In the Bookroom

June 9, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Aside from a few Southern recipes  handed down to me by my Alabama grandmother, I am admittingly a rudimentary cook, but I do love cookbooks and cooking shows (Top Chef is a guilty pleasure). I love the alluring promise they offer inexperienced or unskilled home chefs like me (yes, you too can create this exquisite complicated dish by following these simple steps!). So it was no hardship for me to stroll the aisles at last month's BookExpo in quest of the fall season's hot culinary titles. 

Like the rest of the show, most cookbook publishers were fairly low-key. Gone were the flashy cooking demonstrations by celebrity chefs of previous years. And some major houses d...Read More

Industries: Book News/Interviews, Collection Development, Prepub Alerts

June 1, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (2)

As we have to close the June 15 issue this week, I am slowly sorting through my notes, but here are some of my impressions of this year's BookExpo show at the Javits Center in New York City. 

The glitz and glamor and the extravagant excess of past BEAs were notably absent this year; there were fewer parties, fewer big-name celebrities (Mary Jo Buttafuoco promoting her July memoir Getting It Through My Thick Skull from HCI; Miracle on the Hudson hero pilot Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger signing blads of his ...Read More

Industries: Book News/Interviews

May 5, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

On this Cinco de Mayo, the New York Times reports on how swine flu fears have raised the ugly specter of anti-Mexican hysteria with Mexican citizens typecast as disease carriers and subjected to humiliating treatment (healthy travelers quarantined in China; Chile refusing to host Mexican soccer teams). While scientists have yet to pinpoint the origins of the virus, which is less lethal than once feared (and some news reports speculate on a connection to U.S. factory farm practices), our neighbor to the south has once again been stigmatized. And tonight, Americans with little knowledge of Mexican history...Read More
Industries: Book News/Interviews, Collection Development

April 30, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

In a plot twist as convoluted as a Harlan Coben novel, Variety reports that Miramax and Focus Features have snagged English-language remake rights to the French thriller Tell No One, which is based on Coben's acclaimed 2001 book. (Coben makes a brief cameo in the movie.)  The film, which swept top awards at the 2008 Cesars (the French equivalent of the Oscars), was a surprise hit with American audiences and grossed $6 million. Given Hollywood's poor track record with remakes, I strongly recommend you instead watch this&n...Read More

Industries: Genre Fiction

April 3, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (3)

For a limited time only, Random House is offering a completely free download of Firoozeh Dumas's Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America. By making the full-text of this reading group favorite available without Digital Rights Management (DRM), meaning it can be forwarded, printed, etc.,  library marketing director Jen Childs says Random House is taking a risk of potential piracy but hopes librarians who read the download will be encouraged to select the book for their collections. In addition to the full text of the memoir, the ...Read More
Industries: Book News/Interviews