Back in 2008, when book trailers were in their infancy, the paperback of Kelly Corrigan’s first book, The Middle Place, soared as a simple video of her reading from it made its way around the Internet.

Corrigan’s third book Glitter and Glue, (RH/Ballantine, out today), comes with another equally affecting video of Corrigan doing a simple reading. Now that  book trailers are often indistinguishable from movie trailers,  with some even including well-known actors, it is particularly refreshing.

The book is now rising on Amazon. The audio version (RH Audio)  is, of course, read by the author.

Rising on Amazon’s sales rankings (currently at #24) is All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood by Jennifer Senior (HarperCollins/Ecco), which was featured on the cover of Sunday’s NYT Book Review.

Reviewer Andrew Solomon, whose most recent book Far From the Tree, is also about parenthood, says this “trenchant and engrossing” book inspired him “to think differently about my own experience as a parent.”

When Senior published an essay, also called All Joy and No Fun in New York magazine in 2010, it caused a furor (which may have been generated by the subtitle,”Why parents hate parenting”). So far, reactions to the book have been positive and remarkably personal; Slate’s reviewer even comed close to saying it made her rethink her own decision to not have children.

Senior has several media appearances coming up — NPR’s Fresh Air on Tuesday, Comedy Central’s Colbert Report tonight and ABC’s Good Morning America, scheduled to Feb. 27.

Library holds are heavy where ordering is light.

“For fans of  Downton Abbey” has become one of the most used phrases in promotional copy. As the NYT Book Review asks,

Is it possible nowadays for otherwise intelligent Americans to reflect on England without thinking first of Downton Abbey? To put it another way: Can beleaguered American publishers expect to sell any English author without promising — however absurdly — a tie-in with Julian Fellowes’s opulent confection?

That’s the opening line for the review of the original trade paperback, The Secret Rooms, (Penguin; Thorndike) which goes on to say, “in the case of Catherine Bailey’s stylish new book about one of England’s grandest dynasties, the link proves apt.”

The book, a December LibraryReads pick, was also also featured in the Daily Candy (although with the British cover), which, of course,  made the requisite reference, “If you add a dash of the macabre and a hefty serving of intrigue to Downton Abbey, you get Catherine Bailey’s latest, a true story about a creepy castle and a duke whose private space was sealed in 1940 and reopened only in 1999.”

We hear it will appear at #20 on the upcoming NYT Paperback Nonfiction best seller list.

The woman who created a storm with her 2011 book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,  is making headlines again with a new book co-written with her husband,  Jed Rubenfeld,  The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America (Penguin; Penguin Audio; Feb. 3).

The book has already received advance attention, including a segment on the Jan. 6 Today Show. The New York Post ran a review with a headline meant to amp-up the controversy, “Tiger Mom: Some Cultural Groups Are Superior.” On the other hand, New York magazine says this book is not nearly as proactive as  the previous one, calling it a “much blander, more conventional, and less sensational read, with more than a hundred pages of end notes; a detached, third-person, school-report style.”

Coming this Sunday, the New York Times magazine features a story about the couple (who also published an op-ed page last  Sunday, “What Drives Success“), noting that they claim to be appalled by the response to Tiger Mother, thus making their choice of subject for their new book, “either cynical or oblivious, or some uncanny combination of the two.”

Holds  currently are in line with cautious ordering in many libraries and are heavy where orders are low.

When a book is hotly anticipated by a  wide range of sources, our ears prick up. Walter Kirn’s Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade, (Norton/Liveright; March 3) is highlighted by  Library Journal‘s Barbara Hoffert in her extensive Midwinter 2014 Galley and Signing Guide. It is also one of USA Today‘s “10 Books Should You Read This Winter” and The Hollywood Reporter‘s “2014 Book Preview” as well as the more literary-inclined The Millions’ “Great 2014 Book Preview.”

The story of the con man who passed himself off as a member of the Rockefeller family has fascinated many. Mark Seal’s book, The Man in a Rockefeller Suit is in development for a movie by Walter Selles (The Motorcycle Diaries), and was the inspiration for the well-received novel, Schroder by Amity Gaige. Countless articles have also been written about him, including one last year in the New Yorker by Kirn himself, who was friends with the man he knew as “Clark Rockefeller” for fifteen years.

If you’re going to Midwinter, check for it at the Norton booth (#748). If not, you can request eARC’s through Edelweiss or print copies from the library marketing folks at Norton.

Called “the next great read for those who loved The Hunger Games,”  Pierce Brown’s debut Red Rising, (RH/Del Rey; Jan. 28) tops the February LibraryReads list. Cindy Stevens of the Pioneer [OK] Library System adds, “This story has so much action, intrigue, social commentary and character development that the reader who never reads science fiction will happily overlook the fact that the story takes place on Mars far in the future. The characters are perfectly flawed, causing the reader to feel compassion and revulsion for both sides. Can’t wait for the next installment!” Happily, you can tell readers that it is the first in a planned trilogy. Published as an adult title, it also has strong crossover YA appeal.

Mars is played for laughs in another debut on the list, The Martian by Andy Weir (RH/Crown, Feb. 11). Originally published as an ebook, it caught the eye of Fox Studios which hired  Drew Goddard, to direct it. Goddard, a sought-after screenwriter (Cloverfield and Robopocalypse) made a big splash in his first outing as a director with the low budget hit, Cabin in the Woods. Since the book has already been released as in audio by Audilble, you can listen to a sample here.

We’re pleased to see Wiley Cash’s second book, This Dark Road to Mercy (HarperCollins/Morrow; Jan. 28) is also picked. We were early fans of his 2012 debut, A Land More Kind Than Home. Robin Nesbitt, Columbus [OH] Metropolitan Library says Cash’s new book is “as good as his first,” which says a lot. If you’re going to Midwinter, look for him at the HarperCollins booth #731. You’ll get a warm reception; he’s a major fan of librarians (ask him about his cat).

The list includes a nonfiction pick, E.E. Cummings: A Life by Susan Cheever (RH/Pantheon, Feb. 11). It is excerpted in the current issue of Vanity Fair (unfortunately, it’s one of the articles only available by subscription). Says Linda Jeffries-Summers, Howard County [MD] Library,

Cummings is a pivotal figure in the creation of modern verse, and Cheever conveys his journey with color, warmth, and understanding, especially his imprisonment in France during the First World War, his father’s death and his final reunion with his daughter. She leaves the reader with only one wish: to be a fly on the wall while the poet held forth to his friends.

You can read many of these books now as eGalleys from Edelweiss and NetGalley. If you are going to midwinter, look for print galleys at publishers booths (check the interactive floor plan for booth locations).

To see if you’ve ordered these titles, check our downloadable spreadsheet, LibraryReads, which also lists alternate formats.

Remember to nominate your favorite forthcoming titles for LibraryReads!

To learn more, come to the LibraryReads program at Midwinter:

LibraryReads:
Collaborative Discovery for Librarians & Patrons
Saturday, Jan. 25, 11:30 – 12:30
PCC 114 Lecture Hall
[PLEASE NOTE: time & location were changed; check your schedule to make sure you have the correct one]

To help you stay on top of the lists of highly anticipated titles coming from various consumer media, (see links at right, under “Season Previews”), we’ve compiled a downloadable spreadsheet of all the titles to date, with alternative formats, for your use in checking orders and looking for galleys; Winter/Spring, 2014 — Previews

By their nature, previews tend to be cautious, focusing on authors who are already well known, whether for previous surprise hits (Matthew Quick, Emma Donoghue, Maggie Shipstead, Peter Heller, Amy Chua), long track records (Stephen King, Laura Lippman, Ruth Reichl, Colson Whitehead) or for celebrity status (Rob Lowe’s Love Life and Robin Roberts’s Everybody’s Got Something rival Hillary Rodham Clinton’s untitled June release for attention).

Among these lists of the predictable, it’s notable that Entertainment Weekly singles out one title as their lead, You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz, (Hachette/Grand Central), calling it, “The thriller we’re already obsessed with.” The author’s 2009 novel Admission, about a Princeton admissions officer dealing overwrought parents trying to get their kids her school, was a critical success that was rendered unrecognizable as a rom-com movie starring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd.

This new title is described as a “potential blockbuster about a Manhattan therapist who discovers her husband of 20 years is a sociopath.” Remind you of anything (the accompanying interview makes the connection, asking the author, “Do you think your novel, like Gone Girl, is part of a fiction trend of not sensing the truth about those we’re closest to?”)

Prepub reviews don’t exactly paint it that way. Kirkus calls it a “smart, leisurely study of midlife angst,” while PW praises it as an “excellent literary mystery.”

Dominating the media today is the unauthorized bio. of Fox News boss, Roger Ailes, The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News—and Divided a Country by Gabriel Sherman, (Random House), an embargoed title releasing today.

Venues from USA Today (in which Michael Wolff accuses the publisher of withholding the book from reviewers who might be critical) to The New Yorker‘s Jill Lapore (who doesn’t explain how she got her advance copy), offer their takes. The Daily Beast‘s “speed read” comes up with “25 Extraordinary Roger Ailes Revelations.”

Sherman, a New York magazine writer, appears on Comedy Central’s Colbert Report tomorrow night.

Library holds are light so far.

Janus has officially turned his head. USA Today switches from picking the “10 Best Books Of 2013” to asking”What 10 Books Should You Read This Winter?” Among the books by celebrities and established authors, are two by writers whose earlier books were surprise hits.

Emma Donoghue moves from a the contemporary setting of  her hit The Room (2010) to 1870s San Francisco in Frog Music, (Hachette/Little,Brown; Hachette Audio; April). The common thread is crimes against women; this one is about a grizzly unsolved murder.

Nancy Horan explored the “sandulous” (for the time) relationship between Frank Lloyd Wright and a convention-defying woman who became his mistress, in her best selling debut novel, Loving Frank, (2007). She  stays on familiar territory in her new book, Under the Wide and Starry Sky, (RH/Ballantine;RH Audio; RH Large Print; BOT; Jan. 21), based on the relationship between Robert Louis Stevenson and an aspiring American artist, who had moved to France with her three children to escape her husband.

Ishmael Beah’s memoir of being a child soldier in Sierra Leone, A Long Way Gone, was heavily covered by the media when it was published in 2007 and is often assigned reading in schools.

His first novel, Radiance of Tomorrow (Macmillan/Sarah Chrichton; Macmillan Audio) is being published today. Reviewing it in the Washington Post, Ron Charles applauds Beah’s “lyrical style all his own. Even as a multitude of wearying failures mounts, his characters retain their hopefulness in a way that’s challenging and inspiring.”

Beah appears on the Colbert Report tomorrow night and will be a featured speaker at ALA Midwinter on Saturday, January 25, 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm.

On the cover of this week’s New Yorker magazine, the lions outside the New York Public Library morph into polar bears in Bruce McCall’s image of the city currently in a deep freeze.

In the issue, author Jennifer Weiner gets a warmer reception in a profile by Rebecca Mead, who says this “unlikely feminist enforcer … has waged a campaign against the literary media for being biased against female writers, and against books written for women … In 2010, when Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom was published, Weiner and Jodi Picoult, another best-selling novelist, objected to the attention garnered by Franzen and his work.”

Meade gives Weiner’s work serious, if not completely admiring, consideration, “Sometimes the reversals of fortune and the discoveries of love in Weiner’s books can feel forced, given the anger and hurt that precede them. Her characters can appear to be mouthing lines they have read in self-help books rather than expressing authentic emotions. It often seems that inside these calculatedly lightweight books there is a more anguished, and possibly truer, work trying to get out.”

Weiner’s next novel, All Fall Down (S&S Atria; S&S Audio) is scheduled for release in April.

Gathering the most reviews of the new year is the new novel by Chang-rae Lee, On Such A Full Sea, (Penguin/Riverhead; Penguin Audio; Thorndike), which arrives on Tuesday. In a cover review in the New York Times Book Review, Andrew Sean Greer (The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells) announces he is a fan from the  opening paragraph, 

Watching a talented writer take a risk is one of the pleasures of devoted reading, and On Such a Full Sea provides all that and more. It’s a wonderful addition not only to Chang-rae Lee’s body of work but to the ranks of “serious” writers venturing into the realm of dystopian fantasy.

Lee didn’t set out to write a dystopian novel, but a social realist novel about Chinese factory workers, as he tells the NYT BR editor, Pamela Paul in this week’s “Inside the New York Times Book Review” podcast. Instead, he ended up writing about an enclosed settlement of Chinese-American refugees in a city called “B-Mor,” built on the ruins of Baltimore. He sees that city as a symbol of “a certain kind of urban decay,” but admits his only contact with it has been the view from a train window (something he has in common with songwriter Randy Newman who, 35 years ago, wrote the bleak song “Baltimore” based on the same experience. Up in arms, the city insisted on a visit and an apology).

The majority of the rest of the reviews equal the NYT BR in their praise:

Los Angeles Times – ‎‘On Such a Full Sea’ a cautionary tale of the future —

Who is a greater novelist than Chang-rae Lee today?

Chicago Tribune – Review: ‘On Such a Full Sea’ by Chang-Rae Lee —

… not just a fully realized, time-jumping narrative of an audacious young girl in search of lost loved ones, but an exploration of the meaning and function of narrative, of illusion and delusion, of engineered personalities and faint promises of personhood, and of one powerful nation’s disappearance and how that indelibly affects another.

Entertainment Weekly  — ON SUCH A FULL SEA Chang-rae Lee — A-

The dystopia of On Such a Full Sea isn’t showy … instead Lee relies on specific, indelible images … and his usual perceptive writing to get at the warped morality that can drive a world into decline.

Cleveland Plain Dealer — Chang-Rae Lee charts a rocky course toward freedom 

A new book by Lee is cause for giddy expectation … His latest … is both a detour and a confirmation: a detour because, as a dystopian vision, it is unlike his previous narrative forms; a confirmation, because despite that difference, his prodigious talents are still everywhere evident.

There are a couple of holdouts, however:

San Francisco Chronicle — On Such a Full Sea,’ by Chang-rae Lee

On some level, “On Such a Full Sea” feels totally characterless. It continually keeps the reader at arm’s length, declining to make us care much about its nearly faceless heroine…In part, this is due to the novel’s nature as a cautionary tale…As a consequence, the narration is rendered in a flat, somewhat formal, old-fashioned style that never allows us to get too close to the story’s emotional truth. For all its plot convolutions, the book still feels abstract and cold.

New York magazine, “A No-Frills Buyers’ Guide to January Books“:

The tired dystopian tropes Lee uses to evoke our current predicament—stratified societies, cruel market forces, a broken health-care system, etc.—are so heavy-handed that the book sometimes reads more like a diagnosis than a believable human story.

Arriving next week, Sue Monk Kidd’s new book, The Invention of Wings, (Penguin/Viking; Penguin Audio; Thorndike) already has a powerful endorsement as the first pick of the year for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0. Entertainment Weekly, adds its endorsement, saying The Invention of Wings, “isn’t just the story of a friendship that defies an oppressive society; it’s a much more satisfying story of two people discovering together that their lives are worth the fight.” (for those attending Midwinter, Kidd is one of the speakers appearing at United for Libraries’ Gala Author Tea on Mon., Jan 27).

It is second in terms of holds for the week to Stuart Woods’ 28th title in the Stone Barrington series, Standup Guy,  (Penguin/Putnam; Penguin Audio; Thorndike).

Jane Pauley was in the news last week for simply making an appearance on her old Today Show stage. Her new book, Your Life Calling: Reimagining the Rest of Your Life, (S&S; S&S Audio, read by Pauley) is also likely to get media attention.

Several LibraryReads picks arrive next week:

Little Failure, Gary Shteyngart, (Random House)

“Little Failure is the marvelous tale of the Shteyngart family’s journey from Leningrad to Queens in the 1970s. Gary Shteyngart captures an amazing snapshot of that time in history, and this engaging memoir is suffused with conflict, love, and a lot of hilarity.” — Laura Scott, Park Ridge Public Library, Park Ridge, IL

Also, it gets a strong review from Entertainment Weekly.

The Wind Is Not a River, Brian Payton, (Harper)

“A tender love story about a reporter stranded during World War II on one of the Aleutian Islands, and his feisty wife, who travels to find him. The geographical and historical setting of American warfare in the North Pacific, little known to most, is very intriguing. Readers will fall in love with the main characters’ fierce determination to survive and love against all odds.” –Paulette Brooks, Elm Grove Public Library, Elm Grove, WI

And in movie tie-ins:

Winter’s Tale (Movie Tie-In Edition), Mark Helprin, (HMH/Mariner Books) — starring Colin Farrell, Jessica Brown Findlay, Russell Crowe, the adaptation opens on Velentine’s Day.

Official Web site: WintersTaleMovie.com

Flowers in the Attic, V.C.  Andrews, (S&S/Gallery Books and Pocket Books; AudioGo) — Lifetime explores new territory with this remake of a cult classic, set to debut on Jan 18.

Official Web site: MyLifetime.com/movies/fFowers-in-the-attic

All the above titles, and more coming next week, are listed on our downloadable spreadsheet, New Title Radar, Week of Jan 6

What’s on people’s minds for the new year?

In a word: Diets.

Today, Amazon’s Movers and Shakers list of books that have moved up the most in terms of sales rankings in the last 24 hours, is filled with diet books. How much this is self-motived and how much is the result of  media attention (such as People‘s new issue featuring those who lost Half Their Size!), is anyone’s guess.

Soon, the media will turn their attention from the best books of 2013 to previews of what’s coming in 2014. Meandwhile, check out our links at the right, under “Coming Soon” for a quick overview of titles coming in the next few weeks. Highlights, below:

New York Magazine picks their favorites of January, recommending:

Rachel Joyce’s Perfect (Random House, Jan 14) by the author of the 2012 librarian favorite, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry),

Shovel Ready by Adam Sternbergh (RH/Crown, Jan 14;), calling it  a “darkly funny first books the the culture editor of The New York Times Magazine)

Gary Shteyngart’s Little Failure (Random House, Jan. 7). This memoir also got attention on NPR’s All Things Considered this week, where it was called an “unambivalent success“).

Costco’s influential book buyer, Pennie Ianiciello, picks the paperback edition of Jennifer Chiaverini’s novel from last year, Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker as the featured book of the month. Chiaverini’s next book, Mrs. Lincoln’s Rival, (Penguin/Dutton, Jan 14) is one of the month’s picks by The Book Reporter.

On the IndieNext list for February is one of our Penguin First Flights titles, Archetype by M.D. Waters, (Penguin/Dutton, Feb. 6) — check out our live online chat with the author here (and please join us tomorrow for our chat with Timothy Lane, author of Rules for Becoming a Legend).

Librarians have been tweeting that they can’t wait for the next in Waters’ series, Prototype (they won’t have to wait long, it’s coming in July). For those attending Midwinter, the author will be featured on the AAP Debut Author Panel, Sat., Jan. 25, 3:00–4:00 pm (RSVP HERE with your interest in attending by Monday, January 13th).

There’e nearly universal acclaim for one debut, The Kept, by James Scott (Harper; Jan 7) — it’s picked for January by LibraryReads, IndieNext the BookReporter, and is an Amazon featured debut. The following is the annotation from LibraryReads:

“Scott has written a haunting novel about two characters who are tormented by regret and guilt and who do all the wrong things to find redemption. Beautiful writing and unforgettable characters mark this first novel that has been compared to the work of Cormac McCarthy and Michael Ondaatje.”

Alison Kastner, Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR

Digital advanced readers copies are still available from Edelewiss and Netgalley (but hurry, they may no longer be available after next week’s pub. date).

Attention Ransom Riggs’ fans, the followup to the surprise 2011 best seller, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Chidlren is a reality. A photo of the first copies of Hollow City, (Quirk Books, Jan. 13) arriving in the Quirk offices was tweeted a couple of hours ago.

Even better,  a chapter is now available online (via Random House Library Marketing’s Web site). We’re told there will be no ARC’s. either  print or digital.