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Ron Charles, as a professional literary critic, is hardly an unbiased source, but he effectively demonstrates in his latest Totally Hip Book Review the pitfalls of reviews from the unwashed herd.
Already on the cover of Time magazine, Origins arrives on the cover of the new New York Times Book Review(with a somewhat less eye-catching cover).
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In fiction, Abraham Verghese (Cutting for Stone) is enthusiastic about Salvation City by
Sigrid Nunez (Riverhead Books). Ken Follett’s Fall of Giants is deemed “masterly,” even though, Follett “…is no Tolstoy, but he is a tireless storyteller, and although his tale has flaws, it’s grippingly told, and readable to the end.”
The NYT BR is getting competition; The Wall Street Journal will begin a new standalone book review section in the coming weeks, reports the New York Observer.
Forbes comments that there is “almost no traditional business case for launching an expensive book review section that will see print… Crowd-sourced reviews on Amazon.com are surely the future of the form.” So, what’s the justification? That owner Rupert Murdoch “hates” the NYT.
It seems that view is shared all over the world (via the Washington Post‘s “Blog Post”):
We’ve fallen in love with Ron Charles’s “totally hip video book reviews.” Now, with just two in the can (My Hollywood and Freedom), Ron announces that his employer, The Washington Post, has become the official sponsor. Swearing that this will have no effect whatsoever on the reviews, Charles throws in several “product placements” while reviewing Sara Gruen’s new book, Ape House.
Unfortunately, we can’t find a link to embed the review on EarlyWord. Please, Ron, tell The Washington Post they won’t be as hip as you are until they allow you to go viral.
For now, we all we have to give you the video review link. Charles also reviewed the book in print yesterday.
UPDATE: Hurrah! The new episodes of the Totally Hip Book Review are embeddable.
No surprise, Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom is on the cover of the upcoming Sunday New York Times Book Review, with Editor Sam Tanenhaus taking the prerogoative to review it (keywords: “masterly”, “majestic”, “a masterpiece”).
Another title that has already received plenty of attention, and has the second-most holds of the titles under review, is covered two months after publication, Alan Furst’s Spies of the Balkans (Random House; June 15, 2010). The review, while positive, refuses to grant it the status of literature, reinforcing Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner’s points about the NYT BR‘s approach to popular genres,
Thrillers require plot above all else, which makes it all too easy for them to avoid heroes with any depth or believability. The genre makes a point of satisfying readers’ expectations. In other words, thrillers are by their nature anti-literary, because literature is about, among other things, ambiguity. And as it happens, Furst is a master of plot; the story moves neatly and inexorably to its climax, as Costa, his family and friends leave Salonika, already under bombardment, for a new life. It is this mastery that explains Furst’s success.
A nonfiction title that has been covered widely (including NPR’s Talk of the Nation), The Pain Chronicle: Cures, Myths, Mysteries, Prayers, Diaries, Brain Scans, Healing, and the Science of Suffering by Melanie Thernstrom (FSG; August 17, 2010), also gets attention here.
A May title that hasn’t had received enough attention to date, The Eyes of Willie McGee, (Harper; May 11, 2010) about a man who was electrocuted after being accused of raping a white woman in 1945 in Mississippi, is called, “..a wrenching story, but a rich narrative.”
There’s no surprises on the best seller lists. Below are the new arrivals to the Hardcover Fiction list (all were covered in our preview of the week’s big titles).
#1 James Patterson, Postcard Killers, Little, Brown, 8/16
#4 Frederick Forsyth, The Cobra, Putnam, 8/17
#7 Martin Cruz Smith, Three Stations , S&S 8/17, (cover NYT BR, 8/15),
#9 Lauren Weisberger, Last Night at Chateau Marmont, Atria/S&S 8/17
#11 Dick Francis, Crossfire, Putnam, 8/17
#16 Laura Lippman’s I’d Know You Anywhere, Morrow/HarperCollins, 8/17) falls just short of the main list, arriving at #16 on the extended list in its first week of publication.
The man who has the temerity to call Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom less than the Great American Novel in today’s Washington Post, Ron Charles, also steps from behind the curtain with a video review of a book he looks on much more kindly, Mona Simpson’s My Hollywood (Knopf, 8/3/10).
He also reviewed it in print in the Washington Post.
In the midst of all the bad news about book coverage in newspapers, there is at least one bright spot.
The blog GalleyCat just posted a job listing for a books editor for NPR.org, saying, “According to our sources, the organization is working on building up the books section…”
NPR.org’s books section already rivals many newspaper’s; we look forward to an even stronger one.
Proving the many nay-sayers in the press wrong, Reed Business has found a buyer for Publishers Weekly.
The new owner, George Slowik, is familiar to several on the PW staff; he was the publisher from 1990 to 1993.
Slowik outlined his vision for the magazine in interviews with Crain’s New York Business and the New York Times “Media Decorder” blog. He plans to digitize the PW archives, particularly the reviews (which now go back to 1997). The magazine licenses its current reviews to various companies such as Amazon and book wholesalers; he sees an opportunity in the older reviews when Google clears the way to publishing digitized OP titles. He also plans to sell versions of the magazine in other languages, using Google’s translation tool and some human intervention, to further reach the international audience.
He did not directly address whether the magazine would continue as both a print and digital publication, but presumably it will, since he said that all art and editorial staff will make the transition, as well as sales staff.
The magazine will be transferred to the new ownership beginning June 1 (UPDATE: The new ownership is effective immediately. Publishers Weekly will be moving to new offices effective June 1).
It’s been a long and tortuous road, but it was announced today that Library Journal, School Library Journal and LJ Hotline have been sold to Media Source, which also owns The Horn Book and Junior Library Guild.
Horn Book Editor-in-Chief, Roger Sutton celebrated the acquisition by posting a photo of himself and LJ/SLJ Editorial Director, Brian Kenney at MidWinter with a typically wry Suttonesque headline, Many men have tried to mix us up but no one can.
Kenney continues as editorial director of both magazines, with Francine Fialkoff as editor-in-chief of Library Journal. Ron Shank continues as publisher.
LJ and SLJ were originally put up for sale, along with 45 other magazines, by owner Reed Business Information back in 2008. Unable to find buyers, in what is widely considered a bungled attempt, Reed took them off the table. This past July, they announced they were trying it again. Since then, they’ve sold off several magazines, including Electronic Design News (EDN) and Broadcasting & Cable, and closed others, including Video Business. The magazines were formerly part of Cahners, which published over 150 magazines at its height.
Noticeably missing from the sale is sister publication Publishers Weekly. Some news sources see this as a sign that Reed has been unable to find a buyer for the magazine and predict it will be closed, a step Reed said they would take with any magazines they were unable to sell by mid-year.
It would be a shame if PW was closed, not just because it’s been covering the publishing business since 1872, or because I am one of the former editors-in-chief. Despite a drastic reduction in staff over the past few years, it still has the largest number of reporters and editors focused on all aspects of the business, from printing to bookselling. Several online publications have challenged PW‘s coverage, most notably Publishers Marketplace and Shelf Awareness (which, ironically, had its first incarnation as PW Daily for Booksellers; when the management laid off editor John Mutter and closed the publication, they effectively set up a competitor), but PW still does more original reporting than any of them. Successful PW online publications Children’s Bookshelf and Cooking the Books point to opportunities to create other niche publications.
And, with all the magazines Reed is trying to sell off, they simply may not have had the time to work with potential buyers of single publications. The outlook may be murky, but don’t write PW off just yet.
The last-minute buyer for Kirkus has been revealed; it’s Herb Simon, owner of the Indian Pacers. The New York Times’ Motoko Rich reports the story in the “Media Decoder” blog.
Simon, who made his money as a shopping mall developer, including the Mall of America, is a voracious reader and longtime subscriber who thought it would be a “shame” if the publication folded.
It was also announced that editor Elaine Szewcyzk and managing editor Eric Liebetrau will continue in their positions and Kirkus will continue as a print publication, with expanded digital offerings.
The new chief executive of the renamed Kirkus Media, Marc Winkelman, told the NYT,
Over the years librarians have submitted a lot of comments to Kirkus about things they would like to see enhanced. We hope to do that and make Kirkus even more relevant in the world of book buying and book reading.
Still on the block, with no potential buyers named, are Library Journal, School Library Journal and Publishers Weekly, all owned by Reed Business Information.
Kirkus will continue publishing. Managing editor Eric Liebetrau sent out an email to colleagues today, saying that there may be a buyer after all and they are restarting publication.
Certain editors and agents who expressed delight that Kirkus was being shut down may be facing a dinner of crow.
What books get the fewest consumer reviews?
No, not midlist titles — books by bestselling authors. Most reviewers feel they don’t need the attention (with the notable exceptions of People and Entertainment Weekly).
The Daily Beast is jumping into the breach. William Book has begun a new column that sorts through the bestsellers to identify “which, if any, are readable” (I guess that assumes people buy the books, but don’t read them?)
Here’s how he describes his brief:
I’ll render the kind of blunt verdict you get when reading about toasters in Consumer Reports. I’ll tell you which of the bestsellers, if any, are readable. If they’re semi-readable, I’ll tell you which pages to skip. With any luck, you’ll know which one to pack for the flight to Jakarta. If you want a different approach, try The New York Review of Books.
The first up is Sue Grafton’s U is for Undertow. True to his word, he recommends that if you want to “cut straight to the whodunnit … skip over pages 25-26, 226-233, and 253-260,” although, “that’s not recommended, because U is for Undertow isn’t much of a mystery.”
Does he recommend reading it, “Absolutely,” although he doesn’t present a convincing case for doing so.
It’s a good idea for a column, but, generally, the prepub reviewers, who are not allergic to covering potential bestsellers (all four reviewed this one), were more articulate in their recommendations.
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Random House Audio, UNABR CD; 9780739323212; $45
Large Print; Thorndike; 9781410420374
Book and audio downloadable from OverDrive
For the second time in two months, a potential bestseller appears on the cover of the Book Review; this Sunday’s issue gives the cover treatment to Stephen King’s Under the Dome. It is, however, difficult to decipher whether the reviewer likes the book. While King’s “continued and slightly frenzied commerce with his muse has been one of the more enthralling spectacles in American literature,” his prose is “not all smooth sailing. Given King’s extraordinary career-long dominance, we might expect him at this point to be stylistically complete, turning perfect sentences, as breezily at home in his idiom as P. G. Wodehouse.” (P.G. Wodehouse? Really?)
But, wait, there’s even more potential bestseller coverage. King’s unwitting cohort in the WalMart/Amazon/Target price wars, The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, is also reviewed (“breathtaking”) as well as a book that appears on the nonfiction list for the first time this week, at #15, William Shawcross’s The Queen Mother (“more a document replete with data than a book designed to entertain”). Even more surprising, the #13 NF bestseller, My Life Outside the Ring, by Hulk Hogan is also reviewed; he “can be a lively, breezy narrator,” but “his compulsive confessing feels more like an effort to pre-empt the Us Weeklys and TMZs of the world than an authentic attempt at soul-searching.”
Adding to a string of acclaim for BEA librarian favorite, Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, Kate Christensen (Trouble) declares that she “loved” Rhoda Jantzen’s book.
This issue also features children’s books, including the Best Illustrated Childrens Books of 2009, plus reviews of several childrens and YA titles:
