Shelf Awareness for Wednesday, March 3, 2010


William Morrow & Company: Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay

Del Rey Books: Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid

Peachtree Teen: Romantic YA Novels Coming Soon From Peachtree Teen!

Watkins Publishing: She Fights Back: Using Self-Defence Psychology to Reclaim Your Power by Joanna Ziobronowicz

Dial Press: Whoever You Are, Honey by Olivia Gatwood

Pantheon Books: The Volcano Daughters by Gina María Balibrera

Peachtree Publishers: Leo and the Pink Marker by Mariyka Foster

Wednesday Books: Castle of the Cursed by Romina Garber

News

Macmillan's Sargent on E-Book Availability and Pricing

In his first post on Macmillan's website, CEO John Sargent addressed the e-book agency model, which the company will adopt at the end of March, "and how it will affect our business in the near term." Sargent focused on what he termed "the two major effects at retail"--price and availability.

"All the new adult trade books for which we have the rights to publish in e-book format will be available at the first release of the printed book," he wrote. "We will no longer delay the publication of e-books (read: no windowing). Readers were clearly frustrated at the lack of availability of new titles, and the change to the agency model will solve this problem. We are also working hard to make more books available in digital editions. The consumer will have broader choice and much greater availability."

Sargent added that Macmillan will sell its e-books "at a wide variety of prices. In the ink-on-paper world we publish new books in different formats (hardcover, trade paperback, and mass market paperback) at prices that generally range from $35 to $5.99. In the digital world we will price each book individually as we do today." Pricing for new hardcover releases will range between $12.99 and $14.99, with "a few books will be priced higher and lower," including e-book editions of New York Times hardcover bestsellers, which "will be priced at $12.99 or lower while they are on the printed list. E-book editions of paperback new releases will be generally priced between $9.99 and $6.99." 

 


Now Streaming on Paramount+ with SHOWTIME: A Gentleman in Moscow


Notes: Urban Think! Closing; Mystery Photos of City Lights

Sad news: Urban Think! Bookstore, Orlando, Fla., is closing by the end of the month. As manager Jim Crescitelli wrote: "We had a great nine-year run--a succes d'estime--but we can no longer rationalize staying open beyond our means. We've tried everything humanly possible, but--these things happen. It is no surprise, just an inevitability for us."

---

Cool idea of the day: to attract people to the store during the slowest time of the year, City Lights, San Francisco, Calif., is sponsoring a kind of photo scavenger hunt on Facebook that lasts through March 14. Participants are asked to identify eight "mystery photos" of parts of the interior of the store. City Lights's Stacey Lewis said that the challenge could be tempting to "locals who sometimes stay away from the tourist crowd that North Beach attracts." Also, the store has found that Facebook friends love contests.

---

Mike Slayton and Mary Bannon, co-owners of Finnegan's Bookstore, Utica, Ill., told the Ottawa Times their new shop is still "a work in progress" they hope will evolve into a town gathering place.

Slayton said they chose the "higher-profile location in Utica because of the increased traffic volume and to reach out to the many state park visitors going by."

Bannon added that they were looking for "something to get excited about and thought, 'What would be better than to take advantage of my library and bookstore experience to open our own shop?' Mike and I hope our little shop becomes a meeting place where local residents and area visitors can come to read, start conversations, and find new friends."

---

Are malls moving up to the heavyweight bookstore division? The Detroit News reported on a trend to replace the once ubiquitous small-scale mall bookstores like Waldenbooks and B. Dalton with big box bookstores, "a powerful driver for mall sales and traffic."

Local examples cited included Barnes & Noble, which "recently joined Grand Rapids' Woodland Mall from a standalone location downtown" and Borders, which "has operated a supercenter at Oakland Mall since 1999," the News wrote.

Jim Stokas, principal at Stokas Realty Advisors in Southfield, added that malls hit hard by the financial collapse in 2008 "often can cobble together four or five vacant spaces to make room for a 25,000 square foot superstore."

---

The Atlantic magazine offered a "reality check" on a New York Times article earlier this week about the relative costs of printed books versus e-books (Shelf Awarenness, March 1, 2010). With tongue planted firmly in cheek, the Atlantic detailed "many expenses that book buyers may not appreciate" that go into publishing a $26 hardcover book.

---

Yann Martel has unexpected fans in high places. Quill & Quire reported that the author recently received a letter from President Obama, praising The Life of Pi as "a lovely book--an elegant proof of God, and the power of storytelling."

---

Public radio guest mash-up: Yesterday, NPR's On Point program featured an exploration of the bestselling "monster mash-up craze." Guests included Seth Grahame-Smith--author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter--and Doris Kearns Goodwin, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and author of Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.

---

Staying on theme, here is a very bloody book trailer of the day: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith (Grand Central Publishing).

A feature-length film adaptation of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is also in the works. Deadline Hollywood reported that directors Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov have acquired the rights to produce a movie version of the mash-up. They "used their own money for the option and haven’t involved a studio yet."

---

Today Anne Rice releases an enhanced e-book for her out-of-print story "The Master of Rampling Gate," available on vook.com and the iTunes store. The e-book offers information about how Rice's personal life and hobbies have influenced her most famous novels, new interviews with the author and a tour of her hometown, New Orleans. A preview of the vook is available here.

 


GLOW: Greystone Books: brother. do. you. love. me. by Manni Coe, illustrated by Reuben Coe


Image of the Day: Neil Does Naperville

In its ninth year, NapervilleREADS 2010, an all-city reading event sponsored by Anderson's Bookshops, the Naperville Public Library, Naperville School District 203 and Indian Prairie School District 204, featured Neil Gaiman, who met with students of all ages and spoke to adult fans at a program that drew an audience of more than 800. Altogether, he appeared before more than 8,000 people. Commenting on the range of categories in which Gaiman writes, Anderson's co-owner Becky Anderson called the guest of honor a "cradle to coffin" author.


BINC: Apply Now to The Susan Kamil Scholarship for Emerging Writers!


Pennie Picks The God of Animals

Pennie Clark Ianniciello, Costco's book buyer, has chosen The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle (Scribner, $15, 9781416533252/1416533257) as her pick of the month for March.  In Costco Connection, which goes to many of the warehouse club's members, she wrote:

"If there's one thing I'd rather not remember, it's the awkwardness of my adolescence. Instead of revisiting those memories, I choose to read books about young adults who are figuring out how they fit into the world. This month's pick, Aryn Kyle's The God of Animals, is a great example.

"The main character, Alice Winston, is a friendless 12-year-old, whose prime sources of companionship are her hardworking father, bedridden mother and a troubled teacher. Kyle effortlessly captures the uncertainty many of us felt about what we were seeing in the adults around us and how we translated that information to fit our own versions of reality."

 


Media and Movies

Media Heat: The Language of Life

Today on NPR's Diane Rehm Show: Sheena Iyengar, author of The Art of Choosing (Twelve, $25.99, 9780446504102/0446504106).

---

Tomorrow morning on Good Morning America: Michael F. Roizen and Mehmet C. Oz, authors of YOU: On A Diet Revised Edition: The Owner's Manual for Waist Management (Free Press, $26.99, 9781439164969/1439164967).

---

Tomorrow on Live with Regis & Kelly: Jeff Garlin, author of My Footprint: Carrying the Weight of the World (Simon Spotlight, $25, 9781439150108/1439150109).

---

Tomorrow on the Tavis Smiley Show: Daisy Martinez, author of Daisy: Morning, Noon and Night: Bringing Your Family Together with Everyday Latin Dishes (Atria, $30, 9781439157534/1439157537).

---

Tomorrow on NPR's Diane Rehm Show: Francis S. Collins, author of The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution in Personalized Medicine (Harper, $26.99, 9780061733178/0061733172).

---

Tomorrow on KCRW's Bookworm: Patti Smith, author of Just Kids (Ecco, $27, 9780066211312/006621131X). According to the show, "Poverty and insanity are terrible things--but then there is bohemian poverty and insanity, and these are infused with the romance of becoming an artist. In the first of this two-part interview, Patti Smith speaks of her youth in New York, when she and Robert Mapplethorpe sought to manifest their artistic ambitions."

---

Tomorrow on the Book Studio: Michael Kranish, author of Flight from Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War (Oxford University Press, $27.95, 9780195374629/0195374622).



Television: Game of Thrones; The Pillars of the Earth

HBO has greenlighted the highly anticipated fantasy series Game of Thrones, based on George R.R. Martin's novels, with the first season debut scheduled for next spring. The Hollywood Reporter noted that nine episodes plus the pilot have been ordered and production will start in Belfast this June.

---

Starz network has acquired U.S. television rights to The Pillars of the Earth, an eight-hour miniseries based on Ken Follett's 1989 bestselling novel. Variety reported that Starz "plans to give Pillars a huge promo push for a July debut." The cast includes Ian McShane, Rufus Sewell, Matthew Macfadyen, Donald Sutherland, Hayley Atwell, Alison Pill and Sarah Parish.

"When I realized that we needed something big for the summer, I was aware that this project had been in production and it was just the kind of (programming) model I'd been interested in," said Chris Albrecht, Starz president and CEO. "The execution is first-rate. Once I saw a rough assembly of it, I knew it was an opportunity we couldn't pass up."

 


Books & Authors

Awards: Golden Kite; CCBA Finalists; Montana Book Award

The winners of the 2010 Golden Kite Awards, presented to children's book authors and artists by their peers and sponsored by the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, are:

Fiction: Sea of the Dead by Julia Durango (S&S Books for Young Readers)
Nonfiction: Ashley Bryan: Words to My Life's Song by Ashley Bryan (Atheneum Books for Young Readers/S&S)
Picture Book Text: The Longest Night by Marion Dane Bauer, illustrated by Ted Lewin (Holiday House)
Picture Book Illustration: Gracias Thanks, illustrated by John Parra, written by Pat Mora (Lee & Low Books)

Golden Kite Honor Recipients

Fiction: Neil Armstrong Is My Uncle by Nan Marino (Roaring Book Press)
Nonfiction: Ernest Hemingway: A Writer's Life by Catherine Reef (Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Picture Book Text: Bella & Bean by Rebecca Kai Dotlich, illustrated by Aileen Leijten (Atheneum Books for Young Readers/S&S)
Picture Book Illustration: Bad News for Outlaws, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie, written by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson (Carolrhoda Books)

The Golden Kite Awards will be presented to at the Golden Kite Luncheon during SCBWI's 39th Annual Conference on Writing and Illustrating for Children, which takes place in Los Angeles July 30-August 2. For more information and lists of previous winners, go to scbwi.org.

---

Finalists for the third annual Children's Choice Book Awards have been named by the Children's Book Council, in association with Every Child a Reader. The shortlist was determined by some 15,000 children and teens. From March 15 through May 3, kids will be able to cast their votes for their favorite book, author and illustrator at bookstores, schools and libraries, and at BookWeekOnline.com.

Winners will be announced at the Children's Choice Book Awards gala May 11 in New York City during Children's Book Week. This year's CCBA finalists are:
 
Kindergarten to Second Grade Book of the Year

The Birthday Pet by Ellen Javernick, illustrated by Kevin O'Malley (Marshall Cavendish)
Lulu the Big Little Chick by Paulette Bogan (Bloomsbury USA)
Mouse Was Mad by Linda Urban, illustrated by Henry Cole (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
The Odd Egg by Emily Gravett (Simon & Schuster)
Opposnakes by Salinda Yoon (Little Simon/Simon & Schuster)

Third Grade to Fourth Grade Book of the Year

The Book That Eats People by John Perry, illustrated by Mark Fearing (Tricycle Press)
Coretta Scott by Ntozake Shange, illustrated by Kadir Nelson (Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins)
Gonzalo Grabs the Good Life by Janice Levy, illustrated by Bill Slavin (Eerdmans)
Lunch Lady and the Cyborg Substitute by Jarrett J. Krosoczka (Knopf/Random House)
Oceanology by Ferdinand Zoticus deLessups (Candlewick)

Fifth Grade to Sixth Grade Book of the Year

The Adventures of Benny by Steve Shreve (Marshall Cavendish)
Dork Diaries: Tales from a Not-So-Fabulous Life by Rachel Renee Russell (Aladdin/Simon & Schuster)
Moonshot by Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton (Atheneum/Richard Jackson/Simon & Schuster)
Outlaw: The Legend of Robin Hood by Tony Lee, Sam Hart and Artur Fujita (Candlewick)
Zoobreak by Gordon Korman (Scholastic Press)

Note: The finalists for Book of the Year in the Kindergarten through Sixth Grade categories above were the books that received the highest number of votes in the IRA-CBC Children's Choices program.

Teen Choice Book of the Year

Blood Promise (Vampire Academy, Book 4) by Richelle Mead (Razorbill/Penguin)
Blue Moon (The Immortals, Book 2) by Alyson Noel (St. Martin's Griffin/Macmillan)
Catching Fire (The Second Book of the Hunger Games) by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic Press)
City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments, Book 3) by Cassandra Clare (McElderry/Simon & Schuster)
Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater (Scholastic Press)

Note: More than 3,000 teens voted for their favorite book of 2009 on the TeenReads website, part of The Book Report Network. The five books that received the highest number of votes are finalists for the Teen Choice Book Award.

Author of the Year

Suzanne Collins for Catching Fire (The Second Book of the Hunger Games) (Scholastic Press)
Carl Hiaasen for Scat (Knopf/Random House)
Jeff Kinney for Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw and Dog Days (Amulet Books/Abrams)
James Patterson for Max (A Maximum Ride Novel) (Little, Brown)
Rick Riordan for The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson & the Olympians Book 5) (Disney Hyperion)

Illustrator of the Year

Peter Brown for The Curious Garden (Little, Brown)
Robin Preiss Glasser for Fancy Nancy: Explorer Extraordinaire! (HarperCollins)
Victoria Kann for Goldilicious (HarperCollins)
Susan Roth for Listen to the Wind (Dial/Penguin)
David Soman for Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy (Dial/Penguin)

The Author and Illustrator of the Year finalists were selected by the CBC and Every Child a Reader from a review of bestseller lists.

---

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford (Ballantine) won the 2009 Montana Book Award, which recognizes literary and/or artistic excellence in a book that was written or illustrated by someone who lives in Montana, is set in Montana, or deals with Montana themes or issues.

Four honor books were also chosen by the Montana Book Award Committee: The 600 Hours of Edward by Craig Lancaster (Riverbend Publishing), The Big Burn by Timothy Egan (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen (Penguin) and Stick Horses and Other Stories of Ranch Life by Wallace MacRae (Gibbs Smith).

Presentations and a reception for the winning authors will take place April 8 during the Montana Library Association Conference in Bozeman. 

 


Shelf Starters: The Serialist

The Serialist by David Gordon (Simon and Schuster, $15 trade paper original, 9781439158487/1439158487, March 9, 2010)

Opening lines of books we want to read:

The first sentence of a novel is the most important, except for maybe the last, which can stay with you after you've shut the book, the way the echo of a closing door follows you down the hall. But of course by then it's too late, you've already read the whole thing. For a long time, when I picked up a new book in a shop, I would feel compelled to flip right to the end and read the last sentence. I was unable to control my curiosity. I don't know why I did this, except that I knew I could, and if I could, I had to. It's that old childish impulse, peeling away the wrapping paper, watching horror movies through our hands. We can't resist peeking, even at what we know we shouldn't see, even at what we don't ant to see, at what makes us afraid.

The other reason I really want to start this book off right, with a strong first line, is that it's the first I've written under my own name, and in my own voice, whatever that means. I want to make sure I set the right tone, connect with the reader, and win you over to my side.... I want to open in the classic style, with a hook, a real grabber that holds the reader hostage and won't let go, that will keep your sweaty little fingers feverishly turning the pages all night long. Something like this:

It all began the morning when, dressed like my dead mother and accompanied by my fifteen-year-old schoolgirl business partner, I opened the letter from death row and discovered that a serial killer was my biggest fan. --selected by Marilyn Dahl



Book Brahmin: Dawn Raffel

Dawn Raffel is the author of the novel Carrying the Body and the story collection In the Year of Long Division. A new collection, Further Adventures in the Restless Universe, will be published March 16 by Dzanc. She was a fiction editor for many years and was executive articles editor at O magazine and editor at large at More magazine. She is currently editor-at-large, books, at Reader's Digest and an adjunct assistant professor in the MFA program at Columbia University. She lives near New York City with her husband and sons.

On your nightstand now:

Jane Eyre (I belong to a group of writers who are rereading the classics together), Becoming Jane Eyre by Sheila Kohler, A Common Pornography by Kevin Sampsell, Petersburg by Andrei Bely and Hard Times by Studs Terkel, which I'm using as research for a book I'm writing.

Favorite book when you were a child:

The Little House
by Virginia Lee Burton.

Your top five authors:

Cormac McCarthy, Flannery O'Connor, Grace Paley, Leo Tolstoy, the Brothers Grimm.

Five living women writers whose short stories you wish everyone would read:

Christine Schutt, Diane Williams, Terese Svoboda, Deb Olin Unferth, Laura van den Berg.

Secret affection:

George R.R. Martin's bestselling fantasy series A Song of Fire and Ice.

Book you've faked reading:

That would be the dog-training manual. I hope my husband doesn't see this.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece before he became wildly famous.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Weird Wisconsin by Linda S. Godfrey and Richard D. Hendricks, bought at Renaissance Books in the Milwaukee airport.
 
Book that changed your life:

War and Peace. I came across it in a library when I was a disaffected 13-year-old and had no idea what it was, other than that it promised largeness. By the time I finished, my mind had been rearranged and I'd developed incurable Russophilia. I've now read it four times, and I'm sure I'll be back.
 
Favorite line from a book:

"We must risk delight."--Jack Gilbert, Refusing Heaven
 
Book you most want to read again for the first time:

War and Peace.




Book Review

Children's Review: Meanwhile

Meanwhile: Pick Any Path. 3,856 Story Possibilities. by Jason Shiga (ABRAMS, $15.95 Hardcover, 9780810984233, March 2010)

The subtitle of Jason Shiga's (an Eisner winner for Bookhunter) fabulously inventive comic says it all: "Pick any path. 3,856 story possibilities." You know that kid, the one who'll tally up the story lines--not to make sure he or she got them all, but to make sure the author really did flesh out 3,856 possible story endings--this book is for that kid and for everyone else, too. It transcends the idea of appealing to readers vs. nonreaders, logicians vs. those who go with their gut, child reader vs. adult reader. Who wouldn't want to follow Jimmy, the wide-eyed child on the book's cover, into an ice cream shop? Your first choice is chocolate or vanilla. (Eventually you'll choose both.) This seemingly innocent start leads Jimmy into Professor K's laboratory and the man's three key inventions: the killitron 2000 ("my untested doomsday device"); the SQUID, a beanie-like cap "which can transfer memories between people"; and a time travel machine. No matter which you choose, you must follow hundreds of tiny tubes that connect the comic panels in unorthodox ways; your finger traces a color-coded tube from right to left, bottom to top (and sometimes through elaborate knots), then onto a tab that juts out from the spread, pages away from where you began. "So be sure to keep your eye on where the tube is taking you," suggests the helpful note at the book's beginning. (My favorite line in the preface trumpets the temptation to look through the book out of order to uncover secret codes: "Cheaters only cheat themselves," it states.)

The preface also warns that of the thousands of different adventures, "most will end in DOOM and DISASTER" (who could resist?), and that "only one path will lead you to happiness and success." Hmmm. After you've read it, we can discuss which path he might mean. The vanilla ice cream choice that leads Jimmy quickly home? Probably not. This book made me behave as a reader in ways I never have before. Following the story line tubes the way I'm supposed to, yes, but then retracing to see how I can get a different alternative that looks more interesting--which led me to discover two exact duplicate spreads (except for one tiny detail, okay two, which I won't give away), as well as a salmon-colored spread with Jimmy riding a giant "SQUID" (the kind that lives underwater) that is in no way connected to any of the story tubes. The combination of the time travel machine and the ability of the characters to adopt other people's memories brilliantly allows Shiga to close all of the alternate loops. And you can just imagine how the killitron 2000 factors into the equation. Perhaps my favorite moment is the coin toss that leads Professor K to explain to Jimmy the "Multiple Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics," in which the universe splits in two ("in one universe, the coin landed on heads. In the other, tails"), a perfect analogy for this multiple-possibilities plot line.--Jennifer M. Brown

 


The Bestsellers

AbeBooks February Bestsellers

The following were the 10 bestselling books on AbeBooks.com in February:

  1. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
  2. A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror by Larry Schweikart
  3. Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson
  4. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest by Stieg Larsson
  5. The Shack by William Young
  6. Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger
  7. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
  8. Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
  9. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
  10. The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson


The following were the 10 bestselling signed books on AbeBooks.com in February:

  1. The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova
  2. Horns by Joe Hill
  3. The Women of Nell Gwynne's by Kage Baker
  4. The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis
  5. Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre
  6. Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
  7. Just Kids by Patty Smith
  8. The Man from Beijing by Henning Mankell
  9. Mr. Shivers by Robert Jackson Bennett
  10. Altar of Eden by James Rollins


[Many thanks to AbeBooks.com!]


Powered by: Xtenit