EarlyWord

A new Sedaris audio-only title will be released Nov. 24, called Live for Your Listening Pleasure. It consists of highlights from his latest tour; events in Denver, NYC, Durham, L.A. and Atlanta. Similar to his 2002 Live At Carnegie Hall audio, this is a standalone and will not be published as a book.

A clip is available at Entertainment Weekly ‘s “Shelf Life” blog and another is on the publisher’s web site.

We can do them one better; Hachette Audio is making a limited number of copies available for readers of EarlyWord. To enter, just send an email to EarlyWord, with “Sedaris Live” in the subject line, by 11:59 p.m, this Friday, Nov. 13. Don’t forget to include your shipping address (no P.O. box numbers). EarlyWord will select winners at random. This is only open to librarians residing in the 50 states.

Libraries we checked do not have the audio on order and WorldCat shows it listed on just one library catalog.

By the way, at least one wholesaler annotation incorrectly describes this as the 2002 Carnegie Hall recording. It is all new material.

David Sedaris: Live For Your Listening Pleasure David Sedaris Retail Price: $17.98 Audio CD: Publisher: Hachette Audio – (2009-11-24)

Also downloadable from OverDrive

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And, how retro and how David Sedaris, it will also be available in vinyl (this from the company that held a funeral for the cassette format over a year ago).

Love how different the vinyl and the CD covers are.

David Sedaris: Live For Your Listening Pleasure David Sedaris Retail Price: $24.98 Audio Cassette: Publisher: Hachette Audio – (2010-01-05) ISBN / EAN: 160788447X / 9781607884477

Amazingly, an American named Jake Adelstein managed to become a beat reporter for Japan’s most popular Japanese-language daily newspaper. Even more astounding, he wrote investigative stories about organized crime in Japan.

Adelstein has just published a book about his experiences, Tokyo Vice and was interviewed last night on NPR’s Fresh Air. The book is now at #65 on Amazon and rising. Libraries that ordered it are showing holds as high as 7:1.

The book received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, which called it “..equal parts cultural exposé, true crime, and hard-boiled noir.”

Adelstein also appeared on Sixty Minutes the week before last, as part of a story on the godfather of Japanese crime, Tadamasa Goto, who made a deal with the FBI to exchange information for a liver transplant (Goto got more out of the exchange than the FBI did).

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Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan Jake Adelstein Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: Pantheon – (2009-10-13) ISBN / EAN: 0307378799 / 9780307378798

Audio and eBook downloadable from OverDrive.

Currently at #30 on Amazon and rising is a book that recommends investing in gold and oil rather than stocks and bonds.  Published by Portfolio, Penguin’s business book imprint, it is endorsed by Ron Paul and the author has appeared on the Glenn Beck Show. More information is available here.

Few libraries have ordered it; one library system is showing 7 holds on 5 copies.

The Dollar Meltdown: Surviving the Impending Currency Crisis with Gold, Oil, and Other Unconventional Investments Charles Goyette Retail Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover – (2009-10-29) ISBN / EAN: 1591842840 / 9781591842842

At #16 on Amazon and rising, is a new book by the President of the  Natural Resources Defense Council, Frances Beinecke. This is her first book, but she has been posting her opinions on the NRDC site for several years. Her posts also appear on the Huffington Post and on AlterNet.

According to WorldCat, no libraries own the book.

Despite the cover’s striking similarity to a title by a certain conservative commentator, Beinecke’s book does not share the belief that author’s belief that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the left.

Clean Energy Common Sense: An American Call to Action on Global Climate Change Frances Beinecke, Bob Deans Retail Price: $9.95 Paperback: 120 pages Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. – (2009-11-05) ISBN / EAN: 144220317X / 9781442203174

Publishers Weekly set off a storm of protest last week when they released their selection of the Top Ten Books of the Year and pointed out that all the titles are by men (adding insult to injury, the editors said they didn’t see this as a reason to question their own judgment; that changing the list would be a matter of bowing to “political correctness”).

The newly-formed group WILLA (Women in Letters and Literary Arts) issued a press release amusingly titled, Why Were No Women Invited to Publishers Weekly’s Weenie Roast? and created a wiki for people to post their favorite ’09 books by women, a list that is growing by the minute. GalleyCat reports that the group is also growing, having added 1,000 new members since Wednesday.

Charlotte Abbott, who writes for EarlyWord as well as the blog Follow the Reader, is organzing a group to look into creating an American prize similar to the Orange Prizes in the UK, which are for women writers in English (Americans are eligible; Marilynne Robinson won the Fiction prize for her 2008 book, Home).

The outrage has focused on Publishers Weekly, because they had the temerity to announce their lack of female authors. However, Amazon’s Editor’s Top Ten includes only two women, one of whom is a YA author (PW does not included children’s and YA authors on their list). If, for comparison’s sake, we exclude the YA title, #11 on Amazon’s list is by a man, so only one female author appears on Amazon’s list of Top Ten adult titles.

Women do better with the National Book Awards; of the fifteen finalists in the adult categories, 6 are women.

Amazon and PW also issued Top 100 lists and we were curious to see how women fared on them. To that end, we’ve created a spreadsheet with all the titles (available on the right, under “Best Books ’09; List of the Lists — Spreadsheet) as well as one with just the titles by women (List of the Lists; Women Authors). As the lists show, women make out somewhat better on the full lists, but still represent just 30% or less of the titles:

Of PW‘s Top 100, 30 are by women (we included Half the Sky because the co-author is a woman) = 30%

Of Amazon’s 100 titles, 25 are by women = 25%

If you remove the childrens/YA titles from Amazon’s list to make it more comparable to PW‘s, the total is 94 titles, with 19 by women = 20.20%

Clearly, PW is not alone in underrepresenting women.

In childrens and YA, women fare much better, but it’s difficult to say how this compares with the proportion of women who publish childrens and YA titles;

Of the 30 titles on PW‘s childrens list, 19 are by women = 63.33%

Of the 30 on Amazon’s list, 15 are by women = 50%

There are, of course, many other issues to discuss with “best” lists. PW covers categories that are overlooked elsewhere, such as graphic format and mass market titles. They also give attention to the lesser known; one writer found the PW list refreshing (We can’t help but note that that writer is a “he”);

“Publisher’s Weekly announces 10 best books of the year – ALL by men“, by Oliver Marre, The Telegraph

…the PW list is more interesting for its joyful disregard of the trendy highbrow authors of 2009 – be they  men or women. It shows an admirable indifference to the efforts of the Booker prize nominees like Byatt (whose Children’s Book was extraordinarily heavy going), the omnipresent Sarah Waters and her ghosts, even Hilary Mantel and her epic bestseller (I tried it twice but couldn’t get excited), Wolf Hall. With each of these exclusions, I cannot help agreeing.

If you will be in the New York/Brooklyn area on Saturday, Nov. 21 area, you have the opportunity to brunch with Nancy Pearl. The brunch is a benefit for the upcoming production of Terrible Things, performed by Katie Pearl (Nancy’s daughter, of course) and Lisa D’Amour. It’s being held at the Packer School in Brooklyn, which served as the  location for episodes of Gossip Girl.

You are invited to Brunch with
Nancy Pearl
Librarian, Action Figure, and Book Recommender to the World!

Saturday November 21st 11-1:30pm
At the Packer Collegiate Institute, Brooklyn Heights, NY

To benefit the upcoming production of
TERRIBLE THINGS
A new performance by Katie Pearl (Nancy’s daughter!) and Lisa D’Amour
Premiering 12/4-12/20 at Performance Space 122, NYC

When you join us, you will:

Feast on local eats, coffee and cocktails
Indulge in book lust and conversation with Nancy Pearl
Luxuriate in the Cathedral-esque wonderland of the historic Packer School

SNEAK-A-PEAK at Nancy’s OBIE Award-winning daughter’s new performance, featuring stories from Nancy’s pre-action figure life!

GET YOUR TICKETS HERE:http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/87806

Ticket Information:
$35 – one ticket to the benefit
$50 – one ticket to the benefit, PLUS a ticket to opening weekend of TERRIBLE THINGS
$85 (15% off!) – two tickets to the benefit, PLUS two tickets to opening weekend of TERRIBLE THINGS
$250 – two tickets to the benefit, two tickets to any night of TERRIBLE THINGS, plus a one-on-one get together with Nancy!

The OBIE-Award winning team of PearlDamour turns PS122 into a low-rent IMAX in their newest dance theater piece TERRIBLE THINGS. Let them take you on a T-R-I-P inside the quarks, molecules, and memories of  Katie Pearl and her Action Figure Mom.  CLICK HERE for more info on the show, or visit us at PearlDarmour.com.

Handmade gifts show love. For those of us with more time than money (an expanding category these days), hand made may be the only way to go.

For the crafty among us, now is the time to think about holiday gift giving; a darling scarf for the mother-in-law, mittens for the cousins, or bath salts for the sister. Here are four new titles that work with kids and can form the basis of a gift-making program.

Kid Made Modern Todd Oldham Retail Price: $22.95 Hardcover: 192 pages Publisher: Ammo Books – (2009-11-01) ISBN / EAN: 1934429368 / 9781934429365

Cool craft projects with a modern slant. Bright colors and clean lines are featured in print-making. Make wooden spoon puppets, Noguchi-like sculptures, Calder-like mobiles and wearable art.

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FamilyFun Homemade Holidays: 150 Festive Crafts, Recipes, Gifts & Parties Retail Price: $12.95 Paperback: 96 pages Publisher: Sterling – (2009-10-06) ISBN / EAN: 1402763581 / 9781402763588

The craft projects in this new version of the book originally pubbed by Disney in 2002 are right up my alley. Want to plan an ornament making program? Lot’s of terrific low-cost suggestions from 3-D dough pieces to elegant paper drops. Want to know how to make dancing gingerbread people? Love the edible wildlife ornaments; Pine Cones stuffed with peanut butter and birdseed (use almond butter if allergies are a problem) carrots wrapped in twine, and popcorn strung garlands. My favorite is the homemade gift of a gingerbread family decorating kit. Make gingerbread people and fill a tissue-lined box with a tube of white icing, sprinkles, redhots, tiny M&M’s and string licorice. Label the box Gingerbread Family Decorating Kit. Did you know you can make peanut brittle in the microwave? Have you thought about washing an old woolen sweater until it is felted to create material to reuse as mittens? Pretty easy and green too. Not just Christmas but other winter holidays are represented. Make a kinara for your Kwanzaa celebration. Create a mobile of stars for your Hanukah party.

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One More Skein: 30 Quick Projects to Knit Leigh Radford Retail Price: $19.95 Paperback: 128 pages Publisher: STC Craft/A Melanie Falick Book – (2009-09-01) ISBN / EAN: 1584798025 / 9781584798026

I am digging into my yarn stash after being inspired by the comfy yet stylish wrist warmers; a great beginner project for anyone who has just learned to knit and purl. I’ve been wanting to make a hot-water bottle cover; here it is as well as neck warmer. Also included are some pretty cool felted projects.

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Interweave Presents Knitted Gifts: Irresistible Projects to Make & Give Ann Budd Retail Price: $21.95 Paperback: 136 pages Publisher: Interweave Press – (2009-08-01) ISBN / EAN: 1596680911 / 9781596680913

From Ann Budd who wrote my favorite knitting book, The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns, comes a book of 30 gift ideas. A variety of projects for the beginning and experienced knitters; scarves, hats, socks, and toys that can be knitted up over a short period of time with lovely professional results.

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Refashioned Bags: Upcycle Anything into High-Style Handbags Faith Blakeney, Justina Blakeney Retail Price: $19.99 Paperback: 112 pages Publisher: Potter Craft – (2009-11-03) ISBN / EAN: 0307460886 / 9780307460882

Reduce, reuse , recyle: create clutches, totes, computer bags from old neckties, wool sweaters, shower curtains and even an umbrella.  These are just the kind of things that I see for sale at the very hipster Brooklyn Flea. So that’s how they made that!

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:

• Young Adult Novels About Fairies
• ’14 Cows for America’
• ‘Leviathan’
• ‘Purple Heart’
• Books About the Dust Bowl
• ‘Tales From Outer Suburbia’
• Picture Books About Winter
• Picture Books About Colors
• Animal Books
• Books About Trucks, Cars and Traffic
• ‘The Lion and the Mouse’ (reviewed by Roger Sutton)
• ‘White Noise’ — many libraries have not purchased this pop-up, probably because, as the reviewer says, it’d difficult “not to tear its intricate feats of paper engineering.”
• ‘All the World’

Next week is relatively light in terms of number of titles from big names.

Memoirs

Open: An Autobiography Andre Agassi Retail Price: $28.95 Hardcover: 400 pages Publisher: Knopf – (2009-11-09) ISBN / EAN: 0307268195 / 9780307268198

Random House Audio; 9780739358566; $32

An excerpt from Open was the cover story in last week’s People and the press has been covering his admission that he took crystal meth. Agassi will be interviewed by Katie Couric on 60 Minutes on Sunday. The book gets a strong review in the new issue of Time. Despite all the publicity, holds in libraries are light.

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Last Words: A Memoir George Carlin Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Free Press – (2009-11-10) ISBN / EAN: 1439172951 / 9781439172957

S&S Audio; 9781442303188; $29.99

Fiction

Holds are running heavier at most libraries for Linda Howard’s new book than they are for Stephen King’s.

Ice: A Novel Linda Howard Retail Price: $22.00 Hardcover: 208 pages Publisher: Ballantine Books – (2009-11-10) ISBN / EAN: 0345517199 / 9780345517197

Random House Audio; 9780307577610; $30
Large Print; Thorndike; 9781410420343; hdbk; $33.95

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Under the Dome: A Novel Stephen King Retail Price: $35.00 Hardcover: 1088 pages Publisher: Scribner – (2009-11-10) ISBN / EAN: 1439148503 / 9781439148501

S&S Audio; 9780743597302; $75

Gets 3.5 out of a possible 4 stars in the new issue of People, saying “although it lacks the power and strangeness of works like It and The Shining, it is till a wildly entertaining trip.”

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Wishin’ and Hopin’: A Christmas Story Wally Lamb Retail Price: $19.99 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Harper – (2009-11-01) ISBN / EAN: 006194100X / 9780061941009

HarperAudio; 9780061953262; $19.99
HarperLuxe; 9780061950261; pbk; $19.99

The Lacuna is Barbara Kingsolver’s first novel since her 1998 highly acclaimed, best-selling, Oprah-annoited book, The Poisonwood Bible. Fans looking forward to the new title may have been disappointed by Maureen Corrigan’s review on NPR’s Fresh Air. Damning the book with faint praise, she calls it just “so-so”;

…[the main character], Harrison is so pallid, so retiring that it’s very hard to stay for extended periods in his company, and seeing history unfold from his wan point of view isn’t all that illuminating.

I admit it: I’m mystified… [it] that feels altogether vacant.

Equally so-so is the review in the current issue of Entertainment Weekly, which says that the book “never quite comes together…the plot grows muddy — and worse, a bit predictable.” Curiously, it still gets a B (is EW suffering from grade-creep?)

Other opinions have been decidedly different. People gave it 4 of a 4 possible stars, saying Kingsolver delivers “her signature blend of exotic locale, political backdrop and immediately engaging story line.”

In the UK, the Independent‘s reviewer loved the book so much that she swapped her bike for public transportation, so she could read it during her commute.

The Lacuna is one of the 10 titles in the Wal-Mart/Amazon/Target price wars; pre-ordered copies were priced at $8.98. The Lacuna is one three of the titles released on Tuesday and, as the AP reports, prices on those titles have since “moved up and down like stock market shares.”

Currently, The Lacuna is at #6 on Amazon’s sales rankings, where it’s now selling for $13.49 and #15 at WalMart.com, where it’s selling for $13.52. Large libraries are showing holds ratios ranging from 3:1 to 7:1.

The Lacuna: A Novel Barbara Kingsolver Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 528 pages Publisher: Harper – (2009-11-01) ISBN / EAN: 0060852577 / 9780060852573

HarperAudio; 9780060853563; $44.99
HarperLuxe; 780061927560; pbk; $26.99
Audio and eBook downloadable from OverDrive

Two names you may not have expected to hear in the same sentence — Glenn Beck and Oprah Winfrey. Nonetheless, Motoko Rich’s headline in the NYT today says that “Glenn Beck Is Becoming New Oprah.”

But a Beck book is quite different from an Oprah book. Beck likes thrillers, especially ones that reflect his own political stances (Brad Thor, James Rollins, Vince Flynn). He’s also picked some authors who, as Beck delicately puts it, are “on the liberal side of things, which is, you know fine.”

Andrew Gross, for instance, tells Rich that the Beck attention gives with one hand and takes away with the other; conservatives who bought the book based on Beck’s recommendation are angry that they were duped into buying a “bunch of lefty” garbage. Meanwhile, his liberal fans are suspicious of his association with Beck.

Coming in this Sunday’s NYT Book Review — their selection of the ten best illustrated books (via Publishers Lunch). Only a few of the selections overlap with other lists.

We generally think of this list as being about childrens picture books, but there’s another kind of illustrated book out there, those in graphic format. This year’s list includes Tales from Outer Suburbia, a graphic format title that is shelved in YA by many libraries (although it appeals to a broader age range).

The only title that is not represented in most libraries is the pop-up book, White Noise.

Only a Witch Can Fly Alison McGhee Retail Price: $16.99 Hardcover: 32 pages Publisher: Feiwel & Friends – (2009-08-04)

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Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 (Richard Jackson Books (Atheneum Hardcover)) Brian Floca Retail Price: $17.99 Hardcover: 48 pages Publisher: Atheneum/Richard Jackson Books – (2009-04-07) ISBN / EAN: 141695046X / 9781416950462

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The Odd Egg Emily Gravett Retail Price: $15.99 Hardcover: 32 pages Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing – (2009-01-27) ISBN / EAN: 1416968725 / 9781416968726

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A Penguin Story Antoinette Portis Retail Price: $17.99 Hardcover: 40 pages Publisher: HarperCollins – (2009-01-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061456888 / 9780061456886

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The Lion & the Mouse Jerry Pinkney Retail Price: $16.99 Hardcover: 40 pages Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers – (2009-09-01) ISBN / EAN: 0316013560 / 9780316013567

On PW‘s Best Childrens Books list and #8 on Amazon Editor’s Picks, Top Ten Picture Books

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Snow Day Komako Sakai Retail Price: $16.99 Hardcover: 32 pages Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books – (2009-01-01) ISBN / EAN: 0545013216 / 9780545013215

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Tales From Outer Suburbia Shaun Tan Retail Price: $19.99 Hardcover: 96 pages Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books – (2009-02-01) ISBN / EAN: 0545055873 / 9780545055871

Also on PW‘s Best Childrens Books list

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Yummy: Eight Favorite Fairy Tales Lucy Cousins Retail Price: $18.99 Hardcover: 128 pages Publisher: Candlewick – (2009-08-11) ISBN / EAN: 0763644749 / 9780763644741

Also on PW‘s Best Childrens Books list

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White Noise: A Pop-up Book for Children of All Ages David A. Carter Retail Price: $22.99 Hardcover: 20 pages Publisher: Little Simon – (2009-10-27) ISBN / EAN: 1416940944 / 9781416940944

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All the World Liz Garton Scanlon Retail Price: $17.99 Hardcover: 40 pages Publisher: Beach Lane Books – (2009-09-08) ISBN / EAN: 1416985808 / 9781416985808

On PW Best Kids list

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.

The Associated Press reports that Mark Obama Ndesandjo, President Obama’s half brother has acknowledged that his new novel about an abusive parent is based on his father, the man who was also the absent father President Obama wrote about in Dreams from My Father (by the way, there’s a great inside story about the publishing of that book in the Huffington Post today).

The book, Nairobi to Shenzhen, is being released by Aventine Press, a self-publishing company.

Libraries do not show the book on order; it is available through wholesalers.

Nairobi To Shenzhen Mark Obama Ndesandjo Retail Price: $16.95 Paperback: 358 pages Publisher: Aventine Press – (2009-10-20) ISBN / EAN: 1593306237 / 9781593306236

A book by another of the president’s half brothers, George Obama, will be published by Simon and Schuster in January 2010. It has not yet been reviewed pre-pub; it is described in the S&S Spring catalog, p 99.

Homeland: An Extraordinary Story of Hope and Survival George Obama Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Simon & Schuster – (2010-01-05) ISBN / EAN: 1439176175 / 9781439176177

The AP also reports that Obama’s half sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, daughter of Obama’s mother and her second husband, is working on a book as is Craig Robinson, Michelle Obama’s brother.

We’ve been tracking the amazing trajectory of the debut novel, The Help for over a year (including a giveaway of the audio back in February).

In the New York Times today, Motoko Rich writes about the book’s continuing word of mouth, which has kept it in the top five on the NYT Fiction list since August; quite a feat in normal times, but even more so in the midst of this particularly big-named-filled fall book season.

The novel, set in Mississippi in the early sixties, is about a young white writer who gains the trust of several black maids, most of whom work for her friends and family. She interviews them about their lives and how they feel about their white employers as material for a book. The young writer has to hide what she is doing, since this crossing of color lines would not be acceptable to her social circle, but the maids have even stronger reasons to keep what they are doing a secret, facing job loss an worse.

Several reviewers have been uncomfortable with the fact that the book’s author, Kathryn Stockett, who is white, portrays black women, using ’60’s southern dialect for their voices. In the NYT, Rich focuses whether this is ethical, quoting one blogger who calls Stockett a racist, while others feel she manages to walk the “racial tightrope”  (coincidentally, another recent word-of-mouth success, Mudbound, by Hillary Jordan, is also by a white woman, writing in the voices of Mississippi blacks).

Rich does not successfully address the question of what makes The Help resonate so strongly with readers. Last week, on the Huffington Post, Jesse Kornbluth offered some compelling reasons:

The Help is about Something
“That is, something real. Something that matters. Most of all, something that matters to women, who are, as it happens, America’s most dedicated readers.”

It Rings True
“The maids are long-suffering, delightful, spicy; they’re a dream team of strength, wisdom and compassion. The white women — and this is the novel’s big achievement — are small-minded and pitiable, but they’re never cartoon villains.”

No Sugarcoating, But No Horror
“Smartest of all, Stockett has downplayed the horror that was Mississippi in 1962…[she] doesn’t sugarcoat racism but keeps the guns and violence always a few miles away. Smart thinking. In popular fiction like this, riling readers with false accusations of stolen silverware works just as well.”

I have another element to add to that — Stockett’s portrayal of the developing relationship among the women as they work on their project. You feel them becoming fans of each other, supporting and encouraging each other as they grow in mutual respect.

Libraries have been adding copies as the book continues to grow in popularity, but most are still showing heavy holds. Unfortunately, as the NYT points out (and we reported in mid-Sept), the paperback is being held off until June 1.

The Help Kathryn Stockett Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 464 pages Publisher: Putnam Adult – (2009-02-10) ISBN / EAN: 0399155341 / 9780399155345

Penguin Audio; ISBN: 9780143144182 $39.95
Downloadable from OverDrive in both eBook and audio