EarlyWord

It’s been a strong year for movies based on books. Oscar predictions are studded with titles familiar from books; two of them, Lovely Bones and Invictus are coming out this month.

Looking ahead to 2010, some new titles have been added to the schedule (for the full schedule of forthcoming movies based on books, see our Upcoming — with Tie-ins.)

Be sure to click on the Official Movie Site links to watch the trailers (after all, it’s essential to your work.)

JAN 22, 2010

Movie Title: Extraordinary Measures

Director: Tom Vaughan

Starring: Harrison Ford, Brendan Fraser, Keri Russell

Official Movie Site

Based on: The Cure: How a Father Raised $100 Million–and Bucked the Medical Establishment–in a Quest to Save His Children, by Geeta Anand

The Cure: How a Father Raised $100 Million–and Bucked the Medical Establishment–in a Quest to Save His Children Geeta Anand Retail Price: $15.99 Paperback: 368 pages Publisher: Harper Paperbacks – (2010-01-01) ISBN / EAN: 006073440X / 9780060734404

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MAR 26, 2010

Movie Title: How to Train Your Dragon

Directors: Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders

Voices of: Gerard Butler, Johan Hill, America Ferrera

Based on: How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell

Official Movie Site

Newmarket is publishing one an “Art of…” book. Other tie-ins have not been announced yet.

The Art of How to Train Your Dragon Tracey Miller-Zarneke Retail Price: $40.00 Hardcover: 160 pages Publisher: Newmarket Press – (2010-03-02) ISBN / EAN: 1557048630 / 9781557048639

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April 2, 2010

Movie Title: The Last Song

Director: Julie Anne Robinson

Starring: Miley Cyrus, Kelly Preston, Greg Kinnear

Based on: The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks (a movie based on another Sparks’ title, Dear John, arrives in theaters in February

Official Movie Site

No tie-in announced yet.

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MAR 12, 2010

Movie Title: Green Zone

Director: Paul Greengrass

Starring: Matt Damon, Jason Isaacs, Greg Kinnear

Based on: Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone, by Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Official Movie Site

No tie-in announced yet

On the eve of the book’s publication, comes the news of a movie deal for the debut title in a planned five-book YA series, Beautiful Creatures.

According to Variety, Warner Bros. is looking for a way to fill the revenue hole that the Harry Potter movies will eventually leave (the last in the series, Deathly Hollows, is coming out in two parts, scheduled for Nov 19, 2010 and July 15, 2011.) Meanwhile, Entertainment Weekly sees the move as part of the “hunt for the next Twilight.”

Warner has hired Richard LaGravenese (P.S. I Love You) to write and direct.

Beautiful Creatures Kami Garcia, Margaret Stohl Retail Price: $17.99 Hardcover: 576 pages Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers – (2009-12-01) ISBN / EAN: 0316042676 / 9780316042673 Listen to an excerpt

Hachette Audio: 9780316042673; $17.99

The book is being promoted by Amazon (it’s being featured on the books home page and the Amazon editors picked it as #5 in the Top 100 titles for 2009). In sales rankings, it is now at #68.

Of course, this isn’t the only series that movie people have declared the next HP or Twilight:

The Harry Potter mantel:

Percy Jackson and the Olympians, (if you haven’t already, check out the new trailer) — scheduled for release Feb. 12, 2010. It is directed by Chris Columbus, who also directed the first two HP movies.

Septimus Heap: Magyk — announced for 2012, an animated film.

The new Twilight (the next in that series, Eclipse is coming June 20, 2010 and it’s been rumored that the last book, Breaking Dawn, will be slpit into two movies):

Mortal Instruments — Jessica Postigo (Operation Checkmate) has been signed up to write the script that is based on the novels City of Bones, City of Ashes and City of Glass.

The Host — Stephenie Meyer’s title published for adults was signed up recently. It’s not a series, at least not yet. Meyer has hinted that she might return to the story, most recently on last’s week’s CBS Sunday Morning.

House of Night — the series was acquired last year, but no news since.

The Wall Street Journal warns that eReaders may be more akin to eight-track tapes than to iPods.

It seems many people are happy to read books on their computer screens and iPhones. The killer app may be Apple’s tablet computer, coming next year.

We also notice a few people are still happy with ink on paper.

On NPR’s Fresh Air last night, the author of one of the NYT BR‘s Notable Books, Thomas Mallon, talked to Maureen Corrigan about the now antiquated art of letter writing. The book was also reviewed in the NYT BR on Sunday.

Libraries are showing modest holds.

Yours Ever: People and Their Letters Thomas Mallon Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: Pantheon – (2009-11-10) ISBN / EAN: 0679444262 / 9780679444268

Featured on NPR’s Fresh Air last night, a book about the Smother’s Brothers that is not owned by most of the libraries we checked, despite strong pre-pub reviews.

The book rose from #4,970 on Amazon to #134.

Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” David Bianculli Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 400 pages Publisher: Touchstone – (2009-12-01) ISBN / EAN: 1439101167 / 9781439101162

Lizzie Skurnick, author of Shelf Discovery, takes a jaundiced and very funny look at the “rush of literary fathers gushing about how to raise their perfect children,” in The Book Beast, focusing on,

Eating Animals Jonathan Safran Foer Retail Price: $25.99 Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2009-11-02) ISBN / EAN: 0316069906 / 9780316069908

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Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son Michael Chabon Retail Price: $25.99 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Harper – (2009-10-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061490180 / 9780061490187

The essay may send you scurrying to read Skurnick’s book, if you haven’t already. You probably won’t find a copy on the shelves, but you can get a good sample of it with Browse Inside.

Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading Lizzie Skurnick Retail Price: $14.99 Paperback: 448 pages Publisher: Avon A – (2009-08-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061756350 / 9780061756351 Browse Inside

You can also hear Lizzie in conversation with Nancy Pearl and Virginia Stanley, head of library marketing for HarperCollins, on Library Love Fest.

It’s so human to expect that the next big thing will be similar to the last big thing.

The book section of the Daily Beast tries to figure out what will be the next big YA series, suggesting a half dozen titles that may make it (actually, some are already fixtures on the NYT Children’s bestseller list). Most of the suggestions are of the paranormal persuasion.

Our bet is that something entirely new will come along. We just hope that the next big thing is a book.

Jon Stewart returns from the break with new author interviews:

Wednesday, Dec. 2

Comeback 2.0: Up Close and Personal Lance Armstrong Retail Price: $27.99 Hardcover: 208 pages Publisher: Touchstone – (2009-12-01) ISBN / EAN: 1439173141 / 9781439173145 Read an Excerpt

Thursday, Dec. 3

Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives Michael Specter Retail Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The – (2009-10-29) ISBN / EAN: 1594202303 / 9781594202308

Spector recently appeared on a CBS Sunday Morning feature about the safety of flu vaccine. He’s also been interviewed on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday and the book was reviewed in the New York Times as well as in the NYT Book Review. Holds continue to be heavy in many libraries.

Audiobook sales have dropped this year. On NPR’s Morning Edition today, Neil Gaiman gave the love to the format, supported by David Sedaris also calls himself a “tapeworm,” a habit fostered by his library, and Martin Jarvis, an audiobook reader as well as producer.

It’s worth listening to just to hear all of those great voices.

On NYT reviewer Janet Maslin’s list of the top ten books of 2009 is The Imperial Cruise, a title about Theodore Roosevelt that PW called “stridently disapproving.” In her review, Maslin calls it an “incendiary new book” that “may at times be overly eager to connect historical dots, but … also produces graphic, shocking evidence of the attitudes that [it] describes.”

The incendiary part is borne out by USA Today‘s review which takes issue with most of the book’s assertions.

Bradley, author of the bestselling Flags of Our Fathers, looked into what led  the US to the war in the Pacific. His research brought him to Roosevelt and a secret treaty with Japan. The book, titled The Imperial Cruise is about a secret diplomatic mission that resulted in that agreement.

The book is rising on Amazon, now at #102. Libraries, however, are showing modest holds.

The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War James Bradley Retail Price: $29.99 Hardcover: 400 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2009-11-24) ISBN / EAN: 0316008958 / 9780316008952

Hachette Audio; 9781600243950; $39.98
Large Print; Little, Brown; 9780316024617; Hdbk; $31.99

Thanks to a feature on CBS Sunday Morning, The National Geographic Image Collection, a book of highlights from the National Geographic’s enormous archive, made a precipitous leap from #2,652 on Amazon to #12.

The video is not currently available on the CBS site, but this gives an idea of the book’s appeal:

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National Geographic Image Collection National Geographic, Michelle Anne Delaney, Maura Mulvihill Retail Price: $50.00 Hardcover: 512 pages Publisher: Focal Point – (2009-10-06) ISBN / EAN: 1426205031 / 9781426205033

The NY Times Book Review editors just released their selections of the 100 Notable Books of 2009 (they will appear in print in the Dec. 6 print issue). Meanwhile, their colleagues, the three critics for the daily NYT each named their top ten.

The NYT reviewers see the year in publishing as having been,

…a bit of an off year, and the must-read milestones have been rare. There are fewer towering histories and biographies than usual. There’s more attention to a subject of newly urgent interest: finance.

Despite the “urgent interest” in finance, the only title on the subject that appears on any of the three reviewers’ lists is Liaquat Ahamed’s Lords of Finance. In fact, only two other titles have appeared on any of the lists so far; Carmen Reinhart’s This Time is Different and Justin Fox’s The Myth of the Rational Market.

Other critics do not agree that this has been an off year for biographies; the National Book Award winner for nonfiction was T.J. Sitles’s First Tycoon. Twenty six biographies have appeared on the best lists that have appeared so far, with Blake Bailey’s Cheever appearing on three of them (for a spreadsheet of the 396 titles on lists to date, click on our Bests — All Adult Titles — Spreadsheet).

NYT Book Review‘s editors see a “heartening development,” in the year’s books,

…the resurgence of the short story — and of the short-story writer. Twelve collections made our fiction list, and four biographies of short-story masters are on the nonfiction list.

Fittingly, the cover of the Book Review features Alice Munro’s short stories, Too Much Happiness.

Other lists have been weighted less towards short stories, but consensus is developing for Wells Tower’s Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, which appears on both the Book Review‘s list and three others so far (for a list of all the titles that have been on three lists or more, check our Bests — Titles Selected by Three or More — Spreadsheet.)

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned Wells Tower Retail Price: $24.00 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux – (2009-03-17) ISBN / EAN: 0374292191 / 9780374292195

Since PW opened the conversation about the number of women on bests lists (in an odd way, by announcing there are NO women in their Top Ten), we checked to see how many women authors appeared on the new lists (for a list of all the women writers who have appeared on all the lists to date, click on our Bests — Women Authors).

Out of 100 on the NYT BR list, 32 are by women, or 32%. Of the total 30 titles chosen by the daily NYT reviewers, just 8 are by women, or 27%.

Below is an analysis of the percentage of women appearing on lists that have been published so far, from highest to lowest.

• Library Journal Genre Fiction — 33 titles — 67% women
• PW Best Childrens Books — 30 titles — 63.33% women
• National Book Award Finalists — 20 titles — 45% women — None of the winners are women
• Library Journal Best How-to — 23 titles — 39% women
• Atlantic Books of the Year — Top Five and Runners Up — 25 in total — 36% women
• Library Journal Best Books — 31 titles — 35% women
• NYT BR Notables — 100 titles — 32% women
• Amazon Top Ten Picture Books, Top Ten Middle Readers and Top Ten Teen — 30% women
• PW Best Books — 100 titles — 30% women — None of the Top Ten are women
• NYT Editors –Garner, Kakutani, Maslin — 30 titles total — 27% women
• Amazon Top 100 Editors Picks — 25% women; without YA and children’s titles, 20% women

Of the 28 titles that were picked by 3 or more of the above, seven are by women (25%):

• Byatt, A.S., Children’s Book — AZ #88, Atlantic Top Five, LJ Best Books
• Mantel, Hilary, Wolf Hall — AZ #3, Atlantic Runner Up, LJ Best Books, NYT BR Notable
• Moore, Lorrie,  Gate at the Stairs — AZ #12, NYT BR Notable, NYT Kakutani
• Munro, Alice,  Too Much Happiness — AZ #30, Atlantic Runners Up, NYT BR Notable
• Phillips, Jayne Anne, Lark and Termite — PW,  NBA Fiction Finalist, LJ Best Books, NYT BR Notable, NYT Kakutani
• Reichl, Ruth, Gourmet Today — AZ #11, PW, LJ How-To
• Walbert, Kate,  Short History of Women — AZ #45, LJ Best Books, NYT BR Notable

There should be more national best book lists coming, from the Washington Post and the L.A. Times (we’re hoping their reduced book sections will not prevent them from choosing the year’s bests), as well as Time, People, Entertainment Weekly, the Wall Street Journal, Horn Book and SLJ.

NPR kicks off their listing of the best books of the year, appropriately for the season, with their picks of the 10 best cookbooks.

All the titles are owned by most libraries. NPR couldn’t resist this mouth watering cover and neither can we:

Rose’s Heavenly Cakes Rose Levy Beranbaum Retail Price: $39.95 Hardcover: 512 pages Publisher: Wiley – (2009-09-22) ISBN / EAN: 0471781738 / 9780471781738

Sue Grafton’s U is for Undertow is the clear leader in the number of hold per copy for titles arriving next week, with nearly 4 times the number than the next-highest title, J. A. Jance’s Trial by Fire. People gives it 4 of 4 stars, saying, “expect to be spellbound.”

We’re surprised that Greg Mortenson’s Stones into Schools, the follow-up to his continuing bestseller, Three Cups of Tea (at #3 on the NYT Paperback Nonfiction list after 147 weeks) is showing less than 2 holds per copy on modest ordering. The Amazon rankings show more interest, where Stones into Schools is at #50.

Nonfiction, 12/1

Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession Julie Powell Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2009-12-01) ISBN / EAN: 0316003360 / 9780316003360

Hachette Audio; 9781600245695; $29.98
Large Print; 9780316053822; pbk; $24.99
Audio and eBook downloadable from OverDrive

You’d think the success of the movie based partly on Julie Powell’s previous title, Julie & Julia would be the perfect setup for her second memoir, Cleaving, but library holds are fewer than two per copy on cautious ordering.

Originally timed to coincide with the release of the movie, the publisher suddenly decided to hold off until December, a move The New York Observer regarded with deep suspicion. Their take was that the filmmakers feared the story of Julie’s “insane, irresistible love affair with one of her close friends,” would turn off potential audiences (right! We only wish that books had such power over movies). The more likely story is that the publisher didn’t want it to compete with their two Julie & Julia tie-in editions.

Will fans of the Julie in Julie & Julia, the book or the movie, be willing to accept a darker Julie who is hurtful to her “sainted” husband Eric? How interested will they be with her turning from an obsession with Mastering the Art of French Cooking to an obsession with mastering the art of blood-and-guts butchery?

In an interview in USA Today, Powell herself predicts that people are “going to totally react very negatively. They’ll find me reprehensible. But to counterbalance the negativism, I hope there will be people who empathize with my experience, who maybe feel the book addresses things they wish they could talk about more.”

Entertainment Weekly gives Cleaving a B -, with kudos for the “gutsy, profane, energetic writer we first met mastering a stew from a recipe,” but put off by the fact that “…here, she’s in a stew of her own making, with ingredients that leave a strange taste.”

Elle magazine is less grudging,

Julie Powell’s follow-up to Julie & Julia paints a visceral, compulsively readable picture of what it looks like when you fully indulge with a fantasy object who isn’t your spouse…. She’s one of those narcissists who can’t be truly alone with herself, and while this fear drives her manic activities and her highly engaging accounts of them, it’s also what keeps a very good memoir from being great…Still, Powell has honed her writing chops along with her culinary skills, and her extended metaphor is dead on: how we can systematically hack each other apart without ever getting to the heart of our desires.”

We’ve included a link to a sizable portion of excerpts provided by the publisher; they prove that Powell has indeed honed her writing skills. Vegetarians be forewarned; there are many scenes of butchery.

Nonfiction, 12/1; continued

Mortenson, Greg,  Stones Into Schools, Viking

Michael F. Roizen, YOU: Having a Baby: The Owner’s Manual to a Happy and Healthy Pregnancy, Free Press/S&S

Armstrong, Lance, Comeback 2.0, S&S — Armstrong will appear on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on 12/2.

Fiction, 12/1

Dunne, Dominick Too Much Money, Crown/Random House

Berry, Steve The Paris Vendetta, Ballantine/Random House

Jance, J.A. Trial by Fire, S&S

Zane, Total Eclipse of the Heart, Atria

Grafton, Sue U is for Undertow, Putnam

Jeff Sharlet returned to NPR‘s Fresh Air to talk to Terry Gross about the secretive fundamentalist group “The Family,” which counts among its members influential congressmen and senators. Recent news stories, including those about family members John Ensign’s and Mark Sanford’s sex scandals, have brought new attention to the group.

Sharlet’s book, The Family, came out in hardcover last year; the paperback was released in May.

Holds are heavy in many libraries.

The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power Jeff Sharlet Retail Price: $15.99 Paperback: 464 pages Publisher: Harper Perennial – (2009-06-01) ISBN / EAN: 0060560053 / 9780060560058

Audio and eBook downloadable from OverDrive.