Shelf Awareness for Wednesday, May 5, 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

Google to Begin Selling E-Books This Summer

Google will sell e-books as soon as late June or July, a Google manager said yesterday at a Book Industry Study Group panel, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Under Google Editions, the company said "users will be able to buy digital copies of books they discover through its book-search service. It will also allow book retailers--even independent shops--to sell Google Editions on their own sites, taking the bulk of the revenue. Google is still deciding whether it will follow the model where publishers set the retail price or where Google sets retail prices."

"This levels the retail playing field," said Evan Schnittman, v-p of global business development for Oxford University Press. "And as a publisher, what I like is that I won't have to think about audiences based on devices. This is an electronic product that consumers can get anywhere as long as they have a Google account."

 


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


Notes: New Times Book Reporter; New Bookstore

Julie Bosman is replacing Motoko Rich as the New York Times's publishing and book news reporter, according to a tweet by Rich. (Even the Times is breaking news this way!)

Bosman began at the Times as an assistant to columnist Maureen Dowd and has been a political and metropolitan reporter. Rich is moving to the paper's business section (Shelf Awareness, April 8, 2010).

---

Hoping to fill the void left by the closing of Lambda Rising Bookstore this past winter, Jocques LeClair, former manager of the gay and lesbian store, has opened Proud Bookstore in Rehoboth Beach, Del., according to the Cape Gazette.

"There's a steady clientele that's been coming here for 19 years," LeClair told the paper. "Why not take care of them? I decided, instead of disappearing, why not just reopen one?"

The store sells new and used books, cards, gifts, CDs, movies and clothing. LeClair also said he will emphasize customer service, display work by local artists in the store and offer author signings.

Proud Bookstore is located at 149 Baltimore Ave., Rehoboth Beach, Del. 19971; 302-227-6969.

---

The Chicagoist loves Quimby's Bookstore, which aims to carry "every cool, bizarre, strange, dope, queer, surreal, weird publication ever written and published," owner Steven Svymbersky said.

Quimby's sells many self-published zines, comics, and pamphlets on a consignment basis (40% for the store/60% for the author-publisher). Titles range "from hyperlocal zines to international art books."

---

In a piece called "Why men don't read books," Salon.com's Laura Miller commented on Jason Pinter's Huffington Post account of working in publishing and having difficulties persuading female colleagues to publish books that might appeal more to men, such as one by professional wrestler Chris Jericho. The truism he illustrated: "Few men work in book publishing, so there are few supporters in the industry for books that men in particular might like, causing fewer such books to be published or promoted and finally leading men to think that books are not for them."

So she continued, "It's worth asking, then, why there are so few men in publishing. Could it be the low pay, low status and ridiculous hours? (Remember that book editors seldom get to read manuscripts in the office--that's what weekends are for.) Apart from a handful of celebrated figures, it's the rare editor who gets paid more than a secondary school teacher in a middle-class district. The profession has come to look a lot like a skilled, pink-collar ghetto, albeit garnished with a thin dusting of reflected glamor."

---

Glenn Beck, the Oprah of Bizarro World?

Backward media plug: two nights ago Glenn Beck compared AK Press's latest book, We Are an Image from the Future: The Greek Revolt of December 2008 edited by A.G. Schwarz, Tasos Sagris and Void Network ($17, 9781849350198/1849350191), with The Coming Insurrection (Semiotext(e)), which he trashed last summer--and thereby helped give a nice sales bump. On his Monday Fox News show, Beck held up the books and said, "I want you to understand, these are Communist revolutionaries! You don't want to think that they even exist, but they do."

As a result, AK Press is crash publishing We Are an Image from the Future, which is distributed by Consortium.

---

Speking of strenge publicity fenomena, Pasta Bible, published recently by Penguin Group Australia with a terrible typo--one recipe called for "freshly ground black people"--has seen sales jump 275% in the two weeks ended April 24, after the typo became an issue, over the previous two-week period, according to the Bookseller.

Penguin has pulped its copies of the book and printed a corrected version (Shelf Awareness, April 18, 2010).

---

Book trailer of the day: Crossing Oceans by Gina Holmes (Tyndale House).

---

"What's this gal's name again? Oh yeah, Emily Dickinson." Bill Murray reads poetry to construction workers (via Entertainment Weekly's Shelf Life blog).



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


Image of the Day: Kids Otter Read Day

As part of the Northern California Children's Booksellers Association's Kids Otter Read Day on Saturday, authors and illustrators celebrated at more than a dozen stores. Here at the Books Inc. branch on Chestnut Street in the Marina district in San Francisco: (from the l., in the back) Erin Dealey, author of Goldilocks Has Chicken Pox, and Susan Meyers, author of Bear in the Air and Kittens, Kittens, Kittens. In the foreground, with her children: Elizabeth Gomez, illustrator of A Movie in My Pillow.

 

 


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


BEA Previews: 7x20x21; Editors' and Librarians' Buzz

Hosted by Ami Greko and Ryan Chapman, the second annual BEA 7x20x21 presentation will take place Tuesday, May 25, 3-4 p.m., at the main stage at the Javits Center. Presenters will speak for 7 minutes, accompanied by 20 PowerPoint slides that advance every 21 seconds.

This year's presenters:

Jennifer Egan on writing fiction in PowerPoint
Clay Shirky on cognitive surplus
Justin Taylor and Eva Talmadge on literary tattoos
Jacob Lewis on text-message novels
Ed Nawotka on new perspectives in publishing

---

Immediately following is the Editors' Buzz panel in Room 1E13 (4:30-5:30), which is chaired by John Freeman, American editor of Granta, and features editors talking about their favorite upcoming titles:

Chuck Adams, executive editor, Algonquin: Jonathan Evison's West of Here
Susanna Porter, executive editor, Ballantine: Anne Fortier's Juliet: A Novel
Mitzi Angel, publisher, FSG: Ben Goldacre's Bad Science
Judy Clain, executive editor, Little, Brown: Emma Donoghue's Room
Nan Graham, editor-in-chief, Scribner: Siddhartha Mukherjee's The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
Cary Goldstein, associate publisher, Twelve: Benjamin Hale's The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore

---

And on Wednesday is the AAP Annual Librarians Book Buzz panel (2-3:30) in Room 1C01/02, in which a group of publishers talk about upcoming books they're excited about and in round-robin format, librarians join in. Publishers include:

Mindy Im, marketing manager, Hachette Book Group
Virginia Stanley, director of library marketing, HarperCollins
Amy Jones, library marketing director, Harlequin
Karolyn Anderson, library sales/marketing director, McGraw-Hill
Elenita Chmilowski, director of library sales, Perseus Books Group
Talia Sherer, library marketing director, Macmillan
Erica Melnichok, associate library marketing manager, Random House
Alan Walker, v-p, library sales, Penguin Group
Michelle Fadlalla, director of library marketing, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Michael Rockliff, director of library sales, Workman
Chris Vaccari, library marketing director, Sterling
Dosier Hammond, director, library marketing, Norton

 


Media and Movies

Media Heat: Gail Sheehy, Mario Batali, Stewart Brand

Today on Fresh Air: Randy Frost and Gail Steketee, authors of Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things ($27, 9780151014231/015101423X).

---

Today on the Diane Rehm Show: Isabel Allende, author of Island Beneath the Sea (Harper, $26.99, 9780061988240/0061988243).

Also on Diane Rehm: Alec MacGillis, one of the Washington Post staff who wrote Landmark: The Inside Story of America's New Health Care Law and What It Means for Us All (PublicAffairs, $12.95, 9781586489342/1586489348).

---

Tomorrow morning on the Today Show: Gail Sheehy, author of Passages in Caregiving: Turning Chaos into Confidence (Morrow, $27.99, 9780061661204/0061661201).

---

Tomorrow on KCRW's Bookworm: Chang-rae Lee, author of The Surrendered (Riverhead, $26.95, 9781594489761/1594489769). As the show said, Lee "is renowned for his novels about repressed, withdrawn characters, but his new novel, The Surrendered, explores new ground. In this charged conversation, Lee discusses the going-for-broke quality of this novel--its extremities of feeling and its way of dealing with atrocity--and the risks a writer takes in opening up emotionally."

---

Tomorrow on the Rachael Ray Show: Damon Wayans, author of Red Hats (Atria, $19.99, 9781439164617/1439164614).

---

Tomorrow on Tavis Smiley: Alice Walker, author of Overcoming Speechlessness: A Poet Encounters the Horror in Rwanda, Eastern Congo, and Palestine/Israel (Open Media, $9.95, 9781583229170/1583229175).

---

Tomorrow on NPR's All Things Considered: Laura Bush, author of Spoken from the Heart (Scribner, $30, 9781439155202/1439155208).

---

Tomorrow on the Wendy Williams Show: Victoria Rowell, author of Secrets of a Soap Opera Diva (Atria, $16, 9781439164426/1439164428).

---

Tomorrow night on the Daily Show: Mario Batali, author of Molto Gusto: Easy Italian Cooking (Ecco, $29.99, 9780061924323/0061924326).

---

Tomorrow night on the Colbert Report: Stewart Brand, author of Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto (Viking, $25.95, 9780670021215/0670021210).

---

Tomorrow night on the Late Show with David Letterman: Beth Ostrosky Stern, author of Oh My Dog: How to Choose, Train, Groom, Nurture, Feed, and Care for Your New Best Friend (Gallery, $25.99, 9781439160299/1439160295).



Movies: New Gonzo Film Project

Good news for fans of the late Hunter S. Thompson: Motion Picture Corporation of America has acquired rights to "Prisoner of Denver," a Vanity Fair article Thompson co-wrote with contributing editor Mark Seal for the June 2004 issue of Vanity Fair and one of Thompson's last works, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

While working on  the piece, which examined injustice and abuse of Colorado's legal system, Seal "found himself on the road in what he could only describe as a 'Hunter Thompson world,' dealing with skinheads, speed freaks and angry cops," Hollywood Reporter wrote. 

"My first day I was in a female correctional institution, saying a line I had been waiting my entire life to say: 'Hunter Thompson sent me,' " Seal said. "He made being a reporter glamorous and exciting in the 1970s. It was one of the best experiences in my whole journalistic career, and it was one of the best causes of his life."

 


Books & Authors

B&N Recommends The Scent of Rain and Lightning

Barnes & Noble's latest main selection in its Recommends program is The Scent of Rain and Lightning by Nancy Pickard (Ballantine), which went on sale yesterday.

B&N chief merchandising officer Jaime Carey said that the book "grabs readers with the main character's personal struggle with loss. Riveting and dynamic, this moving novel will have readers enthralled from beginning to end."

B&N described the book this way: "One beautiful summer afternoon, from her bedroom window on the second floor of her Kansas home, Jody Linder watches, unnerved, as her three uncles arrive in her driveway, dust flying from the wheels of their pickups. They bring shocking news: The man convicted of murdering Jody's father has been released from prison and is on his way back to their small town. Twenty-six years ago, on a stormy night, Jody's father was shot and killed and her mother disappeared, as baby Jody lay asleep in her crib. Neither the protective embrace of Jody's extended family nor the safe haven of her grandparents' ranch could erase the pain caused by Billy Crosby on that catastrophic night. Now, thanks in large part to the efforts of his son, Billy Crosby has been granted a new trial. Jody, who has spent most of her life in tiny Rose, Kansas, knows that sooner or later she'll come face-to-face with the man who destroyed her family. Engrossing, lyrical, and suspenseful, The Scent of Rain and Lightning captures the essence of small-town America--its heartfelt intimacy and its darkest secrets--where through struggle and hardship people still dare to hope for a better future."

B&N recommends its main selection titles unconditionally, calls them "unputdownable" and considers them especially appropriate for book discussion groups. The books are promoted online and in B&N's stores.

 


Shelf Starter: The Game from Where I Stand

The Game from Where I Stand: A Baseball Player's Inside View by Doug Glanville (Times Books, $25, 9780805091595/0805091599, May 11, 2010)

Opening lines of a book we'd like to read:

"Now batting, the center fielder, number six, Doug Glanville."

For fifteen professional seasons, nine of them in the major leagues, those words (or some variation of them) began my workday. I heard them in tiny small-town ballparks and in triple-decker urban stadiums that seated fifty thousand people or more. I heard them in spring training; I heard them in the playoffs; I may have even heard them in my sleep. The sound never got old.--Selected by Marilyn Dahl

 


Children's Review: The Shadows

The Shadows: The Books of Elsewhere #1 by Jacqueline West, illustrated by Poly Bernatene (Dial/Penguin, $16.99, 9780803734401/0803734409, 256 pp., ages 9-11, June)

It's summer, and Olive Dunwoody, age 11¾, has just moved into a new house on Linden Street with her mathematician parents. Well, it's new to the Dunwoodys, but the house is very, very old. Olive thinks it's "crumbly and dark and weird," but the old stone house is certainly more interesting than the apartments they've called home in the past. For instance, when Olive tells her mother about a painting that she finds "creepy" ("It's like the houses are trying to pretend they're asleep, and stay quiet... like something bad is coming"), her mother tries to take it down, but the painting won't budge. That's Olive's first clue that something strange is going on here. Next, an orange cat enters her bedroom and introduces himself as Horatio. He warns Olive, "There is something that doesn't want you here, and it will do its best to get rid of you." Olive's absent-minded-professor–type parents spend all their time in the home's library, leaving Olive plenty of freedom to explore the seemingly endless hallways and five guest rooms upstairs. In the chest of drawers in the violet guest room, Olive finds a pair of spectacles. No ordinary eyeglasses, these allow Olive to peer inside the paintings and, as she gets closer and closer to them, she discovers she can actually press her nose through what should be the canvas, which seems to "turn to jelly as her face [sinks] through it." Olive can enter the paintings.

Poet West, making her fiction debut, exploits the possibilities of an alternate world that only Olive, the cats (Horatio introduces her to two other talking felines), and the characters inside the paintings know about. As Olive sets out to solve the mystery of who or what wants to get rid of her, she must also decide whom she can trust. The people inside the paintings warn her that the cats are her enemies, but they've come to Olive's rescue more than once. Then there's Milton, the boy she first notices in one of the paintings flitting among the trees in a white nightshirt, who talks about a mysterious "bad man" who trapped him in the painting. West awakens the senses with scents of moth balls and "very old potpourri" in the guest rooms, and the icy temperatures and animated thorny branches in the dark painting where evil forces pursue Olive and Morton. Olive makes mention of her favorite books, including C.S. Lewis, as she searches for an entrance to the house's attic ("She checked the rooms... even looking in drawers and wardrobes, like anyone who has read about Narnia would"). But she's also an intrepid adventurer, the more charming for her determination to overcome her fears. West brings this launch title to a roundly satisfying close but leaves room for plenty more excursions to Elsewhere.--Jennifer M. Brown

 


Book Brahmin: Nathaniel Philbrick

Nathaniel Philbrick is the bestselling author of the NBA-winning In the Heart of the Sea; Mayflower, a Pulitzer finalist; and Sea of Glory, winner of the Roosevelt Naval History Prize. The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, published yesterday by Viking, is his newest book. He lives on Nantucket Island in Massachusetts.

On your nightstand now:

Mark Twain's Roughing It and Lee Child's One Shot.

Favorite book when you were a child:

The Silly Book
by Stoo Hample. Wonderfully rhythmic and funny. I can still recite portions of the book from memory.

Your top five authors:

Herman Melville, John Updike, Cormac McCarthy, Barbara Tuchman and Ernest Hemingway.

Book you've faked reading:

Pretty much anything by Henry James.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Stephen King's Dark Tower series

Book you've bought for the cover:

Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander. All the covers in the series, featuring paintings by Geoff Hunt, are wonderful.

Book that changed your life:

William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! I learned more about the uses of the past from that novel than any work of history I've ever read.

Favorite line from a book:

First line in the Hyena chapter of Moby-Dick: "There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own."

Book you want to read for the first time:

Jack London's The Sea-Wolf.



The Bestsellers

Top-Selling Titles in Chicagoland Last Week

The following were the bestselling titles at independent bookstores in and around Chicago during the week ended last Sunday, May 2:

Hardcover Fiction

1. The Last Time I Saw You by Elizabeth Berg
2. The Postmistress by Sarah Blake
3. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
4. The Third Rail by Michael Harvey
5. Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende

Hardcover Nonfiction

1. The Big Short by Michael Lewis
2. Oprah by Kitty Kelley
3. This Time Together by Carol Burnett
4. The Bridge by David Remnick
5. Get Capone by Jonathan Eig

Paperback Fiction

1. Little Bee by Chris Cleave
2. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
3. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
4. The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
5. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe

Paperback Nonfiction

1. Summer at Tiffany by Marjorie Hart
2. Food Rules by Michael Pollan
3. The Lost City of Z by David Grann
4. Lords of Finance by Ahamed Liaquat
5. French Dirt by Richard Goodman

Children's

1. Looking Glass Wars #1 by Frank Beddor
2. My Garden by Kevin Henkes
3. How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell
4. The Carrie Diaries by Candace Bushnell
5. The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan

Reporting bookstores: Anderson's, Naperville and Downers Grove; Read Between the Lynes, Woodstock; the Book Table, Oak Park; the Book Cellar, Lincoln Square; Lake Forest Books, Lake Forest; the Bookstall at Chestnut Court, Winnetka; and 57th St. Books; Seminary Co-op; Women and Children First, Chicago.

[Many thanks to the booksellers and Carl Lennertz!]

 


Powered by: Xtenit