Shelf Awareness for Tuesday, July 14, 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

Quotation of the Day

Novels Are 'Social Objects'

"Novels aren't just sources of solitary cogitation. They are social objects, and we use them to brandish our identities, mark our allegiances and broker our relationships. They can provoke passions as strongly as politics. Thanks to the intimate connection between story and reader, they impact upon us very personally, and can drive otherwise undemonstrative folk to feel they have a right--nay duty--to confront complete strangers with their zeal, and have thus been responsible for some of the most unexpected human encounters I've had."--Molly Flatt, from her piece, "Bonding with Books," in the Guardian's Books Blog.

 


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


News

Notes: Stanza App's First Birthday; Reading & Doughnuts

More than two million users downloaded Lexcycle's Stanza e-book reader app for iPhone and iPod touch during its first year. A statement released by Amazon, which acquired Lexcycle in April (Shelf Awareness, April 28, 2009), noted that Stanza's popularity "has led to more than 12 million book downloads."

"These milestones highlight that many people are quite comfortable reading full length books via Stanza on their iPhones and iPod touch," said Neelan Choksi, CEO of Lexcycle.

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University Book Store, Mill Creek, Wash., began offering a new enticement to patrons July 1, when Seattle's Top Pot Doughnuts café "quietly made its debut" at the bookshop. The Daily Herald reported that "this is the sixth location for Top Pot and the company's only cafe outside King County."

"We're just really happy to be in Mill Creek," said co-founder Mark Klebeck. The Daily Herald noted that the new operation "wasn't just slapped together from remnants of the store's former cafe. Shelves had to be built to the right specifications, and a special bakery case was on its way late last week. The founders of the doughnut company have long had a business relationship with the University Book Store, and Klebeck said it's not entirely a coincidence that Top Pot's chief executive officer lives in Mill Creek."

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In its final report on Australia's parallel importation rules--most new books retain Australian copyright only if published in Australia within 30 or 90 days--the Australian government's Productivity Commission recommended that the parallel import restrictions for books be repealed eventually and that the government "review the current subsidies aimed at encouraging Australian writing and publishing, with a view to better targeting of cultural externalities," Bookseller & Publisher Magazine's Weekly Book Newsletter reported.

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Roland A. Vierra "is still attempting to secure financing" to purchase Willow Glen Books, San Jose, Calif., after a previous attempt to strike a deal with former owner Cathy Adkins didn't work out. Adkins had "decided to sell her 17-year-old shop a year earlier than originally planned because of decreasing sales and having to grapple with health issues," according to the Business Journal.

"I am so close to my childhood dream of owning a book store," he said. "This is something I have always wanted to do. I have gotten great support from the bookselling community and the Willow Glen community is willing to support a local, independent book store. It has a great reputation throughout Santa Clara County."

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In addition to a planned initial print run of 1.5 million copies of Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s True Compass later this year, Twelve "is planning to issue 1,000 copies of a leather-bound, electronically signed edition" of the memoir, at $1,000 a copy, and "sell the books through the website of the Hachette Book Group, the parent company of Grand Central," the New York Times reported.

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Margaret Atwood will use video conferencing technology as well as her LongPen booksigning device to launch her next novel, The Year of the Flood, later this year. The Globe & Mail reported that Atwood "is set to attend the Word on the Street festival in Toronto on September 27, but will simultaneously appear at sister events in Vancouver and Halifax via interactive video conferencing. . . . [She] will use the video-conference technology to speak with fans and answer questions. She will also use her LongPen device to sign books long distance."

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NPR's All Things Considered featured a report on the Librarian Book Cart Drill Championships held recently at the American Library Association's convention in Chicago: "Five teams of librarians--dressed in costumes ranging from Vikings to Elvis Presley--competed for the coveted gold book cart. They marched in drill-team formation, equipped with metal book carts."

"Our carts at home don't do wheelies as well as the models we use here. These are full-competition models," said Gretchen Roltgen of Baraboo, Wis. "Absolutely, they're built for this type of rigorous competition."

Children's authors Mo Willems and Jon Scieszka served as emcees. "There's a stereotype that librarians are boring. And I think they want to change that stereotype to 'librarians are crazy,'" said Willems.

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Tomorrow Quirk Books is revealing the follow-up to its surprise bestseller Pride & Prejudice and Zombies. Find the news at quirkclassics.com or Youtube.com/irreference tomorrow.

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Forget about autumn foliage season as the first harbinger of winter. On Twitter, Katherine Fergason (@KatherineBoG) of Bunch of Grapes Bookstore, Vineyard Haven, Mass., reported: "We've probably already sold about 50 2010 calendars."

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Obituary note. Charles N. Brown, publisher, editor, and co-founder of Locus, died Monday. He was 72. A post on the magazine's website recalled that "Brown co-founded Locus with Ed Meskys and Dave Vanderwerf as a one-sheet news fanzine in 1968, originally created to help the Boston Science Fiction Group win its Worldcon bid. Brown enjoyed editing Locus so much that he continued the magazine far beyond its original planned one-year run. Locus was nominated for its first Hugo Award in 1970, and Brown was a best fan writer nominee the same year. Locus won the first of its 29 Hugos in 1971."

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Earlier this year, Vox Pop bookstore and café, Brooklyn, N. Y., faced serious economic challenges (Shelf Awareness, March 16, 2009), but CNN's Allan Chernoff reported that the situation has begun to change for the better thanks to a plan to sell stock to customers.

CNN also reported on the strange and as yet unsolved theft and mutilation of a Statue of Liberty replica, which was stolen from in front of Vox Pop.

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Changing fashions. While bookshops struggle to stay in fashion, "New Look, the young value fashion giant, is to take five stores from ailing bookseller Borders U.K., including its massive flagship store on Oxford Street," the Independent reported.

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Home for the summer holidays? You can take some consolation from the fact that staycation is one of 100 new words that have been added to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. Also making the list were waterboarding, vlog, carbon footprint, flash mob, frenemy, locavore and webisode.

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Beware the "invasion of the sequels." Boing Boing showcased a study by Valentin D. Ivanov in Strange Horizons that "scraped Locus magazine's 'Notable Books' column going back to May 1998 and built a 10+ year dataset of genre popularity in science fiction, fantasy and horror."

According to Ivanov, "If you have ever browsed the infinite shelves of books by Robert Jordan, you have surely asked yourself when the tide of fantasy will completely overwhelm the bookstores. And if you are a fan of Jordan or Le Guin, you have probably worried about the invasion of the space opera, represented by Peter F. Hamilton, Alastair Reynolds, and Iain M. Banks.

"Is there a basis for such fears? What is going on with the demography of the subgenres? Do we get more and more sequels every year, recycling the same old ideas? Is interest in the speculative fiction genre as a whole increasing or decreasing?"

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Sold! If you had your heart set on buying the Cornish beach and lighthouse that inspired Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse (Shelf Awareness, July 13, 2009), you've missed your chance. "A private buyer from London who originally hails from Cornwall" purchased the property at auction for £80,000 (US$130,632), according to the Independent.

 


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


Media and Movies

Media Heat: The Evolution of God

Tonight on the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien: Michael Phelps, author of How to Train with a T. Rex and Win 8 Gold Medals (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, $17.99, 9781416986690/1416986693).

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Tomorrow on the Diane Rehm Show: Robert Wright, author of The Evolution of God (Little, Brown, $25.99, 9780316734912/0316734918).

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Tomorrow on the View: Steve Harvey, author of Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment (Amistad, $23.99, 9780061728976/0061728977).

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Tomorrow night on the Colbert Report: Douglas Rushkoff, author of Life, Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back ($26, 9781400066896/1400066891).

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Tomorrow night on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson: Alan Furst, author of The Spies of Warsaw (Random House, $15, 9780812977370/0812977378).

 


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


Movies: Little Bee; You Don't Know Jack

Little Bee by Chris Cleave has been acquired by BBC Films "and Nicole Kidman has attached herself as star and producer," Variety reported. "Gail Mutrux will produce through her Pretty Pictures banner with Kidman and her Blossom Films partner Per Saari. Shawn Slovo is writing the script. BBC Films creative director Christine Langan will be exec producer."

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An all-star cast--including Al Pacino, Susan Sarandon and John Goodman--is set for director Barry Levinson's You Don't Know Jack, an HBO Films production "loosely based on Neal Nicol and Harry Wylie's book Between the Dying and the Dead: Dr. Jack Kevorkian's Life and the Battle to Legalize Euthanasia," according to the Hollywood Reporter.

 


Harry Potter and the Quest for Franchise Sustainability

The California Chronicle asked some provocative questions:

  • Have the Harry Potter films shed the books' shadow?
  • Are they comparable to the James Bond movies, which long ago eclipsed their literary origins?
  • Or are the Harry Potter films still ultimately to be judged by how expertly they translate what Rowling put on the page?

Noting that Wednesday's U.S. opening of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is dramatically different from the previous installment (which was released in the lengthy shadow of seventh book) two years ago, the Chronicle observed: "Often when a series reaches its sixth entry, it's struggling to keep the critical and commercial flame lit (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country anyone?), and few last that long. Yet the Potter momentum keeps building as it moves toward the climactic seventh and eighth movies to be devoted to Deathly Hallows."

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Variety explored the ways in which Warner Bros. has "made sure its long-running franchise will continue to mint money for the studio for years to come. In Orlando, it's in the midst of building The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, a $200 million theme park inside Universal's Islands of Adventure set to open next spring. . . . In April, it launched 'Harry Potter: The Exhibition' at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. . . . The purpose of the theme park and traveling showcase isn't just to keep Harry Potter alive in various forms, but also help Warner Bros. move a lot of merchandise--toys, clothing and collectibles--which will keep its consumer products division busy."

Although Electronic Arts owns the rights to the Harry Potter videogames, Variety reported that "it wouldn't be surprising if Warner Bros. winds up eventually producing Harry Potter games once the final films bow in 2011. The studio has been aggressively reinvigorating its inhouse videogame business, buying publishers and snatching up rights to make The Lord of the Rings games, which had been at EA."

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The nearly a decade-old income stream for Harry Potter cast members was also considered. Not only have Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson literally grown into (and soon out of) their respective roles, but the film franchise has provided steady and profitable work for numerous adult actors.

With the final installment of the series just two years away, "nowhere is the impact of a post-Potter world likely to be felt more than among major U.K. tenpercenteries such as Independent Talent Group," Variety reported. Independent represents "a particularly large number of Harry Potter stalwarts, including Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon and Alan Rickman."

Agents for the Radcliffe, Grint and Watson "are working to forge long-term strategies for their clients, who have grown up onscreen, as they attempt to make the difficult transition from child stars to mature thesps," Variety added.

 



Books & Authors

Awards: Branford Boase Award

The Traitor Game by B.R. Collins, edited by Emma Matthewson of Bloomsbury, won the Branford Boase Award for authors and their editors.

On the Branford Boase website, the novel was described as "a powerful debut that explores the way boys create friendships and how fragile these relationships can be. Encompassing issues of bullying, homosexuality and peer pressure, The Traitor Game never pulls its punches. Set in two worlds it mixes the contemporary teen 'issue' novel with a traditional fantasy story. Both worlds may be different but the actions, emotions and eventual betrayals within them are very much the same."

"It would have made Henrietta Branford and Wendy Boase enormously proud to see what they cared for so much being fostered so well," said chair of the judges Julia Eccleshare. "B. R. Collins and Emma Matthewson are excellent winners to add to this tradition in this tenth anniversary year."

 


Attainment: New Titles Out Next Week

Selected new titles appearing next Tuesday, July 21:

Twenties Girl: A Novel by Sophie Kinsella (Dial Press, $26, 9780385342025/0385342020) follows a young woman who is visited by the ghost of her great-aunt.

The Leader's Way: The Art of Making the Right Decisions in Our Careers, Our Companies, and the World at Large by the Dalai Lama and Laurens van den Muyzenberg (Broadway Business, $25, 9780385527804/0385527802) applies principles of Buddhism to business management.

Getting It Through My Thick Skull: Why I Stayed, What I Learned, and What Millions of People Involved with Sociopaths Need to Know
by Mary Jo Buttafuoco (HCI, $24.95, 9780757313721/0757313728).

Fire and Ice by J. A. Jance (Morrow, $25.99, 9780061239229/0061239224) unites a Seattle cop and an Arizona sheriff when two distant murders appear connected.

Storm Cycle by Iris Johansen and Roy Johansen (St. Martin's, $26.99, 9780312368036/0312368038) is a thriller about the discovery of ancient medical secrets inside an Egyptian tomb.

No Quarter: The Battle of the Crater, 1864 by Richard Slotkin (Random House, $28, 9781400066759/1400066751) explores a Civil War battle in which Union miners planted explosives under a Confederate stronghold.

Now in paperback:

Sleepless in Scotland (the MacLeans)
by Karen Hawkins (Pocket, $7.99, 9781416560258/1416560254).

Smoke Screen: A Novel by Sandra Brown (Pocket, $9.99, 9781416563075/1416563075).

 


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