Shelf Awareness for Monday, August 9, 2010


Del Rey Books: The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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

Overlook Press: How It Works Out by Myriam LaCroix

Charlesbridge Publishing: If Lin Can: How Jeremy Lin Inspired Asian Americans to Shoot for the Stars by Richard Ho, illustrated by Huynh Kim Liên and Phùng Nguyên Quang

Shadow Mountain: The Orchids of Ashthorne Hall (Proper Romance Victorian) by Rebecca Anderson

News

Images of the Day: Talkin' Baseball and Books

It's been a busy season for Bay Area booksellers, especially Paul Yamazaki of San Francisco's City Lights! Last week, Chelsea Green sales rep Michael Weaver (r.) hosted a doubleheader frontlist sales appointment with Melinda Powers of Capitola Book Cafe, Capitola, Calif., and Yamazaki at a San Jose Giants game. The week before, Yamazaki and Kevin Ryan and Kevin Hunsanger of Green Apple Books, San Francisco, talked literature--so they say--at a San Francisco Giants game, then plotted their next move at Jack London's cabin.





HarperOne: Amphibious Soul: Finding the Wild in a Tame World by Craig Foster


Notes: Bookstore Moves; E-Dorchester

Lame Duck Books, Cambridge, Mass., will vacate the basement shop it has occupied for the past five years, but owner John Wronoski hopes the bookshop will survive elsewhere under new ownership. The Boston Globe reported that Wronoski "is hosting a sale (with many books discounted by 50%) until September when he'll move the remaining books from 12 Arrow St. into the basement of his Pierre Menard Gallery next door. Running two businesses is too much, he has decided."

Wronoski told the Globe he would rather sell the bookshop than close it: "To that end, he is offering his free labor for a year to ease the transition and get a new owner up to speed."

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The Next Chapter Book Store, which opened last week in Gainesville, Ga., "will be run by young adult men with disabilities who live together in a house sponsored by a nonprofit called Our Neighbor," AccessNorthGa.com.

"What we try to do is not only just provide the opportunity for independent living and that kind of freedom and socialization but also the ability to be a part of society and earn a wage," said Our Neighbor executive director Marty White.

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Tina-Marie and Bill Dearhamer, the new owners of Bookstore and More, Payson, Ariz., told the Payson Roundup "they have big plans to one day expand the store, at 1001 S. Beeline Highway, Suite F, into an adjacent space, turning the now bookstore into much more, including a tea room and gift center."

"When you walk up, there will be a sign pointing this way to the 'bookstore' and another pointing this way to 'more,' " said Tina-Marie regarding their vision for the bookshop's future.

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Dorchester Publishing, which publishes 25-30 mass market paperbacks a month, two-thirds of which are romances, will no longer issue print books and instead release titles only as e-books and for POD, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The company attributed the move to a drop in sales last year of 25%, "in part because of declining orders from some of its key retail accounts, including Wal-Mart Stores."

The paper noted: "Romance fans in particular have already embraced e-books, in part because customers can read them in public without having to display the covers. In addition, type size is easily adjusted on e-readers, making titles published in the mass paperback format easier to reader for older customers."

Random House spokesperson Stuart Applebaum told the Journal that the house considers mass market paperbacks "still a viable, popular, lower-priced alternative to the other reading formats. It also has a committed readership. Will that commitment be forever in a transformative marketplace? We'll have to wait and see."

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Bookstore cats "serve as wonderfully calming (if sometimes haughty) hosts: Have a seat, take it easy, get lost in a book. A bookstore cat is a shop's mascot and keeper, equally adept at charming customers and, when the lights go out, chasing away rodents."

Celebrating some of Northern California's finest bookstore cats, the San Francisco Chronicle featured profiles of "these furry souls--hopefully not an endangered species!--as more and more readers get their books delivered in shrink-wrapped packages from out-of-state corporate behemoths, or transmitted, in blips, to hand-held devices no cat would ever want to cuddle up to."

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Vic Zoschak, owner of Tavistock Books, Alameda, Calif., has acquired an original John Steinbeck manuscript. The Island reported that Zoschak "bought the manuscript for 'His Father,' a short story published in the September 1949 issue of Reader's Digest, from another bookseller who obtained it from a private collection. Most of Steinbeck's manuscripts are in institutions, Zoschak said."

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Capital New York deconstructed the bestseller list at Manhattan's St. Mark's Bookshop: "Summer reading means one thing at Barnes & Noble, and something else at a place like this. No doubt lots of Maine summer renters are stopping by to pump up the Borges greatest-hits collection, Everything and Nothing. Because who would be caught dead reading it at Think! Coffee? Sorry, what we mean is, it would be tantamount to admitting you hadn't already read everything in there. Better to hide it inside a copy of the Régis Debray, especially if the cute guy from the textuality seminar is sitting nearby."

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Cool idea of the day: this coming Saturday, August 14, on what would have been Charles Bukowski's 90th birthday, Skylight Books, Los Angeles, Calif., in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles, is throwing an evening party for the poet, novelist and "celebrated East Hollywood resident." Guests at the evening party include Sue Hodson, manuscript curator of the Bukowski Archive at the Huntington Library, and poet Gerald Locklin. There will be readings, screenings, giveaways, food and "of course drink."

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Here's a writers conference we think we need to cover: Books & Books and Florida International University's MFA program in creative writing are sponsoring an international writers conference in Grand Cayman, October 21-23. The program includes nine daily classes in all genres, afternoon editing and publishing symposia and evening readings. Besides a range of writers, faculty include Daniel Halpern of Ecco and literary agent Marly Rusoff. Co-directors are Mitchell Kaplan of Books & Books and Les Standiford, director of FIU's MFA in Creative Writing.

For more information and to register call 305-919-5857 or e-mail campbet@fiu.edu.

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Book trailer of the day: The Wake of Forgiveness by Bruce Machart (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), which appears in October.

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The best comment about Google's estimate that there are nearly 130 million titles in existence comes from Russ Harvey of the Ecology Center Store, Berkeley, Calif.: "My wife will swear that most of those can be found in boxes in our garage."

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On Friday, during a panel at the Techonomy conference, Nicholas Negroponte asserted that the physical book is dead. As TechCrunch explained, "By 'dead,' he of course doesn't mean completely dead. But he means that digital books are going to replace physical books as the dominant form. His argument is related to his One Laptop per Child Foundation. On those laptops, he can include hundreds or thousands of books. If you think about trying to ship that many physical books to the emerging world for each child, it would be impossible, he reasons.... 'It's happening. It's not happening in 10 years. It's happening in 5 years,' " Negroponte said.

At CrunchGear, Devin Coldewey has some thoughts on such futurist predictions: "The death of printed books... is, of course, merely an ongoing process--a given. What is in the air is the timing. Negroponte says not ten years, but five. Either he has more faith than I do in consumers' plasticity, or he's talking about something completely different." He points out some factors that put Negroponte's time frame in doubt. Citing the most recent "Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading" report, Coldewey believes that while consumers are adopting e-reading, the upfront costs are still an obstacle. "And it's difficult to overestimate the inertia of existing technologies--especially ones that have been around for a good three millennia.

Coldewey adds, "People simply will continue to buy books. Not because of any inadequacy in e-book technology (relevant now, but not so much in a few years) but because books have a few fundamental advantages over e-books that are unlikely to change. I don't think it's sentimental to say that the security, tactility, beauty, and permanence of printed books will remain significant selling points--and not just for five years, but for ten, twenty, thirty. Unlike music and movies, books are imperfectly recreated in digital form. I wouldn't make any bet that involves people no longer enjoying things."

And so Coldewey makes his own prognostication: "I predict a flip-flop, though: when cheap e-readers become common possessions, books will cease to be inferior alternatives and start being luxury items."

 

 


Park Street Press: An Autobiography of Trauma: A Healing Journey by Peter A Levine


Wimpy Kid Set to Go Truckin'

Starting this Sunday, August 15, two identical Diary of a Wimpy Kid ice cream trucks will spend two weeks touring different parts of the country and will be the focus of more than 50 events. The trucks will stop mainly at bookstores, where up to 500 purple ice treats will be distributed. For each treat, Abrams will match a donation of one new Abrams book to First Book, which provides new books to children in low-income families.

The Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth will be released November 9 with a first printing of five million. In September, Amulet Books will publish Diary of a Wimpy Kid Box of Books, collecting the initial four books in the series.

"This is the best kind of promotion," Michael Jacobs, president and CEO of Abrams, commented. "Ice treats for fans and booksellers, and more than 25,000 new books donated to First Book to help programs across the country serving children in need. The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series has helped turn young readers on to books, and through this tour we are thrilled to help build the excitement for more books and build foot traffic for booksellers."

 

 


G.P. Putnam's Sons: Take Me Home by Melanie Sweeney


Media and Movies

Movies: Eat Pray Love

In case any readers have been living in a cave without Internet access, here's our official announcement about one of the big movies of the summer:

Eat Pray Love, based on the memoir Eat, Pray, Love (Hollywood apparently doesn't like commas) by Elizabeth Gilbert (Penguin, $15, 9780143038412/0143038419), opens this coming Friday, August 13. Julia Roberts stars as Gilbert, who, after her marriage fell apart, traveled to Italy, India and Bali and slowly put her life back together.

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In honor of the movie, Globe Corner Bookstores, Cambridge, Mass., offered a list of travelogues written by "incredible women who traveled around the world--and then wrote about it":

Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations by Georgina Howell
Passionate Nomad: The Life of Freya Stark by Jane Fletcher Geniesse
Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman's Skiff by Rosemary Mahoney
The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History by Linda Colley
Out of Africa and Shadow on the Grass by Isak Dinesen
Travelers' Tales the Best Women's Travel Writing 2010


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In dishonor of the movie, there's Drink, Play, F@#k: One Man's Search for Anything Across Ireland, Vegas, and Thailand by Andrew Gottlieb (Black Cat/Grove/Atlantic), a parody of Eat, Pray, Love from the point of view of a jilted husband. The book has been optioned by Warner Bros. as Dumped, starring Steve Carell.

 

 


Television: Boardwalk Empire

The Los Angeles Times chronicled actor Steve Buscemi's path to the lead role in Boardwalk Empire, HBO's new series based on Nelson Johnson's book Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City. The project, from creator and executive producer Terence Winter, "already on its way to becoming a critical darling--HBO has sent the first six episodes to the media--is executive-produced by Martin Scorsese, who directed the pilot."

"It was sort of terrifying in a way but so exciting," Buscemi said about hearing that he had landed the lead role of Nucky Thompson, the city treasurer with a passion for politics, trafficking illegal alcohol and gambling enterprises. "And when I first read the script, I hadn't gotten the offer yet to play the character, and I just thought, 'Wow, I'm almost sorry I'm reading this because if I don't get it I'm going to be so disappointed, so sad.' So, of course, when Terence called me and said they wanted me to play the role, my response was, 'Terry, I know you're looking at other actors. I appreciate that my name is being thrown.' And he said, 'No, no, Steve, I just said that we want you.' "

"I've been tempted for years to be involved because of the nature of the long form, and the development of character and plot," Scorcese said of Boardwalk Empire, which premieres September 19.

 


Media Heat: Rosanne Cash Riffs on Composed

Today on NPR's Fresh Air: Jonathan Eig, author of Get Capone: The Secret Plot That Captured America's Most Wanted Gangster (Simon & Schuster, $28, 9781416580591/141658059X).

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Today on Tavis Smiley: Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Crown, $26, 9781400052172/1400052173).

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Today on Hannity: Michelle Malkin, author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies (Regnery Press, $16.95, 9781596986206/1596986204). She's also on Fox & Friends tomorrow.

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Today on Oprah: Geneen Roth, author of Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything (Scribner, $24, 9781416543077/1416543074).

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Tomorrow morning on Good Morning America: Michael Capuzzo, author of The Murder Room: The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes Gather to Solve the World's Most Perplexing Cold Cases (Gotham, $26, 9781592401420/1592401422).

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Tomorrow morning on the Today Show: Roshini Raj, author of What the Yuck?: The Freaky and Fabulous Truth About Your Body (Oxmoor House, $19.95, 9780848734176/0848734173).

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Tomorrow morning on the Early Show: Barbara K. Hofer, author of The iConnected Parent: Staying Close to Your Kids in College (and Beyond) While Letting Them Grow Up (Free Press, $25, 9781439148297/1439148295).

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Tomorrow on Regis & Kelly: Bethenny Frankel, author of The Skinnygirl Dish: Easy Recipes for Your Naturally Thin Life (Fireside, $16, 9781416597995/1416597999) and Naturally Thin: Unleash Your SkinnyGirl and Free Yourself from a Lifetime of Dieting (Fireside, $16, 9781416597988/1416597980).

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Tomorrow on Tavis Smiley: Ian McEwan, author Solar (Nan A. Talese, $26.95, 9780385533416/0385533411).

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Tomorrow on MTV Radio: Dave Mustaine, author of Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir (It Books, $25.99, 9780061714375/0061714372).

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Today on NPR's Talk of the Nation: Vali Nasr, author of Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class and What It Will Mean for Our World (Free Press, $16, 9781416589693/1416589694).

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Today on the View: Rosanne Cash, author of Composed: A Memoir (Viking, $26.95, 9780670021963/0670021962). She also appears tomorrow morning on Good Morning America.

 


Books & Authors

IndieBound: Other Indie Favorites

From last week's Indie bestseller lists, available at IndieBound.org, here are the recommended titles, which are also Indie Next Great Reads:

Hardcover

The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno by Ellen Bryson (Holt, $26, 9780805091922/0805091920). "This novel offers a look inside P.T. Barnum's famous American Museum in nineteenth-century New York City. How would it feel to be 'The World's Thinnest Man?' Embarrassed, ashamed, sad? No, Bartholomew Fortuno feels his unusual body is actually a gift to the world. That is, until he meets Iell, the world's most beautiful and mysterious Bearded Lady. Are they unique people or freaks of nature? You decide after reading this winning and wondrous novel."--Karen Briggs, Great Northern Books and Hobbies, Oscoda, Mich.

The Spice Necklace by Ann Venderhoof (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $25, 9780618685370/0618685375). "Unlike many travel and food writers who never stray beyond the glossy tourist areas, Vanderhoof seeks out the best, most authentic, down-home island recipes whether it's by scampering after thyme-grazing goats on a Dominican mountainside, pounding out conch with Grenadian fishermen, or learning how to 'whine and shuffle' her way through a Trinidadian carnival, covered in mud, paint and sweat. The next best thing to sailing the West Indies yourself!"--Emily Crowe, Odyssey Bookshop, South Hadley, Mass.

Paperback

Meeks by Julia Holmes (Small Beer Press, $16, 9781931520652/1931520658). "Holmes has created a fabulously surreal dystopia where to be married is the only way to find true happiness. Bachelors spend their days cultivating skills to impress ladies in what is essentially a lottery, and if they aren't successful, they are consigned to a life of civil service--or worse. Darkly comic and lyrical, Meeks provides a unique satirical lens to look at our own changing perceptions of marriage, home life, and success."--Emily Pullen, Skylight Books, Los Angeles, Calif.

For Ages 4 to 8

Dogs Don't Do Ballet by Anna Kemp, illustrated by Sara Ogilvie (Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing, $15.99, 9781416998396/141699839X). "Oh, yes, they do! My dog pirouetted right into my face last night. This book is adorable. Perfect for reminding kids they can do anything they set their minds to."--Jilleen Moore, Square Books, Oxford, Miss.

[Many thanks to IndieBound and the ABA!]

 


Shelf Starter: Book of Days

Book of Days: Personal Essays by Emily Fox Gordon (Spiegel & Grau, $15 trade paper, 9780385525893/0385525893, August 17, 2010)

 

Opening lines of a book we want to read:

From "Faculty Wife":

They're nearly gone now, victims of attrition and destruction of habitat. The sociology of academic life may never record their dwindling and extinction.

I speak of the faculty wives of my mother's generation. Rare as they have become, I still spot them occasionally. That near-elderly woman I see on my walks, for example, out in the swampy fields gathering grasses: there is a diffuse benevolence of her aspect that marks her. And the museum docent leading a group of grade school children through the Gainsboroughs; surely she's one too. "Children" she whispers, leaning down to address them intimately, draping her arms around the necks of two representatives, "look at the lady's shoulders. Aren't they just like two scoops of vanilla ice cream?" --Selected by Marilyn Dahl

 

 



Book Review

Mandahla: Juliet

Juliet by Anne Fortier (Ballantine Books, $25.00 Hardcover, 9780345516107, August 2010)

 

Julie Jacobs's story begins with the death of her great-aunt Rose--or maybe it began more than 600 years ago in medieval Siena. In the present day, Julie is directing a dress rehearsal of Romeo and Juliet at a Shakespeare summer camp, when Umberto, Rose's butler, arrives to tell her that her beloved great-aunt has died. At that moment, Julie wishes she had the power to "flip reality upside down like an hourglass, and that life was not a finite affair, but rather a perpetually recurring passage through a little hole in time." Little does she know how her wish will be fulfilled.

Umberto drives her home to Aunt Rose's, where Julie and her twin, Janice, have lived since their parents died in Tuscany when the girls were quite young. Janice has already arrived, with a calculator and a bottle of champagne; this is typical Janice, and never the twain shall meet. Julie is shy and tongue-tied, while Janice is sexy and ravenous; Janice's outfits say come hither, Julie's say get lost. Julie has always been the good girl, although Rose was careful to treat the girls equally, but when the will is read, Janice gets everything. Julie gets, in addition to a shock, an envelope with a letter, a key and a passport in the name of Giulietta Tolomei, which Umberto tells her is her real name. The letter from Rose instructs her to take the key to a bank in Siena, where her mother left something for her, something valuable. This seems to be all Julie has now, so she leaves for Italy.

At the airport, she meets Eva Maria Salimbeni, who immediately recognizes Julie/Giulietta's name, and tells her that their two families, the Tolomeis and the Salimbenis, go way back; back, in fact, to medieval Siena. The two families were always at war, and the feud was so bad they burned down each other's houses and killed each other's children. "Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Siena..." like the Montagues and Capulets. When the plane lands in Florence, Eva Maria insists on giving Julie a ride--she's being picked up by Sandro, her extremely handsome god-son.

In Siena, Juiie follows instructions and winds up with a box, a crucifix, some doodles and scribbles, a cheap paperback copy of Romeo and Juliet, and some letters and typewritten texts. No money, no valuable antique, nothing that promises to be a treasure. Disappointed and puzzled, she settles into her hotel room to read the letters and texts, and she goes back in time to the Siena of 1340, where Giulietta Tolomei is being rescued from a Salimbeni attack by Romeo Marescotti. And that is just page 77--there are over 350 more pages to spin out this compelling and intricate story of the original Romeo and Juliet, and the modern Giulietta--but where is Romeo?

The triangle of Salembeni, Tolomei and Marescotti feuds is played out in Shakespearean tragedy and modern romance, with passion, humor, intrigue (and a friar's curse for spice). As Fortier moves between present and past Siena, there are stories within stories in this Italian matryoshka doll of a novel, and removing the layers is sheer delight as Julie uncovers the story of her parents, of doomed lovers and of her own heart. --Marilyn Dahl

Shelf Talker: A multilayered novel about the real Romeo and Juliet of 14th-century Siena, and a modern-day Juliet in search of her legacy.

 

 


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