EarlyWord

The media’s already got the jump on next week’s laydown of Sarah Vowell‘s Unfamiliar Fishes, a short, idiosyncratic history of Hawaii by the National Public Radio star and bestselling author.

Entertainment Weekly gives it a “B,” saying it “could use a little more of Vowell’s voice peppered throughout some of the long stretches of history and reporting, [but] her brainy wit and savvy cultural references keep the book from seeming like homework.”

There are also short interviews with Vowell in USA Today and Vanity Fair.

Unfamiliar Fishes Sarah Vowell Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover – (2011-03-22) ISBN / EAN: 9781594487873 / 9781594487873

Also up next week is Lost and Found: Unexpected Revelations about Food and Money by Geneen Roth, the author that Oprah made into a star. It arrives with a 200,000-copy laydown. Kirkus calls it, “a timely portrait of one woman’s devastating loss and subsequent rise from the ashes of the Bernie Madoff scandal.”

Lost and Found: Unexpected Revelations About Food and Money Geneen Roth Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 224 pages Publisher: Viking Adult – (2011-03-22) ISBN / EAN: 0670022713 / 9780670022717

T.J. English (Havana Nocturne) will be getting media attention next week for his book about New York in the 1960’s, The Savage City. It will be reviewed in the NYT Metro section on Sunday and the author is booked for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

The Savage City: Race, Murder, and a Generation on the Edge T. J. English Retail Price: $27.99 Hardcover: 496 pages Publisher: William Morrow – (2011-03-01) ISBN / EAN: 9780061824555 / 9780061824555

Below is our weekly roundup of titles to watch next week, by authors you may not have heard about yet, but are poised for success, as well as our list of “usual suspects.” The week brings a large number of new books from big-name authors, including Harlan Coben and Alexander McCall Smith.

Titles to Watch

Spiral by Paul McEuen (Dial) is a techno-thriller that New York Times critic Janet Maslin compared favorably to Michael Crichton in his prime in a review that jumped the book’s pub date, as we mentioned earlier this week.  Today’s Wall Street Journal anoints the author a “publishing star,” although an “unlikely” one (McEuen is a Cornell physics professor) and points out that the book was a best seller in Germany, where it was published in translation last fall. Film rights have also been sold.

The Mozart Conspiracy by Scott Mariani (Touchstone) is this British author’s U.S. debut, though it’s actually the second installment in his thriller series featuring ex-SAS warrior Ben Hope. PW calls it “a fast, exciting read in The Da Vinci Code tradition,” though Kirkus adds “apart from the rumor that he was poisoned, though, don’t expect to learn much about Mozart.” It has a 125,000-copy first printing. Orders are in line with modest holds at libraries we checked.

The Four Ms. Bradwells by Meg Waite Clayton (Ballantine) is the story of four friends who met in law school in the early 1980s and have maintained their ties through decade of marriage, children, divorce, and various career twists, until they must confront a buried secret. Library Journal is on the fence, comparing it unfavorably to the author’s 2008 bestseller The Wednesday Sisters: “Instead of true characterization, Clayton resorts to literary quotes, legalese, and Latin verbiage to give her characters unique voices. Still, fans of Elizabeth Noble, Ann Hood, Elin Hilderbrand, and other luminaries of female friendship fiction will find much to captivate them.” Libraries we checked have modest orders in line with modest reserves to date.

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The rumor mill has been churning for days and now the movie news site The Wrap claims the exclusive that Jennifer Lawrence (nominated for an Oscar for Winter’s Bone) will play Katniss Everdeen in the film version of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. It is scheduled to arrive in theaters on March 23 next year and is planned as the first in a trilogy, followed by Catching Fire and Mockingjay.

The role of Peeta Mellark has not been cast yet, but The Wrap says the Alex Pettyfer (I am Number Four and Beastly) is one of the actors under consideration

Actually, we have two winners from yesterday’s book display contest. Within fifteen minutes of our posting the challenge, Lauri Wilson and Melissa DeWild both identified the unifying theme as books that are sources for movies that Tom Hanks is working on. Each will receive a copy of Knit Your Own Dog, published by Black Dog & Leventhal (thanks to Mike Rockliff, head of library marketing at Workman, for providing the prizes).

How did they guess so quickly? Both had also read Shelf Awareness yesterday and noticed that Hanks will star in a movie based on Richard Phillips’s memoir of his capture by Somali pirates, A Captain’s Duty.

It happens that we noticed the same story and it set us wondering about the other book projects Hanks has in the pipeline. Updates on them after the jump.

We’re hoping one of the winners knits us a dog — Lucy needs a new toy.

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The major international prize for books written by women, the UK’s Orange Prize For Fiction announced their long list of 20 nominees yesterday. Much is being made of the fact that Téa Obreht, whose novel The Tiger’s Wife was released last week to lavish attention, is, at 25, the youngest person on the list.

The prize was created in 1996 by a group of reviewers, librarians, and others in the U.K. book world, who felt that book prizes were disproportionately awarded to men. The Guardian‘s “Books Blog” yesterday addressed the question of whether the Orange Prize is still needed, pointing to recent research that women are still under-represented in literary magazines and criticism.

The full list of nominees is presented in the Guardian slide show, with annotations and  links to reviews. Viewing it can be a bit disconcerting for Americans; the British covers are often quite different from the ones we are familiar with. The UK jacket for The Tiger’s Wife, for instance, actually includes the wife (right, below).

Why is it called the “Orange Prize”? It has nothing to do with Scotland or a the female love of that color; it’s named for the UK mobile network company that funded the launch.

After the jump, the full list of 20 titles, with links to more information about them.

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[UPDATE: We Have A Winner]

Attention knitters and dog lovers!  What’s the unifying theme of the above book display?

The first person to accurately respond, in the comments section below, wins a copy of Knit Your Own Dog, published by Black Dog & Leventhal. (Hint: if you’re having trouble reading the covers, click on each one for more information).

And, don’t forget to enter Wiley’s Dummies contest — a chance to win every Dummies book in print.

On Good Morning America yesterday, George Stephanopoulos talked to Rob Bell about his “Provocative take on heaven and hell,” in his new book, Love Wins. Bell, the pastor of a mega church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is being accused of heresy by evangelicals.

The book has been in the top fifteen on Amazon for the last week. It moved in to the top five after the appearance.

Bell was also profiled in USA Today on Monday.

Audio from Books on Tape; 9780307940568

Going straight to #1 on the March 20th NYT Hardcover Fiction list is The Wise Man’s Fear, the second in the fantasy trilogy, by Patrick Rothfuss.

The first book, The Name of the Wind, came out in 2007 and was a hit with libraries. It won both the Alex Award and the RUSA Reading List Fantasy Award in that year. Librarian Nancy Pearl talked about it on NPR Morning Edition and recently tweeted that the new book is “a worthy sequel…Well worth the 4 year wait.”

In fact that wait may be part of the secret of its success,  Read the rest of this entry »

USA Today designates The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, which releases today, as the “next big Afghanistan book” (following in the footsteps of The Kite Runner and Three Cups of Tea). It’s “…backed by a perfect blend of publishing elements — a remarkable Afghan heroine, a high-profile writer, bookseller support and a marketing campaign with a celebrity roster.” That celebrity roster includes… Read the rest of this entry »

It’s now official; in a front-page story, the New York Times, the “national newspaper of record” writes that libraries are protesting HarperCollins new 26-loan restriction on library e-book lending (the NYT covered the story earlier, but in the “Media Decoder” blog. It’s also been covered by other newspaper, such as USA Today).

Ironically, this attention may serve to bring more users to libraries for ebooks. As the article notes, “It is still a surprise to many consumers that e-books are available in libraries at all.” Nevertheless, ebook lending has risen by 36% in the New York Public Library in the last year.

The story quotes Macmillan CEO Jon Sargent, one of the two major trade publishers that does not loan ebooks to libraries (the other is S&S), who says Macmillan will continue that policy until they “…find terms that satisfy the needs of the libraries and protect the value of our intellectual property.”

As to whether other major publishers will follow the HarperCollins’ approach, Stuart Applebaum of Random House says they have no immediate plans to do so, but will not rule out that possibility.

How important are library sales to large trade publishers? In an industry where statistics are difficult to come by, there are no reliable industry-wide figures. Two major trade publishers told the NYT reporter, “Sales to libraries can account for 7 to 9 percent of a publisher’s overall revenue.”

Announcement and invitation….

Join us this Thursday (see invitation) to celebrate the winners of this years Bank Street College of Education’s Children’s Book Committee will be honored on March 17th.

Sharon Draper will be accepting the fiction award for Out of My Mind. A moving first person… Read the rest of this entry »

HBO’s five-part adaptation of James M. Cain’s book Mildred Pierce, starring Kate Winslet
and Evan Rachel Wood begins on March 27.

Director Todd Haynes used Cain’s original
1941 novel as the source, rather than the
1945 film noir classic starring Joan Crawford. He explains in an interview in ArtForum magazine:

When I began reading the novel,
I discovered that it bears scant resemblance to the film version.
The book felt so shockingly current.
It reflected what was happening right now. And then, of course, Mildred’s sexuality and the details of her erotic life…(trailer after the jump)
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The latest film adaptation of Jane Eyre was released in only four theaters over the weekend, but it achieved the highest ticket sales per-theater for a movie in limited release this year. In addition, sales increased over 50% from Friday to Saturday, indicating strong word of mouth, notes the L.A. Times.

It will continue to roll out slowly, opening in nine more cities next week.

The movie stars Mia Wasikowska as Jane and Michael Fassbender as Rochester. The movie tie-in is published by Vintage/Knopf.

New York Times reviewer Janet Maslin today jumps the pub date of a techno-thriller coming next week, Paul McEuen’s debut, Spiral. Although she doesn’t seem to like the book personally, she clearly expects it to be a big seller.

She says Spiral, “…sounds like something written by Michael Crichton in his prime. It’s actually better than a lot of what Mr. Crichton wrote once his prime was over.”

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Both The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report will be running repeats this week, giving Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer yet another boost on Wednesday (it’s currently at #4 on Amazon sales rankings)…

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