Déjà vu?

It will come as sad news to libraries trying to keep up with the demand for The Autobiography of Mark Twain that it was featured on NPR’s Fresh Air last night.

Libraries aren’t the only ones behind the curve; the book’s publisher, University of California Press, is working to get more copies into the pipeline and booksellers are kicking themselves for not seeing it coming.

One of the elements fueling the demand is the often-repeated story that it was suppressed for 100 years, according to Twain’s desire to not offend the people mentioned in it. However, as we’ve pointed out before, this is not completely true, since most of the autobiography has already been published (in the current issue of the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik says only 5% of this edition is new material).

So, why the embargo myth? Bob Hirst, director of the Mark Twain Project, who has been working on Twain’s papers for 30 years joked to NPR in an earlier interview,

…can you spell marketing plan? If you say here’s a little bit of the autobiography, but you can’t see the whole thing for a hundred years, you’re gonna sell a book. Mark Twain knew how to sell a book.

Gopnick puts it more pointedly, calling this version of the material, which has been edited and published three times before,

If not exactly a deliberate swindle, it is an endlessly repeated put-on, a shaggy-dog story without a punch line…[that] keeps getting replayed for credulous audiences.

He finds very little to admire in the book, calling it, “…slack and anti-rhythmic. Scarcely a single sentence in the whole thousand pages stands out to be admired.”

Does he recommend reading any of the other versions? No, he finds Life on the Mississippi and Roughing It far superior (try that out on customers demanding the Autobiography).

Bookseller Arsen Kashkashian, (Boulder Book Store) calls the phenomenon The Absurdity of Twain Fever and predicts that “many copies of the Autobiography now in the hands of gleeful customers will end up, after great disappointment, flooding back into the bookstore in 2011 as forgotten used tomes.”

In an interview on the Austin, TX PBS station, Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the NYT Book Review says what we already knew — they are going to do an eBook best seller list (the NYT’s announcement said it will debut “early next year“). He also says they are going to do “complicated, fun interesting things” with all the lists.

Unfortunately, he does not elaborate, but does go on to say how they assign books are for review.

It had to happen. The cover of the 11/21 NYT BR goes to Keith Richards for his memoir, Life (if you are suffering a bit of déjà vu, so are we. For some reason, last week’s NYT BR preview listed Liz Phair’s review as appearing in that issue). The book also moves to  #1 on the Hardcover Nonfiction best seller list, up from #2 last week.

The “biography of cancer,” The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee, gets a better reception than Janet Maslin gave it in the daily NYT yesterday.

In nonfiction best sellers, Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra arrives on the list, as we predicted, at #11 and the Cake Boss, Buddy Valastro, arrives at #4 on the Advice, etc. list. In children’s, Kathy Reichs’ first book featuring the fictional niece of the protagonist of her adult mysteries, Virals, debuts at #6 on the Chapter Books list.

Ricky Martin’s memoir is a best seller in both English and Spanish. The English version, Me is at #36 on the new USA Today list. The Spanish-language edition, Yo, is at #145, It’s published by Penguin’s Spanish-language imprint, Celebra.

Yo (Spanish Edition) Ricky Martin Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Celebra Hardcover – (2010-11-02) ISBN / EAN: 0451234162 / 9780451234162

The New York Times will leap into the eBook fray, with fiction and nonfiction best seller lists as an “an acknowledgment of the growing sales and influence of digital publishing.” The lists launch next year.

The NYT added Graphic Books best seller lists a couple of years ago. To date, however, they have ignored audiobooks, a format that accounts for greater sales than eBooks.

Stacy Schiff’s bio of Cleopatra has already received a boatload of reviews and is now featured on the cover of the NYT BR for 11/14. Liz Phair reviews Keith Richards’ memoir and the NYT BR selection of The Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2010 are announced.

Best Sellers

Room by Emma Donoghue pops back onto the main Hardcover Fiction list, at #15. after moving to the extended list last week. Its peak position was #9 on Oct. 10th.

Two books with single-word titles arrive at #1 and #2 on the Nonfiction Hardcover list resulting in strange bedfellows. Keith Richards is at #1 for Life, followed by Glenn Beck at #2 for Broke.

The Last Boy continues in the top five after three weeks. More publicity is coming. Author Jane Leavy is scheduled for NPR’s Talk of the Nation on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving (when lots of people will be in their cars, listening to the radio).

Finishing the Hat, Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics annotated with personal anecdotes has been getting press attention and arrives at #11.

Tyler Perry’s movie, For Colored Girls opens today. The script of the play has been selling in anticipation; it arrives at #9 in Paperback Trade Fiction list.

The NYT BR’s cover this week is cleverly topical, but it won’t sell many books. It features two views of American politics today, as reflected in books; “The State of Conservatism” by Christopher Caldwell, senior editor for the conservative magazine, The Weekly Standard and “The State of Liberalism,” by Jonathan Alter, Newsweek columnist and MSNBC political analyst.

Chelsea Cain provides a lively review of John le Carré’s Our Kind of Traitor (sample; “John le Carré is to spy fiction what Lindsay Lohan is to TMZ. It’s hard to imagine one without the other.”) It’s as likely to bring new fans to her writing as to his. Cain’s next thriller, The Night Season, (Minotaur), is coming in March; le Carré hardly needs any help; his book debuts on the Hardcover Fiction list this week at #7.

The daily NYT profiled Tom McGuane this week and the Book Review follows with an assessment of his new book, Driving on the Rim (Knopf); “the rambling plot is sustained because the individual episodes are a pleasure, often farcical and always acutely observed, and because the hero is sympathetic in his dissociated journey.”

In best sellers, the Man Booker winner, The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury) hits the Paperback Trade Fiction list at #14; last year’s winner, Wolf Hall is still on the list at #20. Our own award nominees are not faring as well. The National Book Award finalists were announced the Wednesday of the week the lists were compiled. Nicole Krauss’s Great House, (Norton) is the sole title to appear on any of them. It’s on the extended Hardcover Fiction list at #24.

Jane Leavy’s bio of Mickey Mantle, The Last Boy, (Harper), arrives at #4 on the Hardcover Nonfiction list, Condoleezza Rice’s memoir, Extraordinary, Ordinary People (Crown/Archetype) at #9 and Nelson Mandela’s Conversations with Myself (FSG) at #10.

Sun sets on Twilight, for now announces USA Today‘s “Book Buzz” column; for the first time since July 12, 2007, none of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight books appear in the top 50 on the USA Today best seller list.

Breaking Dawn is close, though, at #54, and the only other Twilight title in the top 150 is the series “extra,” The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner. But, as the column points out, there is likely to be a spike when the DVD of Eclipse is released in December, followed by the two movies based on Breaking Dawn, scheduled for 2011 and 2012.

The Help slides to #48, from #37 last week, after an amazing 73 weeks on the list. The paperback may finally be on its way.

Philip Roth’s new book Nemesis just squeaks on to the list at #150.

The author of Cutting for Stone, Dr. Abraham Verghese is interviewed about his day job in the NYT Health section today. He says his two professions are quite similar,

Doctors and writers are both collectors of stories…[the] two careers have the same joy and the same prerequisite: “infinite curiosity about other people.”

The long-time rumor that there is another book in the Millennium series was confirmed yesterday on CBS Sunday Morning.  Joakim Larsson, told the show that his brother, Stieg, had sent him an email just before he died, saying that it was nearly finished. Joakim also said that it’s not the fourth book, but the fifth in the planned ten-book series. The writer skipped ahead because “he thought it was more fun to write.” The Larssons said, however, that even if the book surfaces (it’s thought to be in the hands of Larsson’s partner, Eva Gabrielsson, who refuses to work with them), they won’t publish it.

As a result of the interview, all three books rose on Amazon sales rankings, with the latest, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, going to #2.

Philip Roth’s new book Nemesis (HMH) has received several slaps in the face from reviewers, including a rather weary one from the daily NYT reviewer, Michiko Kakutani on Monday (“It’s not unmoving, exactly, but all a little synthetic — less like a vintage Roth narrative than like a very well-executed O. Henry story, complete with a deliberately ironic plot twist and a sentimental outcome.”)

This week, the NYT Book Review puts it on the cover, with a rave from a writer who admits that she had once written off Roth.

Scott Spencer, on the other hand, has been piling up great reviews for Man in the Woods (Ecco), with the notable exception of the Boston Globe, and gets yet another one here.

On the Hardcover Fiction Best Seller list, Follett’s Fall of Giants (Dutton) goes straight to #1 in its first week on sale, beating out James Patterson’s Don’t Blink (Little, Brown) at #2.

The Help (Einhorn/Putnam) slides down to #10 for the first time in months, after a remarkable 79 weeks on the list, 28 of them in the top 3. The paperback may finally be around the corner.

On the Hardcover Nonfiction list, Woodward’s Obama’s Wars (S&S) arrives at #1. A different view, The Roots of Obama’s Rage by Dinesh D’Souza, from the conservative publisher Regnery, comes in at #4.

Jenny McCarthy’s Love, Lust and Faking It (Harper) debuts on the Advice list #4.

Despite strong competition from big-name authors, Booker shortlist title Room by Emma Donoghue (Little, Brown, 9/13) is at #23 on the new USA Today best seller list, continuing for the second week as the tenth hardcover fiction title on that list.

In hardcover nonfiction, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart’s Earth, (The Book) (Grand Central) is the top-seller, at #6, with rival Bill O’Reilly’s Pinheads and Patriots (Morrow/HarperCollins) the second-highest nonfiction hardcover, at #15.

The most popular movie tie-in is Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro (Vintage), at #47. In the October issue of Oprah magazine, the movie’s stars write about their favorite passages from the book.

David Grossman’s novel, To the End of the Land, gets a rave from no less a talent than Colm Toibin in the cover review of the new NYT BR.

Most libraries have ordered it very lightly, despite strong prepub reviews.

To the End of the Land David Grossman Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 592 pages Publisher: Knopf – (2010-09-21) ISBN / EAN: 0307592979 / 9780307592972

As we guessed earlier, Room by Emma Donoghue debuts on the hardcover fiction bestseller list at #10 — no mean feat in this season of major names. In nonfiction, Promise Me arrives at #7, while Susan Casey’s The Wave breaks at #7.

Making its debut on the USA Today best seller list at #43 after a week on sale is Booker shortlisted title Room by Emma Donoghue. It’s the 9th best-selling hardcover fiction title on the list, which means it should hit the NYT Hardcover Fiction somewhere around #9 this week; no mean feat in a season crowded with big name authors.

Of the titles on the Booker shortlist, it is currently selling the most in the US. The same is true in the UK, according to an analysis by The Bookseller.

The book has received many strong reviews in the U.S., including the cover of the NYT Book Review and a People pick. Library holds are growing quickly.

Room: A Novel Emma Donoghue Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2010-09-13) ISBN / EAN: 0316098337 / 9780316098335

Hachette Audio; UNABR; 9781607886273; $29.98
Hachette Large Print; 9780316120579; Trade Pbk; $24.99

TheBookseller notes that in the UK, sales of all the shortlist titles are outstripped by a title that didn’t make it from longlist to short,  The Slap by Australian Christos Tsiolkas. The book has not had the same level of success in the U.S. However, a strong review in the Washington Post, indicates that it is a candidate for both reading groups and readers advisory (and, it’s in trade paperback).

The Slap Christos Tsiolkas Retail Price: $15.00 Paperback: 496 pages Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) – (2010-04-27) ISBN / EAN: 0143117149 / 9780143117148

Two best selling authors were featured on NPR over the weekend. Jonathan Franzen’s book Freedom debuted at #1 on the NYT Fiction list this week. He was interviewed on All Things Considered.

Anne Fortier’s book Juliet, appeared on the list last week at #14 and slipped to #21 on the extended list this week. That could turn around; it moved up Amazon’s sales rankings as a result of an interview on Weekend Edition Saturday.