Shelf Awareness for Monday, November 12, 2007


Quarry Books: Yes, Boys Can!: Inspiring Stories of Men Who Changed the World - He Can H.E.A.L. by Richard V Reeves and Jonathan Juravich, illustrated by Chris King

Simon & Schuster: Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall

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

G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers: The Meadowbrook Murders by Jessica Goodman

Overlook Press: Hotel Lucky Seven (Assassins) by Kotaro Isaka, translated by Brian Bergstrom

News

Notes: Oscar Wilde Book Sale; Canadian Book Rage

Although it is celebrating its 40th anniversary for a full year, the Oscar Wilde Bookshop in New York City is marking the occasion on one day in particular with an unusual sale. On Tuesday, November 27, the landmark gay and lesbian bookstore is offering 40% off any one book in stock priced up to $40. The store is honoring the offer on phone orders but not on its website.

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Borders will open a 29,981-sq.-ft. store at Park Meadows Mall in Lone Tree, Colo., south of Denver, next April. The store will be in the new 154,000-sq.-ft. expansion lifestyle center called the Vistas at Park Meadows, located at the intersection of Interstate 25 and County Line Road.

In connection with the opening, the 27,800-sq.-ft. Borders in Englewood is closing.

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Publishers aren't celebrating the involuntary "turn off your TV" period that has occurred because of the television writers' strike. The temporary absence of the Colbert Report and Jon Stewart's Daily Show has hampered marketing plans for several newly-released books, since the programs "have established themselves as prime movers in the book world, and an appearance on one of their shows is highly coveted by authors and publishers," as the New York Times put it.

Simon & Schuster publisher David Rosenthal said, "Often, to be honest, both Colbert and Stewart have really chosen books that don't often get television coverage--peculiar political books that in the realm of TV coverage are rather eccentric."

The Times cited the example of David Levy, author of Love and Sex With Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships, who was scheduled to appear on the Colbert Report last week. Tina Andreadis, director of publicity at Harper, said the "Colbert appearance was the anchor for us flying him in from London. It was a big disappointment. Colbert would have been the perfect outlet."

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In other television news, today's NYT notes that Borders has developed a broadcast service called Borders TV, installed "37-inch flat-screen televisions to show original programming, advertisements, news and weather . . . in nearly 60 stores and is scheduled to reach an additional 250 stores by the end of February."

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Book rage? As the Canadian dollar reached a value of US$1.10 last week, bookshops north of the border, previously "one of the world's more civilized places of work and leisure,"  are becoming "a charged environment, perhaps even a dangerous one," the Toronto Globe and Mail reported.

Dust jacket pricing doesn't reflect the strong loonie so a form of "sticker envy" is developing. Canadian booksellers and publishers have begun "to circulate stories of customers going beyond simply venting their dismay at hapless clerks and turning books into projectiles, sometimes to the point of drawing blood."

Susan Dayus, executive director of the Canadian Booksellers Association, told the Globe and Mail she "had heard of two 'book rage' incidents recently, both occurring outside Toronto, one at an independent retailer. But she refrained from giving any more details, except to say that 'it sure makes it tough for the front-line sales staff.'"

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RDR Books publisher Roger Rapoport has agreed to delay publication of a book using material from a fan-created Harry Potter website in response to a lawsuit by J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. (Shelf Awareness, November 2, 2007).

The AP (via the International Herald Tribune) noted that Rapoport "volunteered to halt typesetting on the planned Harry Potter Lexicon until a judge rules on whether the work constitutes a violation of Rowling's intellectual property rights, or the copyright on her novels held by Warner Bros." The book had been scheduled for a November 28 release.

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A federal judge ruled in favor of Penguin Putnam in a copyright infringement case involving the book Dorothy Parker, Complete Poems. The New York Times reported that Stuart Y. Silverstein, who compiled Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker, had accused Penguin of using his book "as source material without crediting him. He argued that he was entitled to 'compilation copyright' for the creativity he had showed by including or recategorizing some poems that other scholars had said were not proper poems, and by excluding others that scholars had said were Parker's work."

Judge John F. Keenan of the Federal District Court in Manhattan "dismissed Mr. Silverstein's complaint, ruling that he did not demonstrate any creativity in selecting the poems that appeared in Not Much Fun."

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The New York Times offered an interactive tour of illustrations from the Book Review's choices for the 10 best illustrated children's books of 2007.

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Beginning next spring, Picador in the U.K. "will release all new novels in paperback editions, alongside a small run of hardbacks, breaking with the trade convention of staggered publication dates," according to the Guardian.

Publisher Andrew Kidd asked, "When are we going to accept that we live in a [paperback] country; that only a tiny handful of authors command enough reader loyalty to achieve viable hardback sales; that by concentrating promotional energy on a moribund format we are doing no favours to the format people actually want to buy?" The first Picador in simultaneous editions will be Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet by Joanne Proulx on April 4. More details at Picador's website.

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Also in the Guardian was a panic button update regarding the recent announcement that Richard Madeley and Judy Finnegan, whose book club has an Oprah-like influence on British publishing, were ending their television partnership (Shelf Awareness, November 5, 2007). Fortunately, the "alarms were silenced only when the duo said they wanted to continue presenting their 'book club' as a standalone series after next year. Whether or not a spin-off show will have the same clout or audience figures remains to be seen, but there's no need for emergency measures. Yet."

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The East Valley Tribune's "Destinations" section profiled Singing Wind Bookshop, Benson, Ariz. "Readers love books. They're like bloodhounds," owner Winifred J. Bundy said of her shop's popularity despite its remote location. "They go where they can find the books."

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Career idea of the week: aural proofreader. The Daily Yomiuri profiled Miyoko Tateyama, who has proofed more than 200 audiobooks over the past 24 years. How does she do it? "Aural proofing one title from cover to cover takes her between 10 days and two weeks. A list of mistakes is then passed on to the narrator, who is asked to correct the relevant sections of the recording."

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A successful book proposal. Joshua Reich proposed to his girlfriend, Shianling King, in "the rare-book, botany and horticulture shelves on the fabled Strand Bookstore's third floor," according to the New York Post, which added that "the black bindings on five skinny books were embossed with one word each, reading, 'Shianling,' 'Will,' 'You,' 'Marry,' 'Me?'"

Strand's events coordinator Christina Foxley said love in the stacks is not uncommon: "It happens all the time. Even our staffers find love here."

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Industry veteran David Wilk has another, major trick up his sleeve: under the name Booktrix, he will act as a "provider of publishing and web related services." As outlined on booktrix.com, the company will work with publishers, authors and content owners who might "need to outsource book packaging and editorial development, build a modern, effective website, deploy online marketing, introduce new media into your projects, evaluate your distribution and sales systems, or any other aspect of your business." Also, on booktrix.com, Wilk will blog about books, issues in the book business, distribution, the web and the future of books and reading. RSS feeds are available.

In addition, Wilk and his collaborators aggregrate book and author video and can create video and audio to help promote books and authors as well as run webcasts of live and recorded events. The group is also working on initiatives and projects that will help broaden audiences for books and authors using new media. For more information on this aspect of the business, go to livewriters.com.
 


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Media and Movies

Media Heat: Golfer John Daly's Own Damn Way

This morning on Good Morning America: Mehmet C. Oz, M.D., co-author of You: Staying Young: The Owner's Manual for Extending Your Warranty (Free Press, $26, 9780743292566/0743292561).
 
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This morning on the Today Show: Bliss Broyard, author of One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life--A Story of Race and Family Secrets (Little, Brown, $24.99, 9780316163507/0316163503).

Also on Today: Jamie Oliver, author of Cook with Jamie: My Guide to Making You a Better Cook (Hyperion, $37.50, 9781401322335/1401322336).

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Today on the O'Reilly Factor: Ronald Kessler, author of The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack (Crown Forum, $26.95, 9780307382139/0307382133).

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Today on Live with Regis and Kelly: Nigella Lawson, author of Nigella Express: 130 Recipes for Good Food, Fast (Hyperion, $35, 9781401322434/1401322433).

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Today on NPR's Fresh Air: John Daly, author of Golf My Own Damn Way: A Real Guy's Guide to Chopping Ten Strokes Off Your Score (Harper, $15.95, 9780061431029/0061431028).

Also on Fresh Air: economics writer Robert Kuttner, whose new book is The Squandering of America: How the Failure of our Politics Undermines Our Prosperity (Knopf, $26.95, 9781400040803/1400040809).

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Today on the Diane Rehm Show: former U.N. ambassador John Bolton, author of Surrender Is Not an Option : Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad (Threshold Editions, $27, 9781416552840/1416552847).

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Today on Fox's Hannity & Colmes: Tommy Lasorda, whose new book is I Live for This: Baseball's Last True Believer (Houghton Mifflin, $25, 9780618653874/0618653872). He also appears on Your World with Neil Cavuto and ESPNews's Hotlist.

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Today on Inside the Actor's Studio, host James Lipton discusses his new book, Inside Inside (Dutton, $27.95, 9780525950356/0525950354).

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Tonight on the Charlie Rose Show: Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, author of Leading Ladies: American Trailblazers (Harper, $25.95, 9780061138249/006113824X).

 


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


Movies: No Country for Old Men; Margot at the Wedding

No Country for Old Men, written and directed by the Coen brothers and based on the Cormac McCarthy novel, has opened and will go into wide release on November 21. The movie stars Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Kelly Macdonald and Woody Harrelson. The tie-in edition (Vintage, $14, 9780307387134/0307387135) is out.

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Newmarket Press has published the script book for Margot at the Wedding, the film written and directed by Noah Baumbach and starring Nicole Kidman that opens this Friday. Margot at the Wedding: The Shooting Script ($19.95, 9781557047939/1557047936) includes the complete script, a Q&A with Baumbach (director of The Squid and the Whale), an introduction by biographer Patricia Bosworth, color photos and cast and crew credits.

As Newmarket describes the film, Margot (played by Kidman), "a savagely bright, razor-tongued short-story writer, sets off on a surprise journey to the wedding of her estranged and free-spirited sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) with her all-too-rapidly maturing son in tow. From the minute she meets Pauline's fiance, unemployed artist Malcolm (Jack Black), Margot starts planting seeds of doubt about the union."


Books & Authors

Norman Mailer: 1923-2007

"From one end of his life to the other he sat in solemn thought and left so much to read, so many pages with ideas that come at you like sparks spitting from a fire."--Jimmy Breslin in the Australian.

Although media attention over the weekend initially focused on Mailer's death with a flurry of news reports and obituaries, these were soon followed by essays reflecting upon his influential work and larger-than-life life:

  • "Why Norman Mailer Mattered" by Richard Lacayo in Time
  • "A Novelist's Nonfiction Captured the American Spirit" by Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times
  • "Last round for Norman Mailer: the wife stabbing, critic punching bruiser of books" by Anthony Haden-Guest in the Daily Mail
  • "Author Norman Mailer dies at 84" by Paul Harris in the Guardian
  • "Last post for Norman Mailer" by Tony Allen-Mills in the Sunday Times
  • "Remembering Mailer" by David L. Ulin in the Los Angeles Times
  • "Remembrances of Norman Mailer," compiled by Dana Cook for Salon
  • "He could be flawless. And he could also fail on an epic scale" by Alexander Linklater in the Observer
  • "Norman Mailer: Remembering the pint-size Jewish fireplug" by Christopher Hitchens in Slate

 


Awards: Man Asian Literary Pirze; New Mexico Book Awards

Chinese writer Jiang Rong has won the first Man Asian Literary Prize for his novel Wolf Totem. Worth $10,000, the prize is sponsored by the same company that sponsors the Booker Prize. Howard Goldblatt, who translated the book, won $3,000.

Adrienne Clarkson, chair of the judges, commented: "A panoramic novel of life on the Mongolian grasslands during the Cultural Revolution, this masterly work is also a passionate argument about the complex interrelationship between nomads and settlers, animals and human beings, nature and culture. The slowly developing narrative is rendered in vivid detail and has a powerful cumulative effect. A book like no other. Memorable."

Penguin Press will publish Wolf Totem ($26.95, 9781594201561/1594201560) here next March.

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The 33 winners of the 2007 New Mexico Book Awards were honored last Friday. In addition, Rudolfo Anaya and Tony Hillerman received lifetime achievement awards. To see the winners, click here.

Beginning today, the winning titles will be displayed in Borders bookstores in New Mexico through January; the company, a co-sponsor of the awards, is also hosting signing events for winning authors.

The New Mexico State Library is organizing a display of the winning books as a traveling exhibit for libraries around the state. The Rio Rancho Library is also displaying the winning titles at its main library.

 


Book Sense: May We Recommend

From last week's Book Sense bestseller lists, available at BookSense.com, here are the recommended titles, which are also Book Sense Picks:

Hardcover

The Sound of Butterflies by Rachael King (Morrow, $24.95, 9780061357640/0061357642). "Rachael King's writing makes for smooth sailing for readers of this historical novel about an amateur naturalist whose voyage to the Amazon leaves him a changed man. More tortuous is the journey his wife must take to find the mystery behind his unnerving transformation. Rich in detail and well-researched."--Laura Hansen, Bookin' It, Little Falls, Minn.

Dead Man in Paradise: Unraveling a Murder from a Time of Revolution by J.B. MacKinnon (New Press, $24.95, 9781595581815/1595581812). "An extremely readable political history of the Dominican Republic depicted through a nephew's search for the truth behind his uncle's murder. Very well researched and thorough, and highly recommended."--Julia Green, Front Street Books, Alpine, Tex.

Paperback

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson (Tor, $14.95, 9780765318749/0765318741). "In a genre where authors typically employ more gore and violence than plot and character, it is refreshing for a vampire novel to succeed as brilliantly this one. Robert Neville is, to the best of his knowledge, the only human still alive. As he searches for answers, the story moves beyond the horror genre and into the realm of social criticism. A terrific study of solitude and fear."--Jon Stich, DIESEL, A Bookstore, Oakland, Calif.

For Ages 9 to 12

The Aurora County All-Stars by Deborah Wiles (Harcourt, $16, 9780152060688/0152060685). "The final book in Wiles' Aurora County trilogy. House Jackson wants nothing more than to pitch the winning game against his baseball team's archrivals. But life has a strange way of turning things upside down. It's a wild summer in Aurora County, featuring life, death, poetry, and dancing."--Elisabeth Grant-Gibson, Windows a bookshop, Monroe, La.

Bearwalker by Joseph Bruchac, illustrated by Sally Wern Comport (HarperCollins, $15.99, 9780061123092/0061123099). "A heart-thumping thriller about a middle school kid on a class camping trip in the Adirondacks. The pages seem to turn themselves, until you find out if there really is a Bearwalker."--Sarah Galvin, The Bookstore Plus, Lake Placid, N.Y.

[Many thanks to Book Sense and the ABA!]



Book Review

Mandahla: Bitter Sweets Reviewed

Bitter Sweets by Roopa Farooki (St. Martin's Press, $24.95 Hardcover, 9780312360528, November 2007)



Roopa Farooki begins her story of the permutations and consequences of deception with 13-year-old Henna's marriage to the eldest son of one of Calcutta's best families, a union achieved by a network of lies "as elaborate and brazen as the golden embroidery on her scarlet wedding sari." Henna's father had successfully presented his lazy, illiterate daughter as an older, tennis-playing, poetry-quoting prime catch. The groom, Rashid Karim, quickly discerns the truth but is compelled to follow through. He had hoped for a life lived in truth and sincerity, but his wife "stained him and blotted all his future aspirations." When his daughter is born, one good thing seems to have come from the misalliance, but "Shona had been conceived with a lie, and was born in a liar's house, and into an inevitable understanding that it was always better to comfort or conceal with a lie than to hurt or expose with the truth."

Shona attends Karachi University, falling in love with Parvez Khan, a Pakistani. Neither of their families approves, so they elope to London, where Parvez gets a job at his uncle's sweet shop and parlays that into a successful restaurant. In the meantime, Rashid has become a quite successful businessman--and a quite unhappy husband. At the Orly airport, he meets a timid but lovely woman named Verity and falls in love. He sees an opportunity to find the happiness he had given up on and creates a new life in England built upon an elaborate scheme of lies. He becomes Ricky Karim, husband of Verity, then father of Candida, and believes he is finally living a life of truth and decency.

Shona is happily married to Parvez, her only sadness being an inability to conceive, for which problem she gets money from her father, prevaricating, naturally. They become parents of twins, Sharif and Omar, and stay together for 20 years, until their union begins to unravel. Add their sons' coming of age, with a new set of lies (Omar is afraid he's a fraud of an Oxford scholar, Sharif falls in love with the wrong girl), and family deception reaches a critical point. Lives cross in unexpected ways, while author Farooki hints at disasters to come: "[Ricky] wasn't to know that, in twenty years or so, their little girl would meet a notorious heartbreaker, the lead singer of a band with a cult following, who paid his rent by occasionally waiting tables at his father's restaurant."

Bitter Sweets is filled with characters you root for even as you cringe at some of their choices. Only Parvez seems to get shortchanged--it would have been nice to hear more in his voice. The ending wraps up a bit too neatly, but still, satisfactorily. Would that finally telling the truth turn out as well and fix lives so easily in real life.--Marilyn Dahl

 


The Bestsellers

AbeBooks.com Bestsellers in October

The following were the top 10 bestselling books on AbeBooks.com during October:
 
1, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
2. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
3. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
4. Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld
5. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
6. Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
7. When God Winks at You by Squire Rushnell
8. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein
9. The Age of Turbulence by Alan Greenspan
10. The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn Iggulden

[Many thanks to AbeBooks.com!]

 


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