Book News

On Wednesday, November 5, the USA Today Book Club announced that Balance of Power by Richard North Patterson (Ballantine) was its latest selection. President Kerry Kilcannon takes on the gun lobby and tort reform in Patterson's 12th novel.

This week, we are announcing the top ten picks for the Winter 2003/2004 Children's Book Sense 76, based on the nominations of independent booksellers nationwide. Book Sense 76 Editor-in-Chief Dan Cullen sends many, many thanks to all the booksellers who nominated titles. He notes, too, that all nominations are crucial. Many factors come into play in selecting the quote that is printed in the full 76, but those that are not published play a very important role in composing the entire list.

Self-assured and passionate describe both the stories in How to Breathe Underwater and their author, 30-year-old Julie Orringer. This debut collection, published by Knopf in September, showcases the considerable talents of Orringer, a graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop and Cornell University and a recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing at Stanford University, where she now teaches.

Based on the four weeks of sales ending November 2, 2003, as reported by hundreds of independent booksellers across the U.S.

Past Category Bestseller lists are available at www.bookweb.org/read/5677.

Attention Media: Please contact Kristen Gilligan at [email protected] for reprint guidelines for your newspaper or magazine.

The past few months have turned out to be quite volatile for the eBook industry. In June, Gemstar-TV Guide International decided to drop out of the eBook business. This was followed by PalmGear's acquisition of Palm Digital Media, which produces eBook reading software and is an eBook supplier, and, then, Barnesandnoble.com dropped a bombshell in September when it announced that it would no longer carry eBooks.

It's almost a given that anyone who achieves distinction as a writer will have started reading at an early age, encouraged by a sympathetic adult.

Such was the case with Edward P. Jones, whose highly praised first novel, The Known World (Amistad/HarperCollins), a September/October Book Sense 76 pick, has been nominated for this year's National Book Award.

The full November/December Book Sense 76 with booksellers' quotes is now online at news.bookweb.org/read/1918. Fliers will be mailed to bookstores to arrive during the first week of November.

The graphic novel genre, or "Graphica," is now estimated to be a $100 million market, one which runs the gamut of subjects: from Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus (Pantheon) to all sorts of Japanese manga (comic books), from Harvey Pekar's American Splendor series to Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics (HarperPerennial).

They're all around us, those unmarried 20- or 30-somethings who seem to run in packs, living and working and enjoying life with friends rather than devoting all of their energies to the pursuit of marriage. Who are these people, these -- as the U.S. Census Bureau calls them -- never-marrieds? And what exactly are they doing in the years between student-hood and spouse-dom?

Based on reporting from well over 400 independent bookstores across the U.S. during the period March 1, 2003, to October 12, 2003.

Thanks to all the stores that report!

Attention Media: Please contact Kristen Gilligan at [email protected] for reprint guidelines for your newspaper or magazine.

Here's a look at the titles that have been selected for the November/December Book Sense 76 to give you a heads up for planning and ordering. The full list, with booksellers' comments, will be posted to BookWeb.org next week.

The game of baseball is a statistician's dream. Every aspect of the game is recorded, tracked, and dissected to find out what creates success -- including the one figure that some experts consider the most significant these days: money. While big-market teams, with payrolls to match, dominate the post-season baseball landscape on a yearly basis (read: New York Yankees), it would seem the small-market teams, with their no-name players, shouldn't stand a chance.

Enter Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane.

The 20 finalists for the National Book Foundation's 2003 National Book Awards (NBA) were announced on Wednesday, October 15. The winners will be announced on Wednesday, November 19, at a ceremony hosted by novelist Walter Mosley at the New York Marriott Marquis Hotel in midtown Manhattan.

On Tuesday, October 14, Australian-born author DBC Pierre was named the winner of the 2003 Man Booker Prize for Fiction for his first novel, Vernon God Little, published in the U.K. by Faber & Faber and in the U.S. by Canongate.

"I probably would have been happier living around 1897," said Falls Church, Virginia, author and high school teacher James McGrath Morris.

"Maybe part of the reason I'm writing about the 1890s and 1910 in New York is because I would have preferred to be there then, hanging out on Park Row."