EarlyWord is the home of GalleyChat, monthly online discussions where library staff share excitement about upcoming books. More information here.
Summaries of chats and announcements are posted to the right. Use them to add to your own TBR piles and for collection development.
Links on the far right of the site offer information useful to readers advisors.
Hope to see you during our next chat,
GalleyChatters
Lilian Jackson Braun, who wrotes 29 “The Cat Who…” mysteries died on Saturday in South Carolina. She was 97. Her husband told the local newspaper that her one regret was that she was unable to finish her last novel, The Cat Who Smelled Smoke.
Hang on to your out-of-print copies of Elizabeth Taylor: My Love Affair With Jewelry. They are now selling online for up to $1,999. It’s currently the most popular Taylor book on Alibris.
There were dozens of books about Taylor and various sources have weighed in on their favorites (more will surely come):
Books To Help You Remember The Great Elizabeth Taylor — NPR
Elizabeth Taylor’s life was a true page-turner — USA Today
16 Elizabeth Taylor books, scandals included — L.A. Times
Every one of the lists includes My Love Affair with Jewelry (says NPR’s Linda Holmes, “If you don’t have Elizabeth Taylor’s campy, frothy tribute to her bauble collection on your coffee table, you are really missing out.”)
Also included on each list is the recent book on the Taylor/Burton romance, Furious Love, which Holmes calls a “soapy, delicious and highly literary double biography.”
Tomorrow, the authors are scheduled to appear on The Early Show (CBS) and an ABC 20/20 special with Barbara Walters.
For our money, the best description of the book came from Kayleigh George, HarperCollins Library Marketing.
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Large type; Thorndike; 9781410429858; $32.99
OverDrive WMA Audiobook; Adobe EPUB eBook
The New York Times obituary for Margaret McElderry, who died this week at 98, not only serves as a tribute to a pioneer, but also as a capsule history of her time (she began her career by answering “the pedestal phone” at the New York Public Library).
It may have seemed that she got a slow start. Belva Plain published her first book, Evergreen, at 59, but she went on to write 20 more books, all best sellers. At 95, she died last week at her home in New Jersey, as reported by the New York Times.
Delacorte lists a new novel by Belva Plain to be published in February. It follows the story of the Stern family that began with her first book, Evergreen. Her previous title was Crossroads (Delacorte, 11/08).
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Best known for his series of autobiographical dark comics, American Splendor, Harvey Pekar died early yesterday at his home in Cleveland. He had prostate cancer, asthma and high blood pressure and was suffering from depression, but no cause of death was given. He was 70.
A movie was made of American Splendor, starring Paul Giamatti as Pekar. It was released in 2003.
Obits:
Los Angeles Times; Harvey Pekar dies at 70; comic book author known for ‘American …; “Rather than merely depressive whingeing, Pekar’s work was capable of radiating an anguished spiritual yearning that fans found to be as ennobling as it was mordantly funny and that some critics regarded as downright Dostoevski-esque in its agonized humanity.”
Newsweek; Goodbye, Cleveland; “Harvey Pekar, who died Monday at the age of 70, should be the patron saint of soreheads. Even when he got successful he stayed cranky, maybe because being a crank was what made him successful’
New York Times; Harvey Pekar, ‘American Splendor’ Creator, Dies at 70; “Pekar…applied the brutally frank autobiographical style of Henry Miller to the comic-book format, creating a distinctive series of dispatches from an all-too-ordinary life.”
Tribute
L.A. Times, Harvey Pekar: An Appreciation, David Ulin
Below is Pekar on the David Letterman Show in 1987, demonstrating his brutal honesty,
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The words used to describe Beryl Bainbridge who died of cancer on Friday, are “mordant” and “acerbic.”
She published more than 15 novels, most of them directly influenced by her childhood in Liverpool. Her 1989 novel, An Awfully Big Adventure, based on her own experience as a struggling actress, was made into a 1994 movie starring Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant.
The Guardian reports that she was still trying to dictate the last pages of her final novel from her hospital bed last week. No news yet on when, or if, it will be published.
Obituaries:
The Guardian, Beryl Bainbridge remembered and a gallery of photos of the author
L.A. Times, Beryl Bainbridge dies; British novelist chronicled human relationships
N.Y Times, Beryl Bainbridge, Mordant Novelist, Is Dead at 77
Washington Post, Obituary: Beryl Bainbridge, acclaimed British novelist, dies at 77
The death of Coach John Wooden brought renewed attention to his many books published by McGraw Hill, all of which rose on Amazon’s best seller list over the weekend.
Coming in July is Coach Wooden’s final book, The Wisdom of Wooden: A Century of Family, Faith, and Friends. The publisher describes it as “a commemorative of his life…Filled with fond personal memories, warm fatherly advice.” (McGraw Hill press release, via Publishers Marketplace)
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Dick Francis, a successful jockey who had an even more successful career as a writer, producing over 40 books, died at his home on Grand Cayman island on Sunday.
According to the The Guardian, Francis had an unusual arrangement with his British publisher; as long as he wrote a book a year, all of his books would remain in print. His final novel, Crossfire, written with his son Felix, will be released in August.
The New York Times obituary quotes critic John Leonard who said, “Not to read Dick Francis because you don’t like horses is like not reading Dostoyevsky because you don’t like God.”
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As we noted yesterday, Robert Parker, whose recent death is being widely mourned by the reading community, has several more books coming. In addition to the two scheduled for release this year, his agent tells Entertainment Weekly that “a couple more” are in the pipeline and he was “30-40 pages into” a new Spenser novel when he died.
Below are the titles scheduled for this year:
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Random House Audio; UNABR; 2/23/10; 9780739357484; $32
Thorndike Large Print; 2/1/10; 9781410421876; hdbk; $35.95
Audio available from OverDrive
Coming in May is the fourth in Parker’s Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch western series, following Appoloosa, Resolution and Brimstone.
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Random House Audio; UNABR; 5/4/10; 9780307735478; $32
I vividly remember Robert Parker from hearing him speak at an ALA. Very likely, it was an ALA held in Boston, a city I know more through his books than from personal experience. At that event, Parker made gentle but uproarious fun of a bit of library pomposity that went on before he spoke; he was totally charming and had the audience eating out of his hand.
And, now, upon returning from an ALA in Boston, I learn that Parker has died. He was 77 and, according to reports, he died at his desk in his home in Cambridge.
Below are links to some of the first tributes:
The most recent Spenser novel, The Professional, came out in October, 2009. His next novel, in the Jesse Stone series, is coming next month.
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Random House Audio; UNABR; 2/23/10; 9780739357484; $32
Thorndike Large Print; 2/1/10; 9781410421876; hdbk; $35.95
Audio available from OverDrive
Coming in May is the fourth in his Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch western series, following Appoloosa, Resolution and Brimstone.
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Random House Audio; UNABR; 5/4/10; 9780307735478; $32
Esther Hautzig meant a lot to me. Her book, The Endless Steppe, a survival story about a family exiled to Siberia during WW II, was one that I read over and over again as a child. I must have borrowed it from the synagogue library, a small room where they trusted you to take and return books on your own. I was in the middle of a run of holocaust books like When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit.
Thirty years later, when I met Esther Hautzig at a celebration for Books for the Teenaged at New York Public Library, I was speechless. Then I burst into tears; that’s how real the narrator was to me.
Esther passed away on Sunday (read her obituary in the New York Times). Her funeral will be held today in New York City:
Wednesday, November 4, at 1:00
Plaza Jewish Community Chapel
Amsterdam and 91st Street
Full information is available here.
Sad news arrives at the beginning of Teen Read week — one of Norma Fox Mazer’s colleagues, on her Web site Jacket Knack reports that Mazer died over the weekend after a battle with brain cancer (via Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind).
On her own site, Mazer wrote about how she devloped a love of reading. Of course, libraries were a key element and she asked, “Am I prejudiced or is it a fact that people who work in libraries are among the friendliest and most helpful you’re ever going to meet?”
Return the compliment; check to see if you need to replace worn or missing copies of Mazer’s titles.
