Shelf Awareness for Thursday, October 28, 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

Image of the Day: Celebrating Bookslut's 100th Issue

Melville House Publishing recently hosted a party at its Brooklyn offices/bookstore for Jessa Crispin, Bookslut's founder (in 2002) and editor-in-chief. The event, celebrating the 100th issue of Bookslut, featured author Daniel Nester serving as master of ceremonies, Shalom Auslander and Kathryn Davis reading passages from new works and Melville House publisher Dennis Johnson interviewing Crispin. Pictured (l.-r.) are Auslander, author Steve Stern, Davis and Crispin.

 

 

 


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


Notes: Playing the Giller Game; Patterson in Kindle Million Club

Four of the five Canadian publishers with titles on this year's shortlist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize "have spent weeks pondering the right number: Is it another 30,000 copies? Or another 50,000? Meanwhile, one lone Canadian publisher is wondering why it should be expected to play the Giller game," the Globe & Mail reported.

That publisher is Gaspereau Press, "where each book is printed and bound on the premises, where Johanna Skibsrud's Giller-nominated The Sentimentalists has been sold out for weeks and where publisher Andrew Steeves has declined an offer from a big publisher to rustle up more copies for him."

"It would no longer be a Gaspereau Press book. If you are going to buy a copy of that book in Canada, it's damn well coming out of my shop," said Steeves. The initial print run for The Sentimentalist "was in his usual modest range of 600 to 1,500 copies, and that the book had sold 400 copies before the Giller longlist was announced. He has printed just over 2,000 more copies of the inside pages but is waiting on a delivery of paper for the cover. He hopes to be printing the cover and binding the books next week and filling orders the first week of November," the Globe & Mail wrote.

"The Giller Prize, it does put you in great peril," Steeves observed. "You have to make sure you serve your author as best you can, that it doesn't impede their career that they are with a small press, but without abandoning who you are.... If we decide this is an opportunity to capitalize, the temptation is to put out some mass-market cheaper copy." Skibsrud expressed disappointment there weren't more copies available, but said she respected her publisher's decision.

"I know it is supposed to freak me out, I am supposed to be selling as many books as possible," said Steeves, who rejects "the thinking that you have to fool people into buying books: If you don't get it out there right now, you will lose the sale; they will be distracted by something else. The reader who is here today will be here in three weeks."

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James Patterson has joined Stieg Larsson in the "Kindle Million Club." Amazon said that, as of Tuesday, Patterson had sold 1,005,803 Kindle e-books.

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Powell's Books, Portland, Ore., has purchased 7,000 books from Anne Rice's personal library and set up a dedicated page on its website to sell them, the Oregonian reported.  

Powell's From the Library of Anne Rice section notes that the collection includes "editions signed or annotated by Ms. Rice, and many have her library markings on the spines. The collection showcases her love of literature and writing and reveals a true intellectual curiosity--classic philosophy, the Brontes, biblical archaeology, and Louisiana history are just a few of the subject areas represented."

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This month Kathe Heinecken is celebrating a year in business as owner of Barbed Wire Books, Longmont, Colo., where "armchairs at the front of the store feature embroidered horse's heads, and both walls and shelves are adorned with Western art and crafts done by local artists," the Boulder Daily Camera reported.

"The store's name pays homage to the West. We do live in the Wild West, or it was the Wild West anyway, and my interest comes from my background," said Heinecken, who, in addition to 15 years experience in the book business, had also worked on ranches. She noted that opening a used bookstore last year seemed like a logical move.

"I felt it was a good time because of the recession," she said. "I thought people would be trending toward secondhand books."

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An unusual issue--bookstore discounts--made news in a Maine political race. The Kennebec Journal reported that Robert Sezak, owner of Re-Books, Waterville, and the Democratic candidate for House District 84, was fined $25 by the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices for violating state ethics rules when he combined "a discount offer to his used bookstore along with an election brochure."

"It was a dope-slap moment; I hope it becomes an object lesson for everybody else," Sezak said. "It was misplaced generosity and I should have never done that."

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City commissioners in Grand Rapids, Mich., "are considering a secondhand dealers ordinance that will not require consignment shops, used bookstores and antique shops to photograph and register their inventory with police. The ordinance would replace a proposal that would have required all stores selling used merchandise to participate in an Internet-based system that collects information on used merchandise for local police departments," the Grand Rapids Press reported.

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's once-banned chronicle of crimes against citizens during the Soviet regime will now be required reading for high school seniors in Russia. The Wall Street Journal reported that, "with the blessing of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin," Solzhenitsyn's widow, Natalia, unveiled an abridged version of the exhaustive work and "recalled her husband's reluctant acceptance, late in life, of the need for a shorter Russian-language version."

"Not without bitterness, Aleksandr Isayevich entrusted me to arrange a one-volume Archipelago--a volume for schools," she said. "I had to make it four times shorter, but I think I managed to preserve the power and light of this book, along with its gravity. I think our schoolchildren and adults who have no time for the entire three volumes will gain wisdom and strength when they read it."

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Writer's Halloween I: Author Kate Mosse chose her of top 10 ghost stories for the Guardian, noting: "Spirits and apparitions, headless monks and white ladies, the traditional ghost story still exerts a hold on our imaginations. Their habitat is ancient woods, ruined abbeys, isolated old houses and crumbling monasteries. But what makes a ghost story? Though purists might quibble, I'd say there are three distinct types of ghost story--as opposed to tales of horror, which have a different dynamic and purpose, or novels that have ghosts in them, such as Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude or Ben Okri's The Famished Road."

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Writer's Halloween II: Flavorwire showcased "Horror Writer Graveyard: A Halloween Tour of Famous Memorials."

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Writer's Halloween III: Author Antonya Nelson, whose most recent novel is Bound, lives with her husband in a Colorado mining town she called a ghost town in the New York Times, while clarifying, "And as for the ghost town part? It’s more like a town inhabited by hermits, which would seem oxymoronic, yet rumor has it--and personal experience has borne this out--that these people do not socialize with one another. Feuding might be too strong a word for what they do, but there are only 12 of them (officially), and you never see two together. Ever. For all I know, it’s one guy with a lot of costumes."

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To celebrate the National Basketball Association's opening week, the Huffington Post featured "7 Big Books by Basketball's Greatest Coaches."

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Ever wonder what it would be like to hang out with Frankenstein? U Star Novels offers "a range of romantic novels that are fully personalized to include up to 30 of your personal details, making you and your partner the stars of your very own novel.... With U Star Personalized Classics, the plot remains the same, the only thing that changes is that it could be you following the yellow brick road, or your brother hunting vampires in the darkest depths of Transylvania, or your best friend starring in one of the best-loved romances of all time alongside her own Mr. Darcy!"

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(Funny) book trailer of the day: Extraordinary Renditions by Andrew Ervin (Coffee House Press).

 


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


Happy 30th Birthday, Society of Illustrators!

Last Thursday at the Society of Illustrators in New York, the children's books community marked the opening of the Original Art Show's 30th anniversary. The exhibit was founded by Dilys Evans, a past art director at Cricket magazine who founded her own agency and has represented some of the most esteemed artists in the children's book field, including three-time Caldecott Medalist David Wiesner. At Thursday's opening, Evans received the 2010 Visionary Award.

This year's show features 129 books chosen from 554 entries submitted nationwide. The 2010 gold medal went to Renata Liwska for her illustrations in The Quiet Book, with text by Deborah Underwood (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Silver medals went to Carson Ellis for her artwork in Dillweed's Revenge: A Deadly Dose of Magic, with text by Florence Parry Heide (HMH), and to Dan Santat for his illustrations in Oh No! (Or How My Science Project Destroyed the World), with text by Mac Burnett (Hyperion/Disney). The fifth Founder's Award, for "the most current promising new talent in children's book illustration" was given to Hyewon Yum for There Are No Scary Wolves.

The Society gave two lifetime achievement awards. One went to Alice and Martin Provensen, the husband-and-wife team who collaborated for more than 40 years and produced, among other titles, the 1982 Caldecott Honor Book A Visit to William Blake's Inn by Nancy Willard and the 1984 Caldecott Medal–winning The Glorious Flight: Across the Channel with Louis Bleriot, which they wrote and illustrated. Viking's Regina Hayes accepted the award on Alice Provensen's behalf, reading the artist's words: "Martin and I were lucky to find each other and lucky to work in the best of careers."

The other lifetime achievement award went to Eric Carle. In his acceptance speech, Carle described his beginnings, when Bill Martin, Jr., called him after seeing a lobster advertisement Carle had created and asked him to illustrate Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? He thanked "my wife for putting up with me" and Ann Beneduce, his editor throughout his career. He noted that Beneduce "didn't like the green worm" he'd created for one of his books and insisted he turn it into a caterpillar. That book went on to be the bestselling The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

The artwork will be on exhibition at the Society of Children's Illustrators through November 24. --Jennifer M. Brown

 


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


Media and Movies

Media Heat: Edwidge Danticat on Tavis Smiley

Today on the Diane Rehm Show: Amanda Hesser, author of The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century (Norton, $40, 9780393061031/0393061035).

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Today on Oprah: a reunion of the cast of The Sound of Music, including Julie Andrews, author of The Very Fairy Princess (Little, Brown, $16.99, 9780316040501/0316040509).

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Tomorrow on Tavis Smiley: Edwidge Danticat, author of Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work (Princeton University Press, $19.95, 9780691140186/0691140189).

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Tomorrow on Fox & Friends: Nicolle Wallace, author of Eighteen Acres (Atria, $25, 9781439194829/1439194823).

 


This Weekend on Book TV: Mad As Hell

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 from 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Monday 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, October 30

10 a.m. Susan Herbst, author of Rude Democracy: Civility and Incivility in American Politics (Temple University Press, $24.95, 9781439903353/1439903352), contends that American political debate has become unwieldy and simply rude. (Re-airs Sunday at 1 a.m.)

12 p.m. Sean Wilentz, author of Bob Dylan In America (Doubleday, $28.95, 9780385529884/0385529880), explores the historical and cultural influences that have played a significant role in Dylan's songwriting career. (Re-airs Sunday at 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.)

2:30 p.m. Mark Pendergrast, author of Inside the Outbreaks: The Elite Medical Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $28, 9780151011209/0151011206), offers a look at the Center for Disease Control's Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS). (Re-airs Sunday at 10 p.m.)

5 p.m. Paul David Pope, the son of National Enquirer publisher Gene Pope, Jr., and author of The Deeds of My Fathers: How My Grandfather and Father Built New York and Created the Tabloid World of Today (A Philip Turner Book, Rowman & Littlefield, $24.95, 9781442204867/1442204869), recounts the founding of the tabloid newspaper. (Re-airs Sunday at 8 a.m. and Monday at 4 a.m. )

7 p.m. Ari Berman, author of Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics (FSG, $26, 9780374169701/0374169705), analyzes how the Democratic party won the 2008 presidency and both houses of Congress.  

10 p.m. After Words. Amity Shlaes interviews Scott Rasmussen and Doug Schoen, co-authors of Mad As Hell: How the Tea Party Movement Is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System (Harper, $27.99, 9780061995231/0061995231), argue that the Tea Party is changing politics in America. (Re-airs Sunday at 9 p.m., Monday at 12 a.m. and 3 a.m., and Sunday, November 7, at 11 a.m.)
    
11 p.m. Steven Rattner, author of Overhaul: An Insider's Account of the Obama Administration's Emergency Rescue of the Auto Industry (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $27, 9780547443218/0547443218), recalls his role as the Obama administration's "Car Czar." (Re-airs Sunday at 2:30 p.m.)

Sunday, October 31 

11 a.m. Hal Herzog, author of Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals (Harper, $25.99, 9780061730863/0061730866), questions why people have certain reactions to different animals. (Re-airs Sunday at 11 p.m.)

 


Middle-Earth Remains in New Zealand

New Zealand officials agreed to a deal "under which they will contribute special financing and introduce labor legislation" to discourage Warner Brothers and Peter Jackson from taking the production of the two movies adapted from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit out of the country. The New York Times reported that the agreement came "after a week in which thousands of New Zealand film workers had taken to the streets in a push to save The Hobbit--and much of New Zealand's film industry with it--while others questioned whether its politicians had gone too far in kowtowing to Hollywood."

"This will guarantee the movies are made in New Zealand," said Prime Minister John Key in announcing a tentative deal calling for the introduction of legislation to clarify the employment status of the country's film workers. The Times noted that the future of the two movies "came into question when a small actors union, New Zealand Actors Equity, demanded that producers bargain collectively with actors on the films."

"The lesson is that everybody is pandering to the film industry," said Schuyler Moore, an entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles. "It takes a minute for an executive to say, 'let’s wrap and go somewhere else.' "

 


Movies: Here Lies Bridget; Shoe Addicts Anonymous

Galgos Entertainment has acquired screen rights to Paige Harbison's debut novel Here Lies Bridget, which will be published January 25 by Harlequin Teen. According to Deadline.com, the "heroine, Bridget Duke, rules her high school but when she crashes her car and ends up in limbo, she must confront the people she has wronged, all of whom want her to go to hell. The outcome of these meetings will decide her final destination."

Galgos partners Russell Nuce and Mark Bozek are currently going into production on Shoe Addicts Anonymous, adapted from the novel by Beth Harbison--Paige's mother--and starring Halle Berry.

 


Books & Authors

Awards: Whiting Awards; 'Bookie Prize' Shortlist

Recipients of the Whiting Writers Awards for 2010 are fiction writers Michael Dahlie (A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living), Rattawut Lapcharoensap (Sightseeing) and Lydia Peelle (Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing); nonfiction writers Elif Batuman (The Possessed), Amy Leach, who is writing a book of essays about animals, plants and stars; and Said Sayrafiezadeh (When Skateboards Will Be Free); poets Matt Donovan (Vellum), Jane Springer (Dear Blackbird) and L. B. Thompson (Tendered Notes); and playwright David Adjmi (Stunning). Each writer receives $50,000, the New York Times reported.

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This year's shortlist for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award includes Open: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi, Trautmann's Journey: From Hitler Youth to FA Cup Legend by Catrine Clay, A Last English Summer by Duncan Hamilton, Blood Knots by Luke Jennings, Beware of the Dog: Rugby's Hard Man Reveals All by Brian Moore and Bounce: How Champions Are Made by Matthew Syed. The winner--who receives £22,000 (US$34,722), a £2,000 free bet and a day at the races--will be announced November 30 in London.

 



Book Review

Book Review: Mamalita

Mamalita: An Adoption Memoir by Jessica O'Dwyer (Seal Press (CA), $16.95 Paperback, 9781580053341, October 2010)

Before international adoptions were halted in late 2008, Guatemala was second only to China in adoptions to the United States (and fourth in the world), with an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 adoptions per year. However, in terms of the absolute corruption of its adoption system, Guatemala ranked right at the top. Long riddled with bribery and graft, allegations of coercion and outright kidnapping finally forced a complete shutdown of the system almost two years ago, leaving thousands of pending adoptions in the worst kind of limbo. In 2002, Jessica O'Dwyer experienced this notorious system firsthand when she and her husband flew to Guatemala to meet the infant girl they assumed they would soon be bringing home, but actually beginning what would become an often-hellish two-year ordeal.

After going through premature menopause at the age of 32, O'Dwyer knew she wanted to adopt but was in her 40s when she met and married a man who shared that dream. Searching a Guatemalan adoption website, O'Dwyer saw a photo of two-month-old "Stephany Mishell" and felt an immediate connection. She filed the adoption paperwork the day she and her husband returned from their honeymoon. While O'Dwyer knew the process wouldn't be simple, she was wholly unprepared for how excruciating it would become. Every person she and her husband dealt with--from Yolanda, the "agency director" in Los Angeles, to Theodore, the Guatemalan "facilitator" (who showed up on hidden camera sting footage soon after), to the baby's desperate, manipulative foster family--was disingenuous at best and thoroughly corrupt at worst. Money, of which O'Dwyer and her husband were soon hemorrhaging huge amounts, was the only thing that moved anything or anyone even remotely. The welfare of the baby--indeed, any of the children--wasn't a consideration. Every piece of paper was misfiled or not filed at all. Every new notario (the lawyer entrusted with providing the birth mother's consent) was more crooked than the last.

After a year of runarounds, O'Dwyer quit her job and moved to Antigua so that she could at least bond with her child (whom she renamed Olivia) while she attempted to work her way through the Kafkaesque Procuradur'a General de la Nación (PGN), the last stop before her adoption case could be finalized in the U.S. Embassy. O'Dwyer had no idea who she could trust and spoke very little Spanish. It was only by virtue of her intense determination and fierce mother's love that she was able to work her way through the completely fraudulent and broken system without being crushed by it.--Debra Ginsberg

Shelf Talker: An important and timely book about one woman's harrowing experience adopting a child from Guatemala.

 


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 Sunday, October 24:

Hardcover Fiction

1. Room by Emma Donoghue
2. Worth Dying For by Lee Child
3. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
4. Fall of Giants by Ken Follett
5. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson
 
Hardcover Nonfiction

1. At Home by Bill Bryson
2. Don't Vote, It Just Encourages the Bastards by P.J. O'Rourke
3. Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1 by Mark Twain
4. Earth (The Book) by Jon Stewart
5. Bloody Crimes by James Swanson
 
Paperback Fiction

1. The Glass Room by Simon Mawer
2. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
3. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
4. Little Bee by Chris Cleave
5. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
 
Paperback Nonfiction

1. Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen
2. Manhunt by James Swanson
3. The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
4. Traveling with Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd
5. Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer
 
Children's

1. Big Nate Strikes Again by Lincoln Peirce
2. The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan
3. Big Nate: In a Class by Himself by Lincoln Peirce
4. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
5. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

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!]

 


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