PLA 2010 Conference: Book Buzz with Nancy Pearl

PLA Library Association - PLA 2010 - Annual Conference - Portland

By Barbara Hoffert -- Library Journal, 03/25/2010

If you had attended Nancy Pearl’s Book Buzz at the PLA 2010 Conference in Portland (Pearl at left, with her publisher), here’s what you would have learned. Kelly O’Connor McNees’s The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott (Amy Einhorn: Putnam, Apr.) is a title to watch, since its editor has already given us Kathryn Stockett’s The Help and Sarah Blake’s The Postmistress. 

Laura Lippman’s new standalone, I’d Know You Anywhere (Morrow, Aug.), is darker and twistier than her previous works. If you like Tana French (Faithful Place, Viking, Jul.), you’ll love Sophie Hannah (The Dead Lie Down, Penguin, Jun.), whose readalike titles are very hot in the UK. 

Justin Cronin’s upscale sf title, The Passage (Ballantine, Jun.), is already so big (Ridley Scott’s got the film rights) that it dominates the Random House booth. Emily Giffin (Heart of the Matter, St. Martin’s, Apr.) now outsells Jennifer Weiner. And when Ivan Doig brought back The Whistling Season’s Morrie Morgan in Work Song (Riverhead: Penguin Group USA, Jun.), he gave Morrie a job in the Butte Public Library.

Panelists enthusiastic
You can read catalogs, blogs, and reviews, but there’s nothing like hearing someone rave about a book in person, and the library reps Pearl invited—Alan Walker (Penguin), Virginia Stanley (HarperCollins), Marcia Purcell (Random), and Talia Sherer (Macmillan)—were infectious in their enthusiasm. For instance, Purcell reported that at sales conferences she was so over-the-top excited about Aimee Bender’s The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (Doubleday, Jun.)—the protagonist can taste people’s feelings in the food they’ve prepared—that the author actually emailed her to express her gratitude. Stanley said that she got to the panel despite a bad cold just so she could talk about Susanna Daniels’s Stiltsville (Harper: HarperCollins, Aug.), “an ordinary tale made extraordinary by the writing; it’s my story, it’s your story.”

Plumbing for new voices
In fact, while it’s good to hear that big-name authors like Oscar Hijuelos, Dorothea Benton Frank, James Grippando, John Le Carre, Greg Hurwitz, Walter Mosley, and Ken Follett have forthcoming titles, the panelists had more fun plumbing for new voices. Stanley highlighted the memoir I Love You and I’m Leaving You Anyway by Tracy MacMillan, who recalls life with father, a drug-dealing pimp, without rancor. Sherer proclaimed Chevy Steven’s Still Missing (St. Martin’s, Jul.) a book “you can’t read fast enough.” Among a slew of first novels, Walker singled out Jean Kwok’s Girl in Translation (Riverhead: Penguin Group USA, Apr.) as a great new voice (catch her at ALTAFF’s “First Author, First Book” panel at ALA) and Robin Olivera’s My Name Is Mary Sutter (Viking, May)—the story of a Civil War–era woman eager to be a doctor that Sherer also loved.

First fiction picks
More first fiction to anticipate: Ann Weisgarber’s The Personal History of Rachel DuPree (Viking, Aug.), about African American homesteaders; Beverly Jensen’s The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay (Viking, Jun.), whose author didn’t live to see publication—or the Stephen King blurb; James King’s Bill Warrington’s Last Chance (Viking, Aug.), a book about Alzheimer’s that Walker sees as a sleeper; Adam Ross’s weird and original sort-of murder mystery, Mr. Peanut (Knopf, Jun.); Anne Fortier’s Juliet (Ballantine, Jul.), whose contemporary heroine has links to the prototype for Shakespeare’s tragic heroine; Jaspreet Singh’s Chef (Bloomsbury, Apr.), featuring a soldier in India who’s learned culinary skills from a master; Alina Bronsky’s Broken Glass Park (Europa, Apr.), about a young Russian immigrant in Berlin; Miguel Syjuco’s Ilustrado (Farrar, Apr.), about the mystery surrounding the death of a great Philippine novelist; and Drew Perry’s very funny This Is Just Exactly Like You (Viking, Apr.), which might remind you of Tom Perotta—though Perotta’s novels don’t typically feature gigantic fiberglass animals from a defunct golf course.

Nonfiction picks
Nonfiction you’ll want: John Vaillant’s The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival (Knopf, Aug.), about the hunt for a tiger who stalked and ate a poacher; Jean-Michael Cousteau with Daniel Paisner’s My Father, the Captain: My Life with Jacques Cousteau (National Geographic, May); Twesigye Jackson Kaguri’s The Price of Stones (Viking, Jun.), whose author built a school for AIDS orphans in his native Uganda; Harriet Brown’s Brave Girl Eating (Morrow, Aug.), whose author struggled to save her teenaged daughter from anorexia; and Euna Lee and Lisa Dickey’s The World Is Bigger Now: An American Journalist's Rescue from Captivity in North Korea; A Remarkable Story of Faith, Family, and Forgiveness (Broadway, Sept.), not just for those interested in politics but also for the inspirational/Christian market.

Other anticipated titles
Nancy’s favorites: Nathaniel Philbrick’s The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn (Viking, May), which she said “strips away the mythology”: Guy Gavriel Kay’s Under Heaven (ROC, Apr.), a China saga she called “perfect”; her “new favorite mystery author,” Sharyn Mccrumb (The Devil Amongst the Lawyers (Thomas Dunne Bks: St. Martin’s, Jun.); Charles Todd’s An Impartial Witness (Morrow, Aug.), which she likened to Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series (and whose edgy cover she loves); and Tori Murden McClure’s A Pearl in the Storm: How I Found My Heart in the Middle of the Ocean, a 2009 title coming out from HarperCollins in trade paperback this spring.

And, among the books not yet mentioned, those that I’m anticipating the most: David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Random, Jun.), historical fiction from the author of the exceptional Cloud Atlas; Anna Brashares’s My Name Is Memory (Riverhead: Penguin Group USA, Jun.), a love story over centuries (reincaration helps); Christos Tsiolkas’s The Slap (Penguin, Apr.), an Australian award winner about the consequences of a single rash act; and Dinaw Mengestu’s How To Read the Air (Riverhead: Penguin Group USA, Jun.). I can’t tell you about the plot, but Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears was memorable.