Shelf Awareness for Thursday, September 17, 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: Lost Symbol Sells a Million Copies First Day Out

Sales of The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown on Tuesday exceeded one million copies in the U.S., Canada and the U.K., according to the publisher. In a statement, Sonny Mehta, chairman and editor in chief of the Knopf Doubleday Group, said, "We are seeing historic, record-breaking sales across all types of our accounts in North America."

The company has already gone back to press for another 600,000 copies on top of the initial print run of five million copies.

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Amazon.com called the Dan Brown novel its "best-selling adult fiction at street date," which includes advance orders. An Amazon spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that the Kindle edition of The Lost Symbol outsold hardcover editions, excluding advance orders, on Tuesday.

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Pirated digital editions of The Lost Symbol began appearing on the Internet immediately after publication, the Guardian said. The novel was available on Pirate Bay and Scribd.com Wednesday. Transworld, the U.K. publisher, has been asking sites to take down copies of the book.

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Borders Group continues to up the ante on school and teacher sales: it's now offering a 30% discount the week of September 29-October 7 at most Borders and some Walden stores to "current and retired teachers, librarians, licensed homeschoolers, school administrators and daycare facilitators." The discount applies to "nearly everything" in the stores, "even Seattle's Best Coffee cafe products," and can be for personal use. Borders recent boosted its regular educator discount to 25%.

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Steve Ross, former president and publisher of Collins, is writing a blog on the Huffington Post. Read the first contribution, about downturn chic, here.

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Book trailer of the day: Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl by Stacey O'Brien. (Get out the Kleenex.)

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Virginia prisoners will again have access to the Books Behind Bars program that was recently halted by prison officials (Shelf Awareness, September 14, 2009). The Washington Post reported that the 20-year-old program founded Kay Allison, owner of Quest Bookshop, Charlottesville, has been reinstated after protests from supporters persuaded Department of Corrections Director Gene M. Johnson to reconsider his position.

"At this time it is my intention to restore the opportunity for inmates to request three free books per month through the Quest Institute while strengthening our procedures for the introduction of materials into [Virginia Department of Corrections] facilities," Johnson wrote.

"I'm ecstatic," said Allison. "This is a victory for the inmates."

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In anticipation of the 30th anniversary for Women & Children First Bookstore, Chicago, Ill., the Windy City Times reminisced with co-owners Linda Bubon and Ann Christopherson, and noted that "their walk down Memory Lane has been a wild, emotional journey that, quite often, is more like driving along Rocky Road."

"It seems very real to me and I'm flooded with memories," said Bubon. "We sat down a week ago and tried to come up with [a list of] key highlights [from the past 30 years] and very quickly we were at 12, so we stopped the list."

Christophersen added that five years ago, "30 years is a very rare club. One of the things to me that has been very interesting to think about is, all the change that we've seen over 30 years--from how much money we needed to open the business to how much more money we need today to keep our business running, and everything in between."

Would they do it all over again?

"I really didn't know, at 28, that I would find the career of my lifetime and that I would find work that I feel I was born to do," Bubon said. "I feel that I am so good at this. I feel like I am just a really good book seller. I don't know what else I could do that I would utilize all of my talents, such as, story-teller, which probably is my favorite thing to do. Doing this work is my life's purpose; it's not just a job. I have never once felt that I was not doing what I was meant to do."

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The nine indie bookstores featured on nycgo.com "are for real book lovers. The booksellers are more likely to gently press into your hands a copy of their favorite collection of Alice Munro stories than the latest Stephenie Meyer novel (though you'll likely find that all of your vampire-book needs will be met as well). You'll discover cozy seating and mellow cafés where you can sit and while away the hours with a stack of good things to read. And, most likely, you'll find yourself making many return visits."

New York's bookselling magic nine are McNally Jackson, St, Mark's Bookshop, Idlewild Books, Crawford Doyle Booksellers, Book Culture, BookCourt, WORD, Freebird Books & Goods and the soon-to-open Greenlight Bookstore.

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Patti Vunk, owner of the Dolphin Bookshop, Port Washington, N.Y., told Newsday about a critical May afternoon when "longtime customer Dorothy Rule was stunned by . . . Vunk's reaction after hearing that one of Rule's daughter's friends had requested a Barnes & Noble gift certificate for her birthday."

"If you shop there, we won't be here much longer," Vunk had said, admitting to her customer, "We've had to cut staff back, have reached a point of no cash flow. People are not shopping. We are grateful for your support, and we need you."

Rule recalled that she "went home and in addition to putting fliers up, sent a note to the constituents at the Port Washington's Children's Center to put out a notice to buy books at Patti's."

"The response was phenomenal," Newsday wrote. "People continue to show their loyalty and support, Vunk says, and sales are now up."

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He writes; he scores! NBA basketball superstar LeBron James added popular author to his long list of achievements while visiting Manhattan this week to sign copies of Shooting Stars, co-written with Buzz Biussinger. Newsday reported that the "line wrapped around the building, from Fifth Avenue onto 46th Street. They came here Tuesday to see, as one man shouted, 'The King.'"

"I'm blessed that I'm even able to have the opportunity to do this,'' said James, who literally played to a sellout crowd when the bookshop ran out of copies of the "candid look at James' launch into stardom as a high school phenom."

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Charles McGrath of the New York Times went with Jon Krakauer to a reading Monday at West Point for Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman, which is highly critical of the U.S. Army command. "Less than three dozen" people attended the event and some were more interested in Krakauer's other books, but "the questions were good."

Incidentally Krakauer called Tillman more "interesting and complicated" than he had originally imagined, and said that journals Tillman kept, which his widow let Krakauer read, were invaluable, suggesting "an inner life more typical of a philosopher than a pro football player," the Times wrote. "Tillman talks about his feelings, his fears, his reading, which included Emerson and Noam Chomsky as well as the Cardinals' playbook."

 


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


July: Bookstore Sales Slip Slightly

July bookstore sales dropped 0.5% compared to July 2008, according to preliminary estimates from the Census Bureau. For the year to date, bookstore sales have dropped 2.5% to $8.523 billion.

Before June, when bookstore sales rose 3.4%, sales had dropped for four months in a row.

Bookstores continue to do better than most retailers. Total retail sales in July dropped 9.2% to $314.640 billion compared to the same period a year ago. For the year to date, total retail sales were down 10.8% to $2,081.222 billion.

Note: under Census Bureau definitions, bookstore sales are of new books and do not include "electronic home shopping, mail-order, or direct sale" or used book sales.

 


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


Image of the Day: Powell's Hosts Publisher and Book Launch

As part of the launch of Exterminating Angel Press, Ashland, Ore., editor and publisher Tod Davies spoke at Powell's Books's Hawthorne Boulevard store about her Jam Today: A Diary of Cooking with What You've Got.

She noted that her "first love" was Powell's Books and so her "heart was set on launching the Press and my first book there" and because "Powell's is a standing monument to the fact that all reports of the Death of the Book and the Indie Bookstore are decidedly premature."


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


Media and Movies

Media Heat: Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno

Tomorrow on Martha: George Motz, author of Hamburger America: One Man's Cross-Country Odyssey to Find the Best Burgers in the Nation (Running Press, $19.95, 9780762431021/0762431024).

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Tomorrow on NPR's On Point: Isabella Rossellini, author of Green Porno (HarperStudio, $24.99, 9780061791062/0061791067).

 


Movie: The Burning Plain

The Burning Plain, the first movie directed by screenwriter and novelist Guillermo Arriaga (movies Babel, 21 Grams and Amores Perros and the novels The Guillotine Squad, A Sweet Scent of Death and The Night Buffalo), opens tomorrow. The film stars Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger. The Burning Plain: The Shooting Script includes production notes and an introduction by Arriaga about writing the screenplay (Newmarket Presss, $19.95, 9781557048264/1557048266).

 


This Weekend on Book TV: Where Men Win Glory

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 from 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Tuesday and focuses on political and historical books as well as the book industry. The following are highlights for this coming weekend. For more information, go to Book TV's website.

Saturday, September 19

3 p.m. Tom Coffman, author of Nation Within: The History of the American Occupation of Hawai'i (Koa Books, $20, 9780982165607/0982165609), talks about the U.S. annexation of what would become our 50th state and resistance by the native population. (Re-airs Sunday at 4 a.m.)

8 p.m. Johan Norberg discusses his Financial Fiasco: How America's Infatuation with Home Ownership and Easy Money Created the Economic Crisis (Cato Institute, $21.95, 9781935308133/1935308130). (Re-airs Sunday at 1 p.m. and Monday at 6 a.m.)

10 p.m. After Words. Sean Naylor interviews Jon Krakauer, author of Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman (Doubleday, $27.95, 9780385522267/0385522266). Krakauer recounts the life of a pro football player turned U.S. Army Ranger who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan in 2004. (Re-airs Sunday at 9 p.m., and Monday 12 a.m. and 3 a.m.)

Sunday, September 20

7 a.m. Haleh Esfandiari, author of My Prison, My Home: One Woman’s Story of Captivity in Iran (Ecco, $25.99, 9780061583278/0061583278), chronicles her detention by the Iranian government beginning on New Year's Eve of 2006. (Re-airs Sunday at 11 p.m.)

6 p.m. Jonathan Karp, publisher and editor-in-chief of Twelve Books, discusses his work with the late Senator Ted Kennedy on True Compass: A Memoir (Twelve, $35, 9780446539258/0446539252) on C-SPAN's Washington Journal. (Re-airs Monday at 2 a.m.)

7 p.m. Representative Ron Paul, author of End the Fed (Grand Central, $21.99, 9780446549196/0446549193), argues that the Federal Reserve should be held accountable for the current economic crisis. (Re-airs Monday at 4 a.m.)

 


Book Review

Book Review: As God Commands

As God Commands by Niccolo Ammaniti (Black Cat, $14.95 Paperback, 9780802170675, October 2009)



Thirteen-year-old Cristiano Zena adores his father's longtime pal and working mate, Quattro Formaggi, nicknamed after his favorite pizza and daily diet. Quattro Formaggi is locally famous as Electric Man for having survived his fishing line getting caught on overhead electrical cables, leaving him with a staggering gait and facial spasms. His personal pride and obsession is a room-filling miniature Nativity scene. He's the village idiot, but he also knows how to cut ignition wires and steal cars.

Cristiano's skinhead father, Rino, is a pathological brute whose idea of funny is to make his son miss the school bus and who thinks nothing of ordering his son to shoot a dog whose fits of barking are keeping him awake at night. The only thing that keeps Rino law-abiding is his one fear in the world: the social worker who has the power to take his son away from him. As the novel opens, Rino, Quattro Formaggi and their pal Danilo discover that they have all lost their construction jobs to African and East European workers and come up with an insane scheme: to bash through the wall of the local bank with a tractor and steal the ATM.

Niccolo Ammaniti is one of the bright stars of modern Italian fiction, the author of the thrilling 200-page tour de force I'm Not Scared, which he adapted into a prize-winning film. As God Commands is another exercise in nail-biting suspense by a master at raising anxiety, but on a much larger canvas. From a cluster of a half a dozen houses in the middle of nowhere for his first novel, he now takes on the entire village of Varrano, drawing on characters from all economic levels and social strata.

Told in 244 short chapters and juggling over 90 characters, the central set piece is a highly orchestrated disaster night, when a storm hits Varrano and multiple plot lines intersect resulting in several deaths: the village loony proves he isn't harmless, the social worker betrays his best friend, a stoned girl on a motorbike decides at the last minute to take the forbidden road through the San Rocco woods, an African immigrant crosses the road at the wrong time and a drunken divorced man, abandoned by his friends, decides to commit a robbery by himself.

It's compulsive reading, with the helpless reader gobbling up hundred-page chunks at a time, the stuff of soap opera told with gusto by an Italian Dickens, in a plot that's never going where you think it's going, plunging along eagerly from climax to climax, littered with poetic moments and human touches. Ammaniti offers up a fascinating gallery of flawed, unpredictable human beings pondering how their impulsive mistakes, unexpected opportunities, misunderstandings and defiant braveries reveal the inscrutable will of God, who "comes down hardest on those who are weakest."--Nick DiMartino

Shelf Talker: A story of suspense and surprise by an Italian Dickens, filled with flawed and sometimes brave people.



The Bestsellers

Chicagoland's Topselling Titles Last Week

Bestselling books at independent bookstores in the Chicago area during the week ended Sunday, September 13:

Hardcover Fiction

1. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
2. A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
3. Homer & Langley by E.L. Doctorow
4. South of Broad by Pat Conroy
5. The White Queen by Philippa Gregory

Hardcover Nonfiction

1. Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck
2. Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
3. Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
4. The Gamble by Thomas Ricks
5. Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn

Paperback Fiction

1. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
2. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
3. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
4. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
5. Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosanay

Paperback Nonfiction

1. My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'Homme
2. Choosing Civility by P.M. Forni
3. Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
4. Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
5. Julie & Julia by Julie Powell

Children's

1. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
2. Rangers Apprentice #6 by John Flanagan
3. An Off Year by Claire Zulkey
4. Me & My Animal Friends by Ralph Covert and Laurie Keller
5. Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer

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, Ill.

[Many thanks to the booksellers and Carl Lennertz!]


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