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
An as-yet untitled book by presidential chronicler, Robert Bernstein, will be published in September, reports the AP.
| Untitled on Obama Administration |
| Bob Woodward |
| Retail Price: | $30.00 |
| Hardcover: | 416 pages |
| Publisher: | Simon & Schuster – (2010-09-28) |
| ISBN / EAN: | 1439172498 / 9781439172490 |
S&S Audio; UNABR; Simultaneous; 9781442335264; $29.99
Check out the book trailer for Nathaniel Philbrick’s The Last Stand, a PLA buzz title that was also part of our Galley Chat.
Yes, Philbrick was influenced by the movie Little Big Man.
Thanks to today’s Shelf Awareness for the heads up.
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Audio; Penguin Audio; UNABR; 9780142427699; $39.95
In this week’s New Yorker, writer Richard Rayner reports that the late historian Stephen Ambrose fabricated interviews with former President Eisenhower for the books that brought Ambrose to fame. The information is based on discoveries by Tim Rives, the deputy director of the Eisenhower Presidential Library.
Back in 2002, Ambrose was accused of plagiarism, first in his book The Wild Blue and then in several others. Ambrose refuted the claims by saying he simply neglected to put quote marks around several passages.
Ambrose’s book Band of Brothers was the basis of the highly-acclaimed and popular TV series; his son, Hugh Ambrose, wrote the tie-in book to the follow-up series on HBO, The Pacific.
There’s a common theme among big titles arriving next week; many are aimed at Father’s Day gift giving (don’t panic, fellow procrastinators, it’s not until June 20th).
Media is lined up for The Council of Dads: My Daughters, My Illness, and the Men Who Could Be Me by Bruce Feiler. It was already in USA Weekend, featuring interviews with the men Feiler chose to take on a parenting role to his two girls, in the event he succumbed to the cancer that was successfully removed from his body in 2008. Upcoming coverage includes a profile in People (May 10; on newsstands next week), an appearance on the Today Show and The Glenn Beck Show on Fox News.
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HarperAudio; UNABR; 9780061988493; $29.99
Adobe EPUB eBook from OverDrive.
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The leadup to Father’s Day is also considered good timing for history titles. Heading that group is Hellhound On His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin by historian Hampton Sides. Libraries we checked have ordered solid quantities.
In Salon, critic Laura Miller praises the book as “a genuine corker”:
Sides’ meticulous yet driving account of James Earl Ray’s plot to murder King and the 68-day international manhunt that followed is in essence a true-crime story and a splendid specimen of the genre.
The Los Angeles Times adds that this “taut, vibrant account. . . shows the synchronicity of movements as King and his colleagues plot political strategy and follow his speaking itinerary, while Ray draws ever closer.”
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Random House Audio; UNABR; 978-0-7393-5892-4; $45
OverDrive WMA Audiobook
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The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern by Victor Davis Hanson (Bloomsbury) is an anthology of previously published essays that, according to PW, are “well written, sometimes elegantly so, and closely reasoned. They address familiar material from original and stimulating perspectives. Hanson’s arguments may not convince everyone, but cannot be dismissed.”
Paradise General: Riding the Surge at a Combat Hospital in Iraq by Dave Hnida (Simon & Schuster) is a physician’s account of serving in Iraq that’s “realistic, gritty and full of black humor,” according to Kirkus, but “surrenders to mawkishness and, worst of all, bad puns, seemingly in an effort to be the Patch Adams of Baghdad.”
Winston’s War: Churchill, 1940-1945 by Max Hastings (Random House) is “a joy to read,” says Library Journal. “Despite other works examining this subject, libraries and readers of many persuasions will want this massive and detailed examination of the prime minister and his personal war.”
The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore (Random House) is the account of an investment banker, Rhodes scholar and former aide to Condoleezza Rice who investigates the life of another Wes Moore, his age and from the same area of Greater Baltimore, who was wanted for killing a cop. In a starred review, PW says:
“Moore writes with subtlety and insight about the plight of ghetto youth, viewing it from inside and out; he probes beneath the pathologies to reveal the pressures… that propelled the other Wes to his doom. The result is a moving exploration of roads not taken.”
Kitty Kelley’s bio of Oprah Winfrey has landed at #5 on the new USA Today best seller list, making it the #1 nonfiction title (we hear it is #1 on the upcoming NYT Nonfiction list).
Those sales reflect the first week of media attention. On Amazon’s sales rankings, the book is at #20, making it the 4th best selling nonfiction title. In libraries we checked, holds are averaging 3:1 and slowing.
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Large Print from Random House; $30; ISBN 9780739377857
Audio from Random House Audio; CD: $50; ISBN 9780307749246
Newsweek‘s online column “We Read it [So You Don’t Have To]” is a Cliff’s Notes of current popular titles. Today, it analyzes Kitty Kelley’s bio of Oprah. The “Don’t Miss These Bits” section offers a synopsis of the juicier parts (with helpful page references) for those that haven’t been reading the press coverage.
Newsweek says what many others already have, that the book lacks a bombshell, but has “a gossipy nugget on every page” and raises the key question, “…who buys the book? Her many fans? Or her many detractors?”
The audience may be finite; the book has slid down Amazon’s sales rankings, from #1 to #4, with a down arrow. The rate of new holds added in libraries we checked is also slowing.
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Large Print from Random House; $30; ISBN 9780739377857
Audio from Random House Audio; CD: $50; ISBN 9780307749246
Ironically, the biggest news in Kitty Kelley’s biography of Oprah, releasing today, may be that she was NOT abused as a child, as she claims. Today, the Huffington Post features a photo essay on Oprah’s “Aunt Katharine” (she’s actually an older cousin), who is quoted in Kelley’s book on the abject poverty Oprah claims she was raised in,
Now, you have to understand that I love Oprah, and I love all the good work she does for others, but I do not understand the lies that she tells. She’s been doing it for years now.
NPR’s Morning Edition (audio will be available some time after 9 a.m.), is interested in Kelley’s claims that she got the cold shoulder from many news outlets, including ABC, commenting,
Perhaps that’s not surprising, given that ABC’s parent company, Disney, is partnering with Winfrey on several of the new shows she’ll present on the Oprah Winfrey Network. But it is troubling to some.
In Kelley’s interview with Matt Lauer on The Today Show yesterday, Kelley lists the shows that turned her down. Asked whether her motivation to choose Oprah as a subject was the millions of fans who might buy it, Kelley responds that “they will love it.”
Media attention has increased sales; the book is now at #3 on Amazon (from being in the 300’s over the weekend) and library holds have nearly doubled in the libraries we checked (bringing the average to 1.75 holds per copy). Half the libraries have received their copies.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Kitty Kelley, author of an unauthorized bio of Oprah, releasing tomorrow, has famously not been invited to many TV talk shows that usually vie for such high-profile books. The only show it is booked for is the Today Show this morning.
As of Friday, the book was in the 300’s on Amazon sales rankings and few details had been released (the media was a bit distracted by Oprah’s announcement that she is planning to host a prime-time show on her new network, OWN, which debuts in January).
But the print media has not been so reticent. Over the weekend, details began to leak and the book broke into the Top 20 on Amazon. It’s currently at #16, just behind David Remnick’s bio of Barack Obama (which is the lead review of the NYT BR this week) and well behind books about the founders that Glenn Beck is currently promoting. Today, the New Yorker, USA Today and the New York Times‘ Janet Maslin all parse Oprah, the book.
So, what’s the big “revalations”?
Damning with faint praise, Maslin says,
After some hollow authorial claims of respect and admiration, Oprah just aims for the jugular. It doesn’t draw blood.
Part of the problem is that much of this has been revealed already, often by Oprah herself; the dieting, the James Frey brouhaha; “Ms. Kelley simply replays the televised version. She has nothing new to add to these stories.”
Library holds are averaging 1:1.
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Large Print from Random House
Audio from Random House Audio
Kitty Kelley’s Oprah: A Biography goes on sale next week, but it may get short shrift on national TV: only NBC will interview Kelley (0n Weekend Today this Sat. and the Today Show, Mon. & Tues.), according to the New York Post. Library demand for the book is moderate, so far, at those we checked.
Relatively few of the book’s details have been released so far, aside from the National Enquirer‘s headline about the “Big Gay Lie” of Winfrey’s relationship with Stedman Graham, as we reported earlier.
Perhaps not so coincidentally, Oprah herself is currently dominating entertainment headlines with the announcement of an evening talk show on the Oprah Winfrey Network, which launches in January. Reports also indicated that a book club show may be part of the lineup, with Oprah appearing on it occassionally.
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Large Print from Random House
Audio from Random House Audio
Michael J. Fox’s A Funny thing Happened on the Way to the Future, (Hyperion) is the former TV and film star’s third memoir. He will appear on Entertainment Tonight on April 12 or 13, and Good Morning America on April 15.
FICTION
Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil, (Random House). Heavily anticipated, after the author’s beloved Booker winner, The Life of Pi, the new book’s reviews have not been strong, causing Kirkus to bring out some scary comparisons; “Like a Russian doll, the novel contains parables within parables…[the] dialogue sounds like Aesop filtered through Samuel Beckett.” PW was in agreement, but Booklist gave it a star. The new issue of Entertainment Weekly is in the Kirkus/PW camp, giving it a C+.
Anna Quindlen, Every Last One, (Random House). Entertainment Weekly reviews this title jointly with Anne Lamont’s Imperfect Birds (Riverhead, published last week), giving both books about parents trying to cope with teenage daughters C ‘s and saying, “Bottom line here? Fans of Quindlen and Lamott may want to give these two a skip.” Prepub reviews of both were very strong, however.
For more titles coming this week, go to BandN.com, Coming Soon.
Several new books about Barack Obama are in the works, in addition to the just-announced Bridge by New Yorker editor David Remnick (Knopf, 4/6/10) — see earlier post.
Coming a few days before Remnick’s bio, is a book by Robert Kuttner, co-founder of the liberal magazine The American Prospect and author of Obama’s Challenge. Libraries we checked are not showing it on order.
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Newsweek senior editor Jonathan Alter’s The Promise: President Obama, Year One will be published in May (most large libraries have it on order in small quantities). Alter also wrote The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, 2006, which got a boost in sales when Obama himself said he was reading it prior to taking office.
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S&S Audio; UNABR; 9781442334458; $39.99
According to USA Today, other books by presidential biographers are in the works. David Maraniss, whose account of the early Clinton years, First in his Class, is considered, “a standard text for the early life and political rise of the 42nd president” is at work on a “long-range project” about Obama.
And, Robert Draper, (Dead Certain: The Biography of George W. Bush) is working on a book that considers Obama “in the context of the civil rights movement.”
Knopf announced late yesterday that a new book about Barack Obama, written by New Yorker editor David Remnick and titled The Bridge, will be published on Apri 6th.
Remnick has already written about the president for the New Yorker including a long essay in Nov., 2008. According to Publishers Weekly the first printing will be 200,000 copies.
Remnick won a Pulitzer in 1994 for his book, Lenin’s Tomb.
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By now, you may feel that you know everything that is in The Politician by John Edwards’ aide, Andrew Young, but in today’s New York Times, Janet Maslin reviews the book, saying, “this,…like Game Change, is a book worth reading for its larger drama.”
Game Change has been in the top three on Amazon’s sales rankings since January 11th, sometimes occupying the #1 position (it was recently knocked down by Michael Pollan’s Food Rules; speaking of strange bedfellows).
The highest level The Politician has reached is #7; it is currently at #52.
| The Politician: An Insider’s Account of John Edwards’s Pursuit of the Presidency and the Scandal That Brought Him Down |
| Andrew Young |
| Retail Price: | $24.99 |
| Hardcover: | 320 pages |
| Publisher: | Thomas Dunne Books – (2010-30-01) |
| ISBN / EAN: | 031264065X / 9780312640651 |
Unabridged audio will be available from Tantor:
Publisher: Tantor, 2/22/10 (UPDATE: see comment; Available Now)
Read by: Kevin Foley
Trade: 9781400116508; 10 CD’s; $34.99
Library: 9781400146505; 10 CD’s; $69.99
MP3: 9781400166503; 1 MP3-CD; $24.99
The scoop-hungry National Enquirer, which is planning to enter the paper’s reporting on John Edwards and Rielle Hunter for the Pulitzer Prize, now claims that Oprah Winfrey is publishing a memoir.
The article reports, “Oprah wrote her memoirs years ago, but shelved the book on the advice of family and friends, sources say. But she’s releasing it now to thwart the impact of Kitty Kelley’s unauthorized book, Oprah: a Biography.”
Back in the mid-nineties, Oprah was indeed close to publishing an autobiography with Knopf, but pulled out at the last minute (there was even a lavish party for the book at the ABA convention; the predecessor to Book Expo America). Knopf told EarlyWord that they know of no plans to publish it now.
Meanwhile, sister imprint, Crown is publishing the Kitty Kelley book in April.
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Random House Audio; 9780307749246; $50
Crown Large Print; Pbk; 9780739377857; $30
Molly Ivins is often described as courageous and irreverent, so it’s no wonder that she also loved librarians, who share those characteristics. In fact, she began her career working in a newspaper library (see her 2001 interview in Special Libraries).
She died three years ago Sunday. You can help celebrate her life by tweeting your favorite Mollyisms, stories and memories using the hashtag #MollyIvins, in progress now.
The celebration is organized by Public Affairs, the publisher of the recent biography Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life; The Texas Observer, Molly’s former paper; and Vintage/Anchor, the publisher of Ivins’s books such as Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She? and Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush.
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Alison Weir’s bio of Anne Boleyn, The Lady in the Tower is recommended as a companion book for Americans who need historical background to enjoy Hilary Mantel’s Booker-winning novel, Wolf Hall.
Now we come full circle; Hilary Mantel reviews The Lady in the Tower for the NYT Book Review.
The Lady in the Tower rose to #93 (from #283) on Amazon sales rankings after the review and a fascinating story on NPR’s All Things Considered (listen here). Holds are as high as 10:1 in several libraries.
Why are people fascinated with Anne Boleyn? Mantel says,
It is because her character has archetypal force…She is the young fertile beauty who displaces the menopausal wife. She is the mistress whose calculating methods beguile the married man; but in time he sees through her tricks and turns against her.
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Audio; Recorded Books; Anticipated Release: Feb 13, 2010
eBook available from OverDrive
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UNABR Audio from MacMillan Audio, 9781427210166; $49.99
Audio and eBook available from OverDrive