Shelf Awareness for Tuesday, July 7, 2009


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

Notes: E-Book Ad Patents?; Hachette's Free Online Titles

Attention, Kindle shoppers!

Amazon.com is applying for several patents on ads in e-books, according to Slashdot, which has links to the Patent & Trademark Office (oldfashioned) paperwork. One example: "For instance, if a restaurant is described on page 12, [then the advertising page], either on page 11 or page 13, may include advertisements about restaurants, wine, food, etc., which are related to restaurants and dining."

Like ads for Medieval Times sprinkled through Richard II and Hamlet?

The two patent applications officially are for On-Demand Generating E-Book Content with Advertising and Incorporating Advertising in On-Demand Generated Content.

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On its website, Hachette Book Group has launched OpenAccess, which makes available for free the full content of some of its titles so that readers can have "an experience similar to shopping in a bookstore, where they can browse the entire book to get a sense of an author's work before deciding to purchase."

The first 17 titles on OpenAccess are "a wide range of bestsellers, critically acclaimed authors, and eagerly anticipated books." Some are previous titles by authors who have a new book. For example, one book that can be read for free is Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith, whose new novel, The Secret Speech, is published next month.

The list of titles will change every 30 days.

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As more students have bought textbooks online, during the past seven years, text sales at the University of Iowa's bookstore have fallen 35% and at the Iowa State University Book Store dropped 10%, according to the Des Moines Register.

In response, the bookstores are "playing up the convenience of campus stores, which get book orders directly from professors and will accept returns up to two weeks after the start of class," the paper said. They're also testing digital textbooks.

Northwest Missouri State University had a pilot project last year in which some 200 students were given Sony Readers that contained textbooks for four courses. "NMSU students reported the devices limited their ability to highlight, skip sections and take notes, and 40 percent said they studied less than they would have with hard-copy books, the university noted."

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In an item about three new stores in the Crossroads Shopping Village in Carmel, Calif., the Monterey County Herald noted:

"Diane Keene Simonds has opened River House Books at 208 Crossroads Blvd. Simonds, who grew up in Pebble Beach, previously operated a bookstore in St. Helena." The store's phone number is 831-626-2665.

A listing on the shopping center site described the store this way:

"A family-owned, independent bookstore where every book is hand-picked by the proprietor. Visit us for new works in the humanities and sciences, select bestselling fiction and nonfiction, travel guides, children's classics, reference materials, foreign and domestic magazines plus collection-worthy architecture, art, cooking, equestrian, fashion, gardening, interior design, photography and wine books."

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Scott Pitches and Angelika Cruz, co-owners of Barnacle Books, Montauk, N.Y., are selling their business in the Montauk Colonial Building on the South Plaza. According to the East Hampton Star, "John Keeshan owns the building and is reportedly trying to keep it a bookstore. He has been in touch with the owners of BookHampton."

"I would love to have them in here. We need a bookstore out here," said Cruz, though the Star added that "if a buyer were to come in today, she would willingly hand over the keys."

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Half Price Books, whose headquarters are in Dallas, Tex., is "thriving in hard economic times," the Dallas News reported. "Sales are up. More people are bringing in books to sell. So selections are wider and the titles more current. Retro, recycling and secondhand are cool."

CEO Sharon "Boots" Anderson Wright told the paper, "Everything is working perfectly. Cosmic karma has aligned." Sales at Half Price were $205 million in the fiscal year just ended.

The story includes a discussion and letter about the effect of sales of remainders and used copies of books still in print on authors.

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"Enterprising fiction writers are marketing themselves to book groups in person, by phone, and over Skype to boost sales. Meet the new breed of literary types on the make," the Daily Beast observed.

Among several writers showcased was novelist Joshua Henkin, author of Matrimony, who has visited more than 175 book groups online or in person. "With 10 people in each group, that's 1,750 books sold right there," he said, noting that his initial efforts had reaped many benefits. Among them: book groups sometimes seek him out now. "Most sales are going to come shortly after publication. When you see sales stay steady, something is going on in terms of word of mouth. And that tends to be book clubs."

Author, editor and professional book-club facilitator Mickey Pearlman suggested that the "only thing that's going to save publishing is book clubs."

"Certainly the initial impetus and the continuing impetus is: sell books," Henkin added. "But I wouldn't do it if I didn't enjoy it. Fiction writers are gossips. What fiction writer doesn't want to be invited into a stranger's living room?"

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The Boston Globe reported on the members of a special book club, noting that "for two lively hours every Tuesday morning, in a church meeting room with old oil portraits, they are book club members first and homeless people second. . . . The story of the book club, now in its 10th month, is a tale of ordinary city life upended."

The book group has "proved its power to reach homeless people and build their confidence. Emboldened by its success, Ron Tibbetts, a Beacon Hill church deacon and longtime homeless outreach worker, has launched plans to replicate it. His new nonprofit group, the Oasis Coalition, aims to establish dozens of small social groups citywide, filling the gaps left by large, institutional programs that offer the homeless food and shelter but little or no personal connection.

"It's five people in a book group, not 5,000 people fed, but it's five people I can pull aside and talk to," Tibbetts said.

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Still wondering about beach reads this summer?

The Guardian offered "Text on the beach--the 50 best summer reads ever."

And USA Today went to the literary source waters to talk books with people who follow a classic behavior pattern: "Read a little. Stare out at the sea awhile. Read a little more. Sleep."

The intrepid journalist discovered that "what people read at the beach can be as eclectic as what people wear at the beach. Some choices have substance. Others are, well, a bit more revealing. Sexy, even."

Even a beach book group was discovered: "Six members of a 2-year-old book club, made up of twenty-something professionals in the Washington, D.C., area, are lined up in a row near the boardwalk."

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The Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest bible in the world, "written in Greek in the fourth century but now scattered between the British Library, Germany, Russia and St Catherine's monastery in Egypt's Sinai desert," has been reassembled online.

The Guardian reported that the "pages can be searched in facsimile, transcribed or translated. The digital photography is of such high resolution that insect bites and scars of some of hundreds of animals whose hides became the vellum pages can be seen."

 


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


Media and Movies

Media Heat: Mark Bittman's Kitchen Express

Tomorrow morning on the Today Show: Mark Bittman, author of Mark Bittman's Kitchen Express (Simon & Schuster, $26, 9781416575665/1416575669).

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Tomorrow night on the Colbert Report, in a repeat: Ed Viesturs, author of Himalayan Quest: Ed Viesturs Summits All Fourteen 8,000-Meter Giants (National Geographic, $21.95, 9781426204852/142620485X).

 


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


Television: Going Postal

David Suchet, Charles Dance and Richard Coyle will star in a forthcoming Sky1 high definition version of Terry Pratchett's Going Postal. This will be the third Discworld series novel--after Hogfather and The Colour of Magic--to be adapted for television by Sky, which will broadcast Going Postal "on Sky1 HD and Sky1 next Easter," according to the Hollywood Reporter. All3Media International will handle international distribution.

 


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


Books & Authors

Attainment: New Titles Out Next Week

Selected new titles appearing next Tuesday, July 14:

Rain Gods: A Novel by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster, $25.99, 9781439128244/1439128243) follows a Texas sheriff in search of a couple in grave danger after witnessing a massacre.

Best Friends Forever: A Novel by Jennifer Weiner (Atria, $26.99, 9780743294294/0743294297) tells the story of two best childhood friends who drift apart as teenagers and reunite under trying circumstances as adults.

Born to Play: My Life in the Game by Dustin Pedroia (Simon Spotlight, $25, 9781439157756/1439157758) chronicles the life and career of the Boston Red Sox second baseman.

Sacred Hearts: A Novel by Sarah Dunant (Random House, $25, 9781400063826/1400063825) takes place in a 16th-century Italian convent.

Guardian of Lies by Steve Martini (Morrow, $26.99, 9780061230905/0061230901) is the 10th thriller featuring California defense attorney Paul Madriani.

Jericho's Fall by Stephen L. Carter (Knopf, $25.95, 9780307272621/0307272621) is a spy thriller about a dying CIA director under threat by more than just his cancer.

Unmasked: The Final Years of Michael Jackson by Ian Halperin (Simon, $25, 9781439177174/1439177171) is an investigation into the King of Pop's ailing health by a journalist who predicted his death.


Now in paperback:

The Other Queen: A Novel by Philippa Gregory (Touchstone, $16, 9781416549147/1416549145).

 


Books for Understanding: Iran

The subject of the latest Books for Understanding bibliography from the Association of American University Presses is Iran and addresses, the AAUP said, such questions as: What are the political interests at play in the election crisis? What social currents drive the protests? What are the historical forces that shape Iran's regional and global relations?

The Iran bibliography includes some 150 titles from 29 scholarly publishers on topics such as Iranian history, contemporary politics, foreign policy and society.

Among titles in the bibliography:

  • Guardians of the Revolution: Iran and the World in the Age of the Ayatollahs by Ray Takeyh (Oxford University Press, 2009)
  • Reinventing Khomeini: The Struggle for Reform in Iran by Daniel Brumberg (University of Chicago Press, 2001)
  • China and Iran: Ancient Partners in a Post-Imperial World by John W. Garver (University of Washington Press, 2006)
  • Women and Politics in Iran: Veiling, Unveiling, and Reveiling by Hamideh Sedghi (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

 

 



Book Review

Book Review: In Praise of Doubt



"The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are filled with passionate intensity." In our time, rife as it is with the din of competing and seemingly irreconcilable dogmas, Yeats's lament would have been a fitting epigraph for this challenging encomium to the virtues of passionate uncertainty. Eminent sociologist Peter Berger (The Social Construction of Reality) and his Dutch colleague, sociologist and philosopher Anton Zijderveld, have constructed a methodical if somewhat understated argument in support of the proposition that rational doubt, which some might call it skepticism, is a healthy antidote to the twin evils of modern political and cultural life--fundamentalism and relativism.

Berger and Zijderveld first deal with the ideology of relativism, an undeniable byproduct of the process of modernity. They demonstrate how the seemingly benign relativist point of view that "there's no single, universally valid ethical system" has morphed into what they assert is the philosophical and moral rigidity of post-modernism. Similarly, they hold no brief for fundamentalism's "attempt to restore the taken-for-grantedness of a tradition, typically understood as a return to a (real or imagined) pristine past of the tradition."

In contradistinction to these extremes that they characterize as, in fact, two sides of the same coin, the authors cast their lot with an ethic of doubt founded upon the principle of the fundamental dignity of all human beings. In all too brief examples, they demonstrate how that ethic can be applied to deal intelligently and thoughtfully with such contemporary dilemmas as abortion, capital punishment and the rights of immigrants. Contending that the environment of Western liberal democracy is the only one in which the values they cherish can flourish, they are vocally skeptical about the prospects of what they call "democratism"--the process of extending democracy's trappings, such as free elections, to societies without the underlying values to make them successful.

Readers are well-advised to pause for a moment before picking up this volume for a casual read, as Berger and Zijderveld invoke thinkers like Max Weber and Jacques Derrida in a way that presupposes at least a passing familiarity with their writings. And contrary to its somewhat flip subtitle, it won't serve especially well as a manual to help settle the argument between the advocates of Biblical creationism and the defenders of Darwin. What these thinkers do promote with at least a reasonable degree of success is a mode of thought that, if practiced more widely, might serve to inoculate us against the ideological pandemics of our day.--Harvey Freedenberg

Shelf Talker: Two scholars offer a brief in support of the notion that an outlook on the world founded upon thoughtful doubt offers an antidote to the evils of extremist ideologies.


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