Book News

Oates was a runaway #1 pick.

The Summer Teen pad is going to press and will be in the July box, but a PDF will be posted at BookWeb.org soon, in the event you’d like to print and photocopy some sooner.

P.S. The Mystery 76 Top Ten is mailing now, and the top five will be featured in a USA Today snapshot on Wednesday, July 3!

Carl
carl@booksense.com

Author Michael Gerber is not afraid of being sued over the publication of his new book, Barry Trotter and the Unauthorized Parody. He is a first-time author who is still working a day job to make ends meet. "The worst thing that could happen to me is my cats would be jointly owned by Warner Brothers and Scholastic," Gerber said during a program at the American Library Association convention in Atlanta on Monday.

Titles Not Selected for the Children’s Book Sense 76, But Still Worthy of Attention

This is strictly if you are interested in discovering a sleeper or two that might turn into a nice stock item or handsell. I just can’t bear to let these passionate recommendations go unrecognized in some fashion. Enjoy.

Carl
Carl@booksense.com

Arranged in age sequence:

Pulpwood Queens recommend Ann Packer’s The Dive from Clausen’s Pier

On April 25, Wyoming's Teton County Board of Education (TCBE) voted 4-2 to ban Julius Lester’s When Dad Killed Mom (Silver Whistle) from the Jackson Hole Middle School (JHMS) library. However, after much attention from local media and the book’s author, district policy is being "reviewed and re-written so that incidents like this will not happen again," Board member Zia Yasrobie told BTW via e-mail.

The Southeast Booksellers Association (SEBA) recently announced the winners of the SEBA Book Awards. The winners of the 2002 awards will be honored at the "Rep Appreciation, Book Awards, and More Celebration" at Books & Books in Coral Gables, Florida on Thursday, September 19. The Awards are given to recognize the year's best books either by a Southern author or set in the South.

This year’s winners are:

The Mountains & Plains Booksellers Association (MPBA) has announced the winners of the association's 2002 Regional Book Awards, which are presented annually "to honor outstanding books set in our region that were published in the prior year."

The 2002 Regional Book Award winners are:

With its enthusiastic jacket endorsement from Jonathan Franzen ("Alive with intelligence, comedy, and inside dope ... sure-handedly captures the uncertainties of our times") and its choice as a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, Mark Costello's Big If (Norton) would seem to be the promising debut of a terrific new American writer.

But, as it happens, Big If is in fact the second novel by Mark Costello -- though only the first to bear his name.

By 1936, two New Yorkers were touted as the greatest political leaders of the century -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Alfred Emanuel Smith Jr. While every American can recall some accomplishments of FDR, only those who lived through the 1920s and 1930s will likely even remember who Smith was.

In Gracefully Insane: The Rise and Fall of America’s Premier Mental Hospital (PublicAffairs), a Book Sense 76 May/June title, Alex Beam tells the story of McLean Hospital, refuge of the rich, famous, and deeply troubled for almost two centuries. McLean is a mental hospital-cum-luxurious estate set in acres of rolling New England parkland just outside Boston. The picturesque asylum also looms large in the American imagination.

On the surface, Marcus Stevens’s new novel, The Curve of the World (Algonquin), is an adventure novel. A New York businessman is stranded in the Congolese rainforest, desperately running from a rogue militia, all the while trying to survive a cruel and unknown environment. But dig deeper, and Stevens’s first novel is about the human mind, and how our own perceptions can create or remake the world in which we live.

The millions of fans of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books might not be able to return to Hogwarts for new adventures until 2003. Rowling spokesperson Rebecca Salt told A.P. on May 9 that the author is unlikely to finish the manuscript of the fifth Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, until the end of the year. "It could be this year and it could be next year," she said.

Gay and lesbian publishing has come a long way in recent years. Now, more then ever, referring to a title as a gay and/or lesbian book is often an inadequate description, just as someone’s gay or lesbian identity doesn’t fully define who he or she is. Consider what Dan Cullinane, marketing manager of Alyson Publications, had to say at this year’s BookExpo America at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City: "What we’re aiming for are books that have gay and lesbian content, but aren’t limited in any way, shape, or form to that market.

Shelley Jackson's debut story collection, The Melancholy of Anatomy (an Anchor Books trade paper original), boldly turns the human body inside out, as the visceral becomes visible and takes on a life of its own through her fantastical tales.

In the competitive world of publishing, independent presses, as always, face a number of challenges. At this year’s BookExpo America, held May 1-5 at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City, many indies acknowledged this reality, yet were quick to point out the benefits of being independent. Sporting a cheery yellow shirt and tie, and a smile to match, Ten Speed Press CEO Philip Wood noted, "It’s a difficult time, but also a good time, to start and have an independent press. The new technology has democratized the business….