the complaints keep coming.”

Pamela Paul begins that thankless job in May.

Before it was published in August of 2011, Tom Perrotta’s novel The Leftovers, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; Macmillan Audio) was acquired by HBO for a possible series.

Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights) has just been named as director and shooting is expected to begin in June for a possible 2014 premiere, according to New York Magazine’s culture blog, “Vulture.” Co-writing the script with Perrotta is Damon Lindelof, who was a writer and producer for Lost. In an interview about the project last year, Lindelof indicated that the series would go beyond the book, saying it “probably only has enough content for two or three episodes.”

UPDATE, 5/8/13: Fox ultimately rejected the series.

Filming wrapped this weekend on a pilot for a possible FOX-TV series based on the popular YA novel Delirium by Lauren Oliver.

The enthusiastic cast members, including Emma Roberts and Daren Kagasoff have been Tweeting and instagramming from the set in Malibu (check out a roundup here).

The final book in the trilogy, Requiem, (HarperCollins; Listening Library), was published in early March.

In other dystopian-YA-novels-to-film news, shooting for the big-screen adaptation of Divergent (Veronica Roth, HarperCollins/Tegen; Dreamscape audio) begins today in Chicago, starring Shailene Woodley as Tris Prior and The Maze Runner, based on the book by James Dashner, is going into production with Kaya Scodelario starring.

Many libraries still have holds lists for Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins, which HarperCollins just released in paperback. It’s a novel that seems ripe for a movie adaptation (great locations — just look at that cover — and the multiple story lines involve the movie business. Note also, that it has been a hit in audio).

Unsurprisingly, the book was optioned shortly after publication and now comes the news that Todd Field has signed on as the director. He has had experience with book adaptations, having won acclaim for his film Little Children, based on the novel by Tom Perrotta.

In 2011, it was announced that an earlier title by Walter, The Financial Lives of Poets, was  going to be adapted as Bailout, by independent filmmaker Michael Winterbottom, starring Jack Black, but there’s been no news on it for over a year.

Walter’s most recent book, a collection of short stories, We Live in Water (Harper Perennial original paperback), was published in February.

Below is a quick look at titles to know before you work the information desk today.

Media Attention

The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth, Mark Mazzetti, (Penguin Press) — NYT front page story, Washington Post book review, plus an appearance on Face the Nation, with much more coming this week (see our New Title Radar, Media Magnets).

Carrie and Me: A Mother-Daughter Love Story, Carol Burnett, (S&S; S&S Audio) — Carol Burnett was featured on CBS Sunday Morning, yesterday (see video).

Holds Alert

Life After Life, Kate Atkinson, (Hachette/Little, Brown/Reagan Arthur; Hachette Audio; Hachette Large Print) is on the rise. It has been reviewed widely, most recently in the L.A. Times and the Seattle Times.

Expect to see it on next week’s best seller lists; it is currently at #4 on Amazon sales rankings and has been in the top 100 for 2 weeks.

NYT Notable Hardcover Best Seller Debuts

Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, Therese Anne Fowler, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; Macmillan Audio; Thorndike Large Print)

The latest in the “Real Housewives of Historical Fiction” genre (recent titles include The Paris Wife, which continues as a best seller at #8 on the Trade Paperback list and The Aviator’s Wife, which is now on the extended hardcover list) follows in the footsteps the other titles’ footsteps, arriving on the NYT Fiction best seller list at #10. See our earlier coverage (also note that promotion for Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby may bring additional interest).

World War II continues to be a strong interest in Nonfiction, with

Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941, (Random House) — #10 in nonfiction. It was featured on NPR at the end of March.

The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II, Denise Kiernan, (Touchstone, $27.) About the women who worked on a project was enriching uranium for the first atomic bomb. — at #14. The author appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

The popularity of “bonnet fiction” continues with a new title by the “queen of the genre,”  Beverly Lewis’s The Guardian, (Baker/Bethany House). It debuts at #5 on Trade Paperback fiction list.

Childrens Books 

New to the NYT Children’s Picture Books best seller list:

Poems to Learn by Heart, collected by Caroline Kennedy, illus. by Jon J. Muth, (Disney/Hyperion, 3/26/13). arrives at #1. See our earlier story.

Green by Laura Vaccaro Seeger, (Macmillan/Roaring Brook), the perfect title for spring,  debuts at #9  even though it has been out for a year. EarlyWord Kids contributor Lisa Von Drasek included it in her annual list of “Best Books To Give Younger Kids You Don’t Know Very Well.”  The book’s trailer shows off its clever cut-outs:

We are saddened to hear the news that Peter Workman died yesterday. He was the founder and CEO of Workman Publishing, a successful company built on unique, often quirky titles. In addition, he was a vital part of several charities, including the Goddard-Riverside Community Center, an organization that works for social and economic change for the poor in West Harlem and the Upper West side, Prep for Prep, which works with New York City’s students of color to give them better educational opportunities and the UJA.

Peter was known for being very hands-on and as a result, a Workman title is always recognizable. The companies that Workman acquired over the years are also unique and have retained their own identities; Algonquin, Black Dog & Leventhal, Highbridge Audio, Storey Publishing and Timber Press.

In the midst of corporate consolidation in publishing, Workman has remained steadfastly independent. The company will continue to be run by Peter’s wife and business partner, Carolan Workman, their daughter Katie Workman and a small management team of people from within the company.