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
News for Collection Development and Readers Advisory Librarians
March 11th, 2011 By: Nora Rawlinson
Serial killer Gretchen Lowell scared the pants off readers in Chelsea Cain’s first three thrillers (Heartsick, Sweetheart and Evil at Heart). What actress wouldn’t want to play her?
January Jones, who plays a different kind of scary on the TV series Mad Men, has optioned the books, with plans to play Gretchen…
March 11th, 2011 By: Charlotte Abbott
Thanks to a controversial video trailer for Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived by Rob Bell, the book’s publication date has been pushed up by a week. In the video, the Grand Rapids, Michigan mega-church pastor and bestselling author of Velvet Elvis leans toward “universalism ─ a dirty word in Christian circles that suggests everyone goes to heaven and there is no hell,” as CNN.com’s “Belief Blog” puts it.
On March 14, Bell will be the subject of a New York Times profile, and will appear on Good Morning America and Nightline.
Several libaries we checked did not have copies on order. Others showed holds of up to 10:1 on light ordering.
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March 10th, 2011 By: Nora Rawlinson
The major film adaptation opening tomorrow is based on a picture book, Mars Needs Moms. Author Berkeley Breathed describes in the L.A. Times what it was like to see his 38-page book become a big-budget 3-D Disney movie (the filmmakers added back a segment that Breathed’s “lily-livered publisher” axed). In another piece, the L.A. Times says the movie may suffer at the box office, partly because of its potentially frightening ending. People magazine’s review gives it a lowly 1 of 4 possible stars, objecting to a “vicious caricature of a feminist” but sister mag. Entertainment Weekly completely disagrees, awarding it an A-.
A better landing is expected for Catherine Hardwicke’s…
March 10th, 2011 By: Nora Rawlinson
Mat Johnson, whose novel Pym is called a “blisteringly funny satire of contemporary American racial attitudes” by Laura Miller in Salon, recommends another “hilarious, uproarious, insane” novel about race on the regular NPR segment, “You Must Read This.” The book, Oreo, by Fran Ross, was overlooked in its time says Johnson…
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March 10th, 2011 By: Nora Rawlinson
As a NYT columnist, David Brooks has easy access to the media and he’s been making the rounds with his new book, The Social Animal. Yesterday, he was on Good Morning America and The Colbert Report. The book rose to #2 on Amazon and several libraries are showing heavy holds on modest ordering.
While Brooks’s ideas are explored in these appearances, it’s not made clear that the book is an extended metaphor. PW describes it as…
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March 10th, 2011 By: Nora Rawlinson
Jodi Picoult achieves a new landmark today. Her latest book, Sing You Home, arrives at #1 on the USA Today best seller list, her first time debuting in that position on that list.
Two of Picoult’s previous titles, Nineteen Minutes and Change of Heart, debuted at #1 on the NYT Fiction list, but the USA Today‘s list tracks all books, regardless of category or format. Both of those titles were beat out on the USA Today list by Oprah selections…
March 9th, 2011 By: Charlotte Abbott
Next week, Charles Cumming‘s spy novel Trinity Six arrives with a 150,000-copy first printing and four out of four stars from People magazine – which calls it “a smashing Cold War thriller for the 21st century.” The novel centers on the “Cambridge Five” (Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, et al.), who betrayed England to the Soviet Union during and after WWII.
PW says it “revitalizes the moribund cold war spy novel…. Cumming’s knowledge of the spy business, his well-crafted prose, and his intensely engaging plot make this a breakthrough novel.”
Libraries we checked have very low orders and modest holds on this title and the next one, below, by Cara Hoffman.
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Macmillan Audio; 9781427211408; $34.99
Large Type; Thorndike; 9781410437150; May 2011; $31.99
So Much Pretty by Cara Hoffman (Simon & Schuster), arrives with a 75,000 printing and an early thumbs up from the Los Angeles Times, which calls it “a skillful, psychologically acute tale of how violence affects a small town… the payoff is more than worth the slow-building suspense.”
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March 9th, 2011 By: Nora Rawlinson
Who’s going to play Sarah Palin in the HBO adaptation of Game Change?
No, not Tina Fey.
According to Entertainment Weekly, that role just went to Julianne Moore.
No news yet on who will play John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.
March 9th, 2011 By: Nora Rawlinson
NPR inaugurated a social networking book club experiment in January with Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken.
For March, they turn to a book that has been a long-lasting trade paperback best seller (currently at #2 after 57 weeks), Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese.
Adding a new twist, NPR invites books clubs to apply for the opportunity to receive a personal call or videochat from the author.
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OverDrive, Adobe EPUB eBook; Mobipocket eBook; WMA Audiobook
Audio; Books on Tape
March 9th, 2011 By: Nora Rawlinson
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.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
March 9th, 2011 By: Nora Rawlinson
Coming in second at the box office last weekend is The Adjustment Bureau (after the children’s animated feature, Rango) based on Philip K. Dick’s short story, “The Adjustment Team.”
The love interest, played by Emily Blunt in the film, was not in the original story. In the L.A. Times blog, Jacket Copy, Carolyn Kellogg explores the differences between the two versions.
Many successful films have been adapted from Dick’s novels and stories, including Blade Runner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) and Total Recall (a full list is available here).
The story “The Adjustment Team” is available in various anthologies, including the following and as an audio tie-in.
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Audio tie-in: Brilliance Audio; under the title “The Adjustment Bureau”; Read by Phil Gigante; $39.97
OverDrive; Selected Stores available in Adobe EPUB eBook
March 8th, 2011 By: Nora Rawlinson
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).
March 8th, 2011 By: Nora Rawlinson
According to the movie news site, Deadline, books are “the most ubiquitous source material among this year’s crop of broadcast pilots.”
Several are based on public domain titles; fairy tales (ABC’s Once Upon a Time and NBC’s Grimm), a drama about Edgar Allan Poe, and one that sets The Count of Monte Cristo in the present…
March 8th, 2011 By: Nora Rawlinson
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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March 8th, 2011 By: Nora Rawlinson
The latest incarnation of Newsweek, under the editorship of Tina Brown, arrives on newsstand today. In her introductory editorial, Brown makes a valiant effort to explain why a print weekly still matters today.
Our focus is more narrow; what about books? In recent years, the weekly news magazines have cut back their review sections. On the other hand, Brown’s online publication, The Daily Beast, launched a book section early in 2009. We heard that the new Newsweek would include a book section in each issue, so we had hopes.
We haven’t gotten our hands on the print version yet, but in the online version, the book section is rather meager and buried. The only book feature is “Bookbag: Jodi Picoult’s Picks,” in which the bestselling author shines her light on three novels; Allison Pearson’s I Think I Love You (Knopf; Feb), Benjamin Hale’s The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore (Twelve/ Grand Central; Jan) and Caroline Leavitt’s Pictures of You (Algonquin; Jan).
Picoult calls Leavitt an “undiscovered jewel.” While not exactly “undiscovered” (Pictures of You was a Costco Pick and it was on the extended NYT Paperback Fiction list), Leavitt does deserve a broader audience (check out Carolyn See’s review in the Washington Post).
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OverDrive; Adobe EPUB eBook
Highbridge Audio; UNABR; 9781615736553; Library Edition, 9781611741025