Plea, Sleepers, and Audio Raves

By Carl Lennertz

Plea: I'm waiting to hear from you what subject categories you'd like to see the four-week bestseller list cover before I crank up the way-back machine!

Sleepers:

Hardcover fiction:

• #39 0316895245, In the Hand of Dante, Nick Tosches, Little Brown, $24.95
  

Hardcover nonfiction:

• #30 0805065415, Blue Latitudes, Tony Horwitz, Henry Holt, $26 -- A Book Sense 76 pick.
  
• #43 0609610902, Horseshoes, Cowsocks, & Duckfeet: More Commentary by NPR's Cowboy Poet & Former Large Animal Veterinarian, Baxter Black, Crown, $23.95
  
• #44 0465030491, Why Orwell Matters, Christopher Hitchens, Basic Books, $24
  
• #46 0060196726, The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women & the Artists They Inspired, Francine Prose, HarperCollins, $25.95 -- This is looking like a November/December 76 pick.
  
• #47 0743205863, Perfect House: A Journey With the Renaissance Architect Andrea Palladio, Witold Rybczynski, Scribner, $25
  

Trade paper fiction:

• #21 0316284955, White Oleander, Janet Fitch, Back Bay, $13.95 -- A Book Sense 76 pick, movie tie-in, and my last hurrah at LB.
  
• #49 0060507403, The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel in Two Semesters, Chip Kidd, Perennial, $13.95 -- A Book Sense 76 pick.
  
• #60 0312199430, One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd, Jim Fergus, Griffin, $13.95 -- An amazing seller! A few years old and going strong; made our Reading Group 76.
  

Trade paper nonfiction:

• #49 0913098604, In the Presence of Fear: Three Essays for a Changed World, Wendell Berry, Orion Society, $8
  
• #54 1561586137, Not So Big Solutions for Your Home, Sarah Susanka, Taunton Press, $22.95
  

And a kid's fave, a Top Ten 76 pick in cloth, now out in paper:

• #47 0689853289, The Great Good Thing, Roderick Townley, Aladdin Paperbacks, $4.99
  

Audio Raves:

The Grave Maurice, read by Roger Rees, is fantastic!!!

The family was howling in the car over Simon Callow's reading of Dahl's The Twits, just out from Harper.

And kudos to Listening Library for the … what!?!… Nancy Drew tapes! Reader Laura Linney is wonderful. You chuckle over the dated tone and downright innocence of the time … and hang on every plot twist. Totally retro and fun.

Carl
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