Shelf Awareness for Tuesday, August 7, 2007


Workman Publishing:  Atlas Obscura: Wild Life: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Living Wonders by Cara Giaimo and Joshua Foer

Berkley Books: The Seven O'Clock Club by Amelia Ireland

Simon & Schuster: Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers: Nightweaver by RM Gray

News

Notes: Fake Steve; Bookseller Reminiscences

Yesterday's New York Times uncovered the man behind the Fake Steve blog, who pretended to be Apple's CEO and, as the Times put it, aimed "to lampoon Mr. Jobs and his reputation as a difficult and egotistical leader, as well as to skewer other high-tech companies, tech journalists, venture capitalists, open-source software fanatics and Silicon Valley's overall aura of excess." Some might say that's too easy, but Fake Steve has been so popular that he snagged a contract with Da Capo Press, which in October is publishing his novel Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody ($22.95, 9780306815843/0306815842), one of the publisher's fall lead titles.

In real life, Fake Steve is Daniel Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes magazine who writes and edits technology articles.

Concerning his invention of Fake Steve last year, Lyons told the Times, "I thought, wouldn't it be funny if a C.E.O. kept a blog that really told you what he thought? That was the gist of it."

He added that he tried to give up the blog twice, "but started again after being deluged by fans e-mailing to ask why Fake Steve had disappeared."

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On the occasion of his 90th birthday tomorrow, George Browning, former longtime bookseller at Capitol Book & News, the Montgomery, Ala., bookstore owned by Cheryl and Thomas Upchurch, tells the Montgomery Advertiser about his days as a POW in World War II. Bizarrely when he was interrogated by a German officer after being captured when his B-17 crashed in the Netherlands, the officer stopped his questioning and asked, "Haven't we met before?"

The answer to that interrogatory was ja. It turned out that the two had been at a frat party following a Virginia Military Institute-University of South Carolina football game in 1936. Browning had been a student at USC; the German was studying at VMI.

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Frances Steloff, "a raggedy little girl" who peddled flowers at fancy hotels in her native Saratoga Springs, N.Y., eventually became the prescient businesswoman who, in 1920 and with only $100, started Manhattan's legendary--and recently closed--Gotham Book Mart (then called Gotham Book and Art).

The Glens Falls Post Star reminisced about the woman who "befriended and supported some of the most celebrated figures of the twentieth century--Martha Graham, Anais Nin, Henry Miller, and many more. As owner of the Gotham Book Mart in New York City, hailed by one book reviewer as being as important to the culture as the Museum of Modern Art, she became a minor celebrity in her own right."

Despite her notoriety and having left Saratoga at age 12, Steloff "kept strong ties to the city throughout her life," the Post Star continued. "In 1968, the year after Skidmore College awarded her an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, Steloff endowed an annual lecture series and poetry prize there. She later donated a collection of rare books, many first editions inscribed to her by the authors. In December 1987, on her 100th birthday, then-mayor of Saratoga Springs Ellsworth Jones gave her the key to the city. When she died at 101, she was buried at the Shaara T'fille cemetery on Weibel Avenue, in a tree-shaded plot she had chosen a month earlier. With $100 and a few books." 

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The Oak Ridge Bookshop and Café has opened in Oak Ridge, N.C. The Stokesdale News reported that owner Minaxi Patel "has been very pleased with the reception the bookstore has received in the community. . . . Minaxi said she started the bookstore because there was no close-by bookstore for her children to get books." The nearest bookshop is a Barnes & Noble in Greensboro.  


 


Disruption Books: Our Differences Make Us Stronger: How We Heal Together by La June Montgomery Tabron, illustrated by Temika Grooms


Literacy Opened Eyes for RealEyes Owner

"In the past, I would think of everything as a problem. Now I turn the other way and see where another door is open. This whole literacy thing is about opening your eyes."


Those are the words of Darren Vincent, owner of RealEyes bookstore, Charlotte, N.C., and organizer of the Charlotte Literary Festival, which will be held this coming weekend. He told his story to the Charlotte Observer, recounting a hard journey from his troubled past in Niagara Falls, N.Y., "where people knew him as a roughneck, a troublemaker. He was a rap singer with muscles and tattoos and a scar from a barroom brawl. . . . But one day, Vincent says, someone convinced him to read a book about facing fear. It was the first book he ever read from front to back--and it awakened a hunger in him."

As Vincent put it, "I was a kid from the 'hood, and all of the sudden, I realized I didn't know anything."

Like most independent booksellers, Vincent's bookstore dream, which grew out of conversations with a co-worker at a call center, wasn't about getting rich, but nourishing people with information. "I was looking at all my family members, and I saw people who were 26 years old and had six kids, and they had never picked up a book about parenting, never picked up a book about pregnancy. And at the call center, I was taking in what all those people wanted to do and where they wanted to go. And I realized that it was just like in the 'hood. What they all lacked was information."

Last year, Vincent's commitment grew further when he started the Charlotte Literary Festival, which drew Nikki Giovanni as well as local authors. This year Catherine Coulter and Zane are expected to participate.

A long way from home. 

"Everybody who knows Darren Vincent back in the Falls says, 'Oh yeah, I remember him. He beat up my cousin, Now he owns a bookstore?'" said Humphrey Hill, Vincent's cousin.

When asked if he is happy, Vincent replied, "I have a lot on my plate. I don't have the money to get the kind of manpower I need to do what I want to do. I have to be in so many places at once. But I finally in my life like what I do."




NYU Advanced Publishing Institute: Early bird pricing through Oct. 13


G.L.O.W. - Galley Love of the Week
Be the first to have an advance copy!
The Queen of Fives
by Alex Hay
GLOW: Graydon House: The Queen of Fives by Alex Hay

Quinn le Blanc, "the Queen of Fives," is the latest in a dynasty of London con artists. In August 1898, she resolves to pose as a debutante and marry a duke for his fortune. According to the dynasty's century-old Rulebook, reeling in a mark takes just five days. But Quinn hasn't reckoned with the duke's equally shrewd stepmother and sister. Like his Caledonia Novel Award-winning debut, The Housekeepers, Alex Hay's second book is a stylish, cheeky historical romp featuring strong female characters. Graydon House senior editor Melanie Fried says his work bears the "twisty intrigue of a mystery" but is "elevated [by] wickedly clever high-concept premises and explorations of class, social status, gender, and power." The Queen of Fives is a treat for fans of Anthony Horowitz, Sarah Penner, and Downton Abbey. --Rebecca Foster

(Graydon House/HarperCollins, $28.99 hardcover, 9781525809859, January 21, 2025)

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Media and Movies

Media Heat: Meyer's Eclipse of YA First Printing Records

This morning on Good Morning America: Stephenie Meyer, author of Eclipse (Little, Brown, $18.99, 9780316160209/0316160202). Published today, this title has a one million copy first printing, Little, Brown's largest first printing for a YA author, according to the Wall Street Journal. There are 1.6 million copies in print of the first two books in Meyer's vampire series--Twilight and New Moon.

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Today on the Diane Rehm Show: Alan Krueger, author of What Makes a Terrorist: Economics and the Roots of Terrorism (Princeton University Press, $24.95, 9780691134383/0691134383).

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Today on the Brian Lehrer Show: Bryan Caplan, author of The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (Princeton University Press, $29.95, 9780691129426/0691129428). The book was recently described by Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times as "the best political book of the year."

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Today on the Oprah Winfrey Show: former Vice President Al Gore talks about global warming, the subject of his book An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It (Rodale, $23.95, 9781594865671/1594865671).

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Today on Ellen, in a repeat: Kanye West introduces his mother, Dr. Donda West, author of Raising Kanye: Life Lessons from the Mother of a Hip-Hop Superstar (Pocket, $24.95, 9781416544708/1416544704).

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Tonight on Larry King Live: "Oprah's health experts":
  • Dr. Mehmet C. Oz, co-author of You: On a Diet: The Owner's Manual for Waist Management (Free Press, $25, 9780743292542/0743292545).
  • Bob Greene, Oprah's personal trainer and author of many exercise and diet books.

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Today on the Charlie Rose Show: Nancy Gibbs, author of The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House (Center Street, $26.99, 9781599957340/1599957345).

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Tonight on the Colbert Report: Ian Bogost, author of Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames (MIT Press, $35, 9780262026147/0262026147). 

 


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Books & Authors

Attainment: New Books Out Next Week

Selected new hardcover titles appearing next Tuesday, August 14:

Play Dirty: A Novel by Sandra Brown (S&S, $26.95, 9780743289351/0743289358) follows a disgraced football player who receives an unusual job offer from a millionaire.

The Rake by William F. Buckley, Jr. (HarperCollins, $24.95, 9780061238550/0061238554) stars a young, charismatic, liberal presidential candidate with many skeletons in his closet. Stardate: 1992.

Force of Nature: A Novel by Suzanne Brockmann (Ballantine, $21.95, 9780345480163/0345480163) is a romantic suspense story about a former cop, a gay FBI agent and mobsters working with terrorists.

Obama: From Promise to Power by David Mendell (Amistad, $25.95, 9780060858209/0060858206) is a biography by a journalist who has covered the presidential hopeful since his election to the Senate in 2004.

Hard Call: Great Decisions and the Extraordinary People Who Made Them by John McCain and Mark Salter (Twelve, $25.99, 9780446580403/0446580406) profiles courageous people who have made difficult choices and the circumstances surrounding their decisions.

The Art of Power by Thich Nhat Hanh (HarperOne, $24.95, 9780061242342/0061242349) teaches that true power is within and that what we seek we already have. By the Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peace activist who now lives in France.

Appearing on Monday, August 13:

Religion of Peace?: Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't by Robert Spencer (Regnery, $27.95, 9781596985155/1596985151) makes the eyebrow-raising claim that Christianity has always promoted peace and logic while Islam has always been violent and without reason.


Mandahla: The Cutting Season Reviewed

The Cutting Season by Arthur Rosenfeld (YMAA Publication Center, $21.95, 9781594390821/1594390827, June 25, 2007)

I've been on a mystery-reading binge. July and August are the perfect months for it (as is any month, let's be real), and I have read a slew of them (including the fine The Face of Death by Cory McFadyen). I inadvertently picked a lot of books with beatings, missing body parts and the unnerving phrase "bled out," so when The Cutting Season was next on the pile, with a knife on the cover, I thought it might be time for a British cozy. But a cat was asleep on my lap, and the Brits were in another room, so blades and mayhem it was. I read it in one sitting (with several changes of cats). More bleeding out, more severed limbs, but nonetheless, an intriguing page-turner with a startling opening in an operating room:
"The young boy's soul emerged from his body, hesitated as if getting its bearings, made a circuit of the operating theater, and flitted upward toward the radiance of the halogen lamp like a wispy white pigeon homing in on the sun."
Dr. Xenon Pearl is so shocked at this sight that his scalpel slips and cuts a vertebral artery, and the boy dies. His death was inevitable, for the Russian boy, Rafik, had been beaten beyond saving; no matter, Zee feels tremendous guilt. His second shock comes when he walks out of the doctors' shower room and sees Wu Tie Mei, his former nanny and martial arts instructor--she's been dead for 10 years. He thinks he's hallucinating when she tells him that a big change is coming. He protests, "I don't like change, even when a person long dead suggests it." She basically tells him to shut up and explains what he has to do: mete out justice in a world that has little. "Do your work. It has to be done. Applying justice is nothing to be ashamed of."

Wu Tie Mei also taught him Chinese medicine, making clear to him that a martial artist has to be equally adept at hurting and healing. Zee is more than adept at healing, now she wants him to start hurting. She urges him to get in touch with his past lives, which include being an imperial guard, a monk in the northern provinces and the wife of a ferryman in Guangling. Little Rafik was his former war commander, and the boy's mafiya father, Petrossov, had been a village pimp. Zee's first task is to scare straight the husband of one of his patients, who burns his wife repeatedly. Zee thinks he's going crazy, but soon finds himself on his Triumph Thruxton, sword strapped to the saddlebags, breaking and entering. And cutting. Not killing, mind you, just some meaningful slices along with a warning. And so he starts on his new mission.

There is a lot going on in this book, starting with the hero, Xenon Pearl. He's a brilliant neurosurgeon who lives in southern Florida. He rides a motorcycle and is restoring his father's old Triumph. He has a ponytail. He's mastered secret Chinese martial arts. Perhaps most important, he knows his way around good chocolate (and uses the drug for good, never for evil). There is information on sword-making (and a beautiful bladesmith named Jordan Jones); there are lessons on karma and reincarnation; there is humor. The author, in his acknowledgements, even thanks his personal armorer. What's not to like? Well, the vigilante justice is a bit disconcerting (as is one sex scene). Perhaps that's because retaliation is carried out with a knife--we usually have no problem with Spenser or Reacher and fists and guns. All in all, The Cutting Season is fine thriller with a cinematic shine--you'll have fun casting the movie in your mind.--Marilyn Dahl



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