EarlyWord

If you are in New York City on Thursday March 18th, please join us.

The Children’s Book Committee at Bank Street is being dragged kicking and screaming into the age of technology. For the first time in its 101 years of reviewing, selecting and annotating children’s books, the Best Books of the Year list will be available electronically.

The Children’s Book Committee
Bank Street College of Education

Cordially invites you to attend a breakfast celebrating the presentation of

The 2010 Children’s Book Awards to the authors and illustrators

Thursday, March 18, 2010
9:30 to 11:30 a.m.

Bank Street College of Education
The Evelyn Rome Tabas and Daniel Tabas Auditorium
610 West 112th Street
New York, NY 10025-1898

RSVP to bookcom@bankstreet.edu

The Josette Frank Award for fiction:

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate Jacqueline Kelly Retail Price: $16.99 Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) – (2009-05-12) ISBN / EAN: 0805088415 / 9780805088410

.

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon Grace Lin Retail Price: $16.99 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers – (2009-07-01) ISBN / EAN: 0316114278 / 9780316114271

The Flora Stieglitz Straus Award for nonfiction:

Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream Tanya Lee Stone Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 144 pages Publisher: Candlewick – (2009-02-24) ISBN / EAN: 0763636118 / 9780763636111

.

Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 (Richard Jackson Books (Atheneum Hardcover)) Brian Floca Retail Price: $17.99 Hardcover: 48 pages Publisher: Atheneum/Richard Jackson Books – (2009-04-07) ISBN / EAN: 141695046X / 9781416950462

The Claudia Lewis Award for poetry:

Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors Joyce Sidman Retail Price: $16.00 Hardcover: 32 pages Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children – (2009-04-06) ISBN / EAN: 0547014945 / 9780547014944

For more information: 212.875.4540

The Children’s Book Committee is an affiliate of the Bank Street Center for Children’s Literature.

In this Sunday’s NYT Magazine Frank Bruni profiles Katie Lee, aspiring food celebrity.

She appears regularly on The Early Show. Her cooking column, Eat This Up, appears monthly in Cosmopolitan. She’s published books; a requirement for any food celebrity. The first book even landed her a spot on Oprah (perhaps largely because her husband at the time, Billy Joel, appeared with her).

Sales of Lee’s second book, minus the Oprah effect, have been modest. Lee observes to Bruni that the cookbooks that sell the best are by people who have their own show. Having failed to sell an earlier pilot, she is now working on another one. She also has a contract with S&S for a novel, loosely based on her life with Billy Joel.

Trying to become famous must be exhausting.

The Comfort Table: Recipes for Everyday Occasions Katie Lee Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 272 pages Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment – (2009-10-20) ISBN / EAN: 1439126747 / 9781439126745

——————————–

The Comfort Table Katie Lee Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment – (2008-04-01) ISBN / EAN: 141694835X / 9781416948353

After dozens of high-profile best selling titles about various aspects of the financial crisis, the most anticipated title, and the one the may be the most accessible to the broadest audience is…

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine Michael Lewis Retail Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company – (2010-03-15) ISBN / EAN: 0393072231 / 9780393072235

It arrives with much fanfare; an excerpt in Vanity Fair, appearances on Sixty Minutes (Sunday), the Today Show, NPR’s All Things Considered, and Jon Stewart, among others on Monday, followed by Fresh Air and Charlie Rose on Tuesday.

Holds in libraries are surprisingly light; all the publicity could change that.

Viking’s big early spring debut, Angelology, is bringing hosannas from some and pitchforks from others.

Viking wasn’t the only publisher to see potential in the book; they were one of seven houses to bid on it last year, and won with a rumored six-figure deal, (Publishers Weekly, 1/28/09). Shortly after, movie rights were sold for $1 million to Columbia (see our earlier story).

USA Today gives it the love in the current issue,

What do you get when an Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate and critically acclaimed memoirist [Falling Through the Earth, 2006] trolls for the same readers who loved Dan Brown’s search for the grail of best-sellerdom in The Da Vinci Code? In the case of Danielle Trussoni’s Angelology, a spellbinding quest novel.

And, further,

[Trussoni] has worked out her fantasy scheme brilliantly. Her literary riddles resolve with the aesthetically pleasing precision of a well-oiled antique clock. She offers up intriguing characters, lyrical nature descriptions, hidden clues, secret codes, hidden manuscripts and treasure hunts, creating a sumptuous and surprising novel.

As we noted earlier, both People and the NYT BR featured Angelology as their lead reviews last week and both were won over. The Chicago Tribune is not so appreciative, saying that the plot is “so convoluted it makes The Da Vinci Code look like a model of clarity” and the reviewer notes regretfully that Trussoni is at work on a sequel. In the daily NYT, Janet Maslin says it’s “prettily written,” but goes on to detail the book’s “nonsenical” story line. Perhaps most damning, she notes that “Ms. Trussoni does not even tie up this book’s loose ends. She leaves her story in virtual midair…”

In the libraries we checked, holds are averaging just 3:1 on light ordering.

Angelology Danielle Trussoni Retail Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 464 pages Publisher: Viking Adult – (2010-03-09) ISBN / EAN: 0670021474 / 9780670021475

Penguin Audiobooks: 03/09/2010; $39.95; ISBN 9780143145264

Two novels to keep an eye on next week – Paolo Giordano’s The Solitude of Prime Numbers, an international bestseller that’s starting to draw media attention, and Sarah Addison Allen’s third novel, The Girl Who Chased the Moon, which has solid demand in libraries that have ordered it.

Paolo Giordano’s The Solitude of Prime Numbers is the saga of two misfit Italian schoolmates as they move through life.

Today’s NYT calls it, “…a mesmerizing portrait of a young man and woman whose injured natures draw them together over the years and inevitably pull them apart.”

It gets an A- in the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, which says,

We’re engrossed by the way in which a dreadful combination of faulty brain wiring and rotten luck propels each child’s future, like number sequences locking into place.

USA Today also mentions this debut novel by a 27 year old Italian physicist in an international roundup:

Don’t be frightened off by the author’s Ph.D. or the book’s title… Giordano’s passionate evocation of being young and in despair will resonate strongly with readers under 30. Alas, overbearing parents, special-needs siblings, cruel classmates, physical and sexual insecurities, guilt, loneliness and grief are universal plagues.

The Solitude of Prime Numbers Paolo Giordano Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books – (2010-03-18) ISBN / EAN: 0670021482 / 9780670021482

————————-

The Girl Who Chased the Moon, the tale of a young woman’s seach for her roots in a small Southern town, received a starred review in Library Journal:

Allen’s warm characters and quirky setting are what will completely open readers’ hearts to this story. Nothing in it disappoints.

The Girl Who Chased the Moon Sarah Addison Allen Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Bantam – (2010-03-16) ISBN / EAN: 0553807218 / 9780553807219

Other Titles With Buzz On Sale Next Week

The Spellmans Strike Again (Spellman Files Series #4) by Lisa Lutz (Simon & Schuster)

Think Twice, by Lisa Scotoline, (St. Martin’s Press)

But the real news in fiction next week is in childrens and YA titles:

Stephenie Meyer‘s Twilight: The Graphic Novel (Yen Press) — Meyer’s first foray into Manga.

The Wimpy Kid Movie Diary by Jeff Kinney (Amulet Books) — the movie opens next week (see trailer here).

L.J. Smith’s The Vampire Diaries: The Return: Shadow Souls (HarperTeen) — fans are resting easier, now that the CW has announced that the series based on the books has been renewed for the fall.

James Patterson‘s Maximum Ride: Fang (Little Brown)

…is heeeere!

The movie opens June 30th. The official site is here.

On Tuesday night, Jon Stewart interviewed Mark Thiessen on Comedy Central’s Daily Show. Going in, you had to know, simply from the title of the book, Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack, that the interview would be contentious.

The extended interview continues in two additional parts:

• Marc Thiessen Extended Interview Pt. 2
• Marc Thiessen Extended Interview Pt. 3

Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack Marc A. Thiessen Retail Price: $29.95 Hardcover: 376 pages Publisher: Regnery Press – (2010-01-18) ISBN / EAN: 1596986034 / 9781596986039

As an NPR correspondent covering Iraq, Deborah Amos became interested in talking to Iraqis, not an easy task under Saddam, when they feared talking, or now, as violence has made communication nearly impossible. Nonetheless, she never tires of Iraq. As she told Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air last night (listen here),

I actually love the culture. I love the food, and the people — and I’m comfortable there. … I’m always happy when I get off the plane, and it hardly matters where I land.

Her new book is about the forced migration of the Sunnis.

Eclipse of the Sunnis: Power, Exile, and Upheaval in the Middle East Deborah Amos Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: PublicAffairs – (2010-03-09) ISBN / EAN: 1586486497 / 9781586486495

Today’s Oprah Show repeats the January segment that launched Alicia Silverstone’s vegetarian book, The Kind Diet, which is still on the NYT Hardcover Advice list, currently at #2. Also on the show is Michael Pollan, discussing his book, Food Rules, which is at #1 on the Paperback Advice list.

Jonathan Safran Foer appeared on the The Ellen DeGeneres show yesterday; as a result, his book on vegetarianism, Eating Animals, rose from #383 on Amazon to #6.

It’s amazing to realize that there was a time before consulting firms and endless talk about business strategy. The former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review writes about how we got here in Lords of Strategy. It’s currently rising on Amazon (now at #308), even though the listing indicates it won’t be published for three more weeks (the publisher listing, however, shows a 3/3/10 pub date).

It was just reviewed in the The Wall Street Journal, “Big Think In the Boardroom“;

…a clear, deft and cogent portrait of what the author calls the most powerful business idea of the past half-century: the realization that corporate leaders needed to abandon their go-it-alone focus on their company’s fortunes and instead pursue policies based on a detailed study of the competitive environment and of broader business trends.

The author was interviewed earlier in Business Week; “Lords of Strategy: A Talk with Walter Kiechel.”

The Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World Walter Kiechel Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Harvard Business School Press – (2010-03-03) ISBN / EAN: 1591397820 / 9781591397823

Check your holdings; it wasn’t review prepub and the libraries we checked have not ordered it yet.

Harry Markopolos, a Boston deratives analyst, was asked by his boss to look into a very successful hedge fund and try to figure out why it was doing so well. He instantly realized that it was a fraud and tried many times to blow the whistle on it. He wasn’t subtle; in 2000, he sent a memo to the SEC  titled “The World’s Largest Hedge Fund is a Fraud.” Fittingly, his book about the experience is titled No One Would Listen.

That fund was, of course, Bernie Madoff’s. In an interview with Jon Stewart on Monday night, Markopolos was clear about his distain for the SEC, causing Stewart to burst out, “You are an angry dude; you’re just rippin‘ these guys.”

The book rose to #18 on Amazon (it’s now at #21) and has heavy holds in libraries.

———-

No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller Harry Markopolos Retail Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 376 pages Publisher: Wiley – (2010-03-02) ISBN / EAN: 0470553731 / 9780470553732

ebook available from OverDrive

In a first novel by award-winning short story writer Eric Puchner, a California real estate developer is going broke and hiding that fact from his family. Alan Cheuse reviews the book, Model Home, on NPR’s All Things Considered (listen here), saying,

I came to feel so deeply for [the characters] that the book now and then became almost excruciating to read: the feckless parents, the desperate kids struggling to stay alive and in love with a home world crumbling around them.

People gave it their highest accolade, 4 of a possible 4 stars. It was also reviewed by,

• SF Chronicle ‘Model Home,’ by Eric Puchner
• NYT Nightmare on Easy Street

Model Home Eric Puchner Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher: Scribner – (2010-02-09) ISBN / EAN: 0743270487 / 9780743270489

Audio from Tantor:

On Sale Date: 04/05/2010
Trade 9781400116522 12 Audio CDs $39.99
Library 9781400146529 12 Audio CDs $79.99
MP3 9781400166527 2 MP3-CD $29.99