Editors' Spring Picks
Our Book Review editors highlight an eclectic array of spring offerings ranging from print books to an audiobook to ebook apps; plus, a Prepub Alert Time Line Feb 15, 2011While we do not represent the rainbow of reading tastes American public libraries accommodate, we Book Review editors—now nine strong—are a wildly eclectic bunch. One look at our bedside tables and ereaders would reveal very little crossover.
So it is with this annual feature: literary and popular fiction, pop-culture-crazed crafting how-to, a Beatles no-brainer, a nerd-ready audiobook, superlative academic history, and, for the first time, library ebook apps.
Also new: a four-month Prepub Alert time line of hot spring titles by Prepub Alert Editor Barbara Hoffert and, for context, lists of our past book loves. Enjoy and read hard.
| Photo by Nancy Ney |
Not-So-Simple
Nanny Life
Minding Ben by Victoria Brown. Voice: Hyperion.Apr.
ISBN 9781401341510. $24.99.
Seeking refuge in my neighborhood park during Manhattan’s sweltering summers, I have often observed local nannies gossiping with their colleagues while watching their young charges at play. Yet the private lives of these women have remained a mystery to me—that is, until I read Victoria Brown’s Minding Ben, an engaging and eye-opening debut novel that takes us into the inner world of West Indian nannies.
Its protagonist is 16-year-old Grace, who leaves her native Trinidad for a better life in America. When her cousin fails to meet her at JFK airport, the determined teen eventually lands a job caring for the toddler son of a Manhattan couple, Miriam and Sol Bruckner. Three-year-old Ben is a delight, but Grace is challenged by the humiliating demands of his parents and struggles to navigate the playground politics of her fellow nannies.
Part of the novel’s appeal lies in Grace’s spirited voice, but the fascinating insider details on the nanny life also add an extra dimension. “I did reference my life story when I was writing the book,” says Brown, a 37-year-old wife, mother of two, and MFA student at Hunter College. “Like Grace, I came to New York from Trinidad when I was 16 and worked as a nanny in New Jersey and Manhattan. And Grace shares my middle name.”
Although a social satire in some ways like The Nanny Diaries (Grace has to take nightly nude photos of her pregnant employer), Minding Ben is also a moving immigrant story. Brown vividly depicts the vibrant and diverse West Indian communities of Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood, where Grace lives when she’s not working for the Bruckners. Especially notable is the author’s knack for the colorful patois that distinguish various Caribbean nationalities, from Trinidadians to Jamaicans.
In writing about the New York experience, Brown was also not afraid to tackle the thorny issues of race, religion, and class. The novel climaxes with the August 1991 Crown Heights riot, which broke out after a car driven by a Hasidic Jew accidentally killed a seven-year-old Guyanese boy. With the exception of Anna Deveare Smith’s play Fires in the Mirror, Brown could find no fictional accounts about this ugly incident. It coincided with the author’s arrival in New York and made for a good situation to wrap the novel around.
“This is what I like to call commercial women’s fiction with a brain,” explains Ellen Archer, president and publisher of Hyperion’s Voice imprint. “I believe Brown’s novel will have wide commercial appeal, primarily because of the strong and distinctive voice of its main character. In some ways, I see it as a cross between The Help and The Bonfire of the Vanities.”
Voice felt so strongly about the book’s potential that it named Minding Ben its Spring 2011 Publisher’s Pick. Marketing plans included early read promotions targeting librarians on Library Thing, galley giveaways at the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting, and early consumer reads via Amazon Vine and BookBrowse.
Brown is working on a second novel (“about friendship, loss, and going home”) set in the Caribbean, but readers who fall in love with the resourceful and appealing Grace will hope the author continues Grace’s adventures in future volumes.—Wilda Williams
WILDA’S TOP THREE ALL-TIME FAVORITE BOOKS Fancy Strut by Lee Smith, Southern Fried Plus Six by William Price Fox, and The Gypsy’s Curse by Harry Crews.
PAST EDITORS’ PICKS The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman (2007), The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters by Rose George (2008), and The Passage by Justin Cronin (2010)
| Photo ©Kris Snibbe, Harvard Univ. New Office 2008 |
History’s Hide & Seek
The Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth-Century History by Emma Rothschild. Princeton Univ. Jun. ISBN 9780691148953. $35.
I went to library school because I wanted to work in a historical manuscript repository, having been inspired in college by the pleasures of research in innocent sources—that is, those fragmentary records that come to us from creators innocent of any sense of crafting a story with history in mind. That seeking out of narratives that are almost lost, the honorable attempt at reconciling the messages from the past: there is the fascination—and that is the pleasure for me in Emma Rothschild’s The Inner Life of Empires.
Sitting in the Edinburgh University Library’s Rare Books and Manuscripts Room in 2002, as Rothschild explained to me by email, she was pursuing a paper trail about Adam Smith. That led her to one John Johnstone of Fife, and John Johnstone pointed her to a letter-book of his brother James. Thus Rothschild began to listen—I have always thought of it that way—to the messages, some whispered, some declared loudly, sent across the centuries from an extensive and fascinating family who lived at the margins of history’s elite during the British Empire’s 18th-century expansion.
“I was captivated,” Rothschild explained to me. “I knew almost at once that the history of the family was extraordinary.”
The Johnstone brothers and sisters, 11 of them, bequeathed dispersed messages from the past, both beckoning and elusive. Over the next several years, as Rothschild (Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History, Harvard) was able, she followed the Johnstones, via repository, from Scotland to England, France, the United States, the West Indies, and West Bengal, India.
Along the way, she found that the Johnstones were both slaveholders and abolitionists. Brother Alexander ran a West Indies sugar plantation worked by 178 slaves. Brother John, having been a slave owner, became a member of Edinburgh’s Society for Abolition of the African Slave Trade.
For Rothschild, “the most striking revelation, and the most moving, was Bell or Belinda,” John Johnstone’s Bengali slave, a young woman he brought from India to Scotland. There, in 1771, her newborn son was found dead in the river near Johnstone’s home. Rothschild was able to trace some, but not all, of her story, for manuscript repositories, including the one where I eventually worked, largely hold the records of the empowered.
Rothschild did find some legal documents in which Bell or Belinda insisted that her son had been stillborn. Rather than face a trial and possible hanging, she petitioned for banishment. The documents show that she could not write (a major reason why the unempowered aren’t represented in historical manuscript repositories). Bell or Belinda was ordered transported “as a Slave for Life.” Rothschild learned she was shipped to Virginia in 1772.
Today, a much more extensive portion of humankind has the capability to write and therefore, presumably, to leave records of its doings. And yet, in our digital age, we may be establishing greater historical losses to future research than ever before. “There is a real possibility of loss,” Rothschild agrees, “of the lights going off.” Student archivists learn about the 1960 U.S. Census records, preserved by the National Archives, but without an extant UNIVAC Type II-A tape drive to read them, they were inaccessible, with the cost of data rescue immense. Have we learned our lesson?
As to Bell or Belinda, her fate has remained elusive from the historical record. But Rothschild remains hopeful: “I am planning to go to Virginia later this year, to continue to look for her.”—Margaret Heilbrun
MARGARET'S TOP THREE ALL-TIME FAVORITE BOOKS The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a 16th Century Miller by Carlo Ginzburg, tr. from Italian by John and Anne C. Tedeschi, Troy Chimneys by Margaret Kennedy, and Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
PAST EDITORS’ PICKS The Tiger in the Attic: Memories of the Kindertransport and Growing Up English by Edith Milton (2005), War Is Beautiful: An American Ambulance Driver in the Spanish Civil War by James Neugass, ed. by Peter N. Carroll & Peter Glazer (2008), and Waiting on a Train: The Embattled Future of Passenger Rail Service by James McCommons (2009)
| Photo ©David Wild 2004 |
A Family Affair
The Secret Mistress by Mary Balogh. Delacorte. Aug. ISBN 9780385343312. $24.
Welsh-born, Canada-based historical romance author Mary Balogh has been addressing the issue of siblings across a number of titles. When interviewed in the LJ 2/15/09 issue, she had just published the initial installments of an eventual quintet about the Huxtable family rising from genteel poverty to wealth and position through the vagaries of fate and the British peerage system. Having successfully tackled the Bedwyn brothers/sisters, she could speak knowingly about the demands of writing such linked titles. “Siblings are, of course, separate human beings and so must develop in their own way,” she explained. “But when they are part of a family series, then they must also develop as members of the family and interact with the family in each book. It poses a particularly interesting challenge to the writer.”
In her upcoming The Secret Mistress, a prequel to More Than a Mistress (LJ 9/15/00) and No Man’s Mistress (LJ 8/01), which are being rereleased in two-in-one format in June, Balogh gracefully revisits the subject. She refers to Secret as a “leftover,” a book “for the scatterbrained sister of the Duke of Tresham in More Than a Mistress. She is married in that book and its sequel, but several readers have asked for her love story…and I am now curious myself to discover how that marriage came about.”
Well, the “secret” is out, and it’s a treasure. The scatterbrained sister here is 19-year-old Angeline Dudley, who is looking forward to her debut to the queen, her come-out ball, and her first London Season. Self-deprecating and impulsive, Angeline prattles on about everything. She doesn’t think she is pretty or particularly worthy of attention, except for her dark features and great height, which aren’t positive attributes at all.
As our tale begins, Angeline is too excited at the future that lies ahead to stay in her room at the Rose and Crown Inn, so she awaits her brother in the taproom, knowing full well a young lady should not be in such a place at all no less unchaperoned by her maid or grooms. At some point, two gentlemen separately enter the room. Edward Ailsbury, Earl of Heyward, keeps quiet so as not to discompose the young woman he notices leaning in the window, with her “very shapely derriere” in his line of sight. The more roguish Lord Windrow assumes her to be a woman of easy morals and remarks in kind. Heyward manages to protect Angeline’s honor and extract an apology from Windrow without fisticuffs. The episode saves Angeline from scandal but leaves her heart set on a man whose name she doesn’t even know and suspects she will never see again.
We are now off on a delightfully ditzy yet poignant journey, the conclusion of which, this being a prequel—and a romance—is never in doubt. Still, it’s all in the telling. And no one tells romantic “secrets” better than Balogh. Look for a full review in a future LJ Romance column.—Bette-Lee Fox
BETTE-LEE’S TOP THREE ALL-TIME FAVORITE BOOKS A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and anything written by romance author Jo Goodman
PAST EDITORS’ PICKS The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie James (2007) and Eating Pomegranates by Sarah Gabriel (2010)
“The Right Thing
To Do”
Bluefire Reader for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. Free in the iTunes Store.
I thought library patrons were never going to get any love. Toward the end of 2010, there was an announcement every few weeks touting a feature that would make it easier for consumers to browse, buy, and “lend” titles purchased from etailers like Barnes & Noble and Amazon. Starbucks even anted into the ebook game, debuting free in-house browsing and reading access via its store-based Digital Network.
Yet library patrons still couldn’t read the most popular titles on the most popular devices. Frankly, I was getting a little depressed about the growing gulf between consumer expectations and what libraries were able to offer their patrons in terms of wireless ebook access.
Then the Bluefire Reader (www.bluefirereader.com) broke onto the scene last November. It offered the first real option for reading library ebooks on the iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch device trinity. Plus, it especially plays nicely with titles downloaded via the OverDrive platform (I detailed the download process in a blog post; see bit.ly/bluefirelibraryapp).
Talking with Micah Bowers, principal at Bluefire Productions, the Seattle-based indie shop behind the reader app, I found out that it was his company’s close relationship and past business with Adobe (makers of the DRM software that OverDrive and most retailers use to keep tabs on their content) that made the app possible in the first place. Beyond that, however, why dedicate costly development time and effort to a library lending option?
“It just seemed like the right thing to do,” Bowers says.
Bowers firmly believes that an educated reading culture is essential to a viable content industry. More important, he sees libraries as a pillar of that culture. “More people who read and have devices in their pocket that give them ways to find, read, buy, and talk about books is a good thing for authors, publishers, and retailers.”
There’s still a long way to go before library patrons get the most they can out of the ereading ecosystem, but with an app like the Bluefire Reader, we’re getting closer than we ever have been before. [See also Heather McCormack’s profile of OverDrive’s Media Console app,—Ed.]—Josh Hadro
JOSH’S THREE FAVORITE BOOKS REFERENCED IN THE LAST WEEK Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli, The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings , 9th ed., and The Complete Joy of Homebrewing by Charles Papazian
Reading 2.0, Ho!
Overdrive Media Console app for iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android. Free in the iTunes Store and Android Market.
The life of a library vendor isn’t easy—especially if it’s in the business of providing ebook access to American publishers’ trade lists. Technical complications aside, leading distributor OverDrive must also shoulder the hefty expectations of public librarians and their patrons that selection be as deep and wide as what’s found in print and that digital rights management shouldn’t obliterate ease of use.
Last year, I watched CEO Steve Potash diplomatically field users’ frustrations—most out of his control—without shucking what he clearly views is his responsibility to extend a library’s value in the realm of reading 2.0. In December 2010, the company released a long-overdue upgrade of its free OverDrive Media Console app that enables users to access library ebooks on iPhone and Android devices (an incarnation designed specifically for the iPad will come out over the next two months). Building on the buzz created by the Bluefire Reader in November 2010 (see Josh Hadro’s profile, p. 32), it can be downloaded from the iTunes store and Android Market. What’s more, many librarians in the trenches who are hustling to educate patrons in their first flushes of ebook fever—forget this editor in her New York office—find it a solid, empowering little piece of technology.
“I love the OverDrive library app on principle because it shows publishers and tech coming together for library users,” says Lizanne Payne, a library consultant based in Washington, DC. “For the kind of fiction I like, the app works great because of the access it grants to popular titles. I have a kind of mental triage going on with my reading: popular fiction that I can wait for is a library OverDrive book, somewhat more specialized fare is Kindle, and things I want to keep forever or share with my husband is print.”
That said, the app requires enhancements to maximize its potential. Payne’s suggestions mirror those of other librarians. To offset the publisher-set limitation of one simultaneous user per book, per library license (why everything is checked out), users should be able to limit searches to “available” titles when searching from the phone app (you can already do that from the website). And my favorite: the ability to check ebooks back in “explicitly,” as Payne says, so the next person in line gets it as soon as possible.
“Right now, the app waits until the checkout period expires—seven, 14, or 21 days, depending on what you set. That keeps the hold queue artificially high,” Payne says.
The good news is that OverDrive is working on said enhancements, not to mention new models that are more conducive to serving library patrons.
“One model that is quite popular with audiobooks and video is Max Access—simultaneous use/always available. The first ebook publisher to try this is Liquid Comics,” says David Burleigh, director of marketing for OverDrive. “I can’t predict how many others will follow suit, but we are talking with several publishers about new models.”—Heather McCormack
HEATHER’S TOP THREE ALL-TIME FAVORITE BOOKS The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, and Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung by Lester Bangs and edited by Greil Marcus
PAST EDITORS’ PICKS Stich ‘n’ Bitch: The Knitter’s Handbook by Debbie Stoller (2003), Smut Vol. 1 ed. by Nerve.com (2007), and Role Models by John Waters (2010)
| Photo by Anna Weise |
The Play’s the Thing
The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips. Random. May. ISBN 9781400066476. $26.
The protean author of four acclaimed novels, which range from spooky Victoriana (Angelica) to the machinations of an anonymous Svengali in contemporary New York (The Song Is You), Arthur Phillips will surely be making news with his latest title. For here he presents a previously unknown work, long in the possession of his family, that chronicles how illegitimate sixth-century English-Welsh king Arthur (yes, Arthur) battled slimy cousin Mordred of the Pictish-Scottish court to unite Britain under one crown. The playwright? None other than William Shakespeare himself.
The full name of the play, as indicated by the title page taken from the 1597 quarto and reprinted here, is actually The Most Excellent and Tragical Historie of Arthur, King of Britain. But The Tragedy of Arthur (see review, p. 100) is much more than that. Phillips also offers a lengthy introduction to the play that serves as both remarkable family memoir and challenging meditation on that rock-bottom concern: reality. That Phillips père, who taught doubtful young Arthur and twin sister Dana to worship the Bard, was a much-jailed art forger is just the first of many factors compelling us into dizzying and delicious reflections on how we judge what we see.
Which of course compels us to judge this very work. Can we really trust Phillips’s wild ride of an introduction as memoir—a genre Phillips seems to dislike? And while the play itself certainly feels Shakespearean in action, atmosphere, and phrasing, might the language sometimes slant toward roguish Phillips? (Judge for yourself by reading the excerpt above.) Whatever the final assessment, we’re left with this verity: in this slippery, funhouse world, there’s the legitimate struggle to distinguish truth from falsehood—and then there’s imagination, amply displayed in this outrageously entertaining book.—Barbara Hoffert
arthur [Aside] Why here’s a glass that shows one’s better face.
Were I of suppler knee, as there I seem,
I’d bow to earth my joints and plant my thanks.
Would this one here could reign instead of me,
A wise old king, resolved yet never rash,
I would I saw such pious king as this
When I do peer into my subjects’ eyes.
But no.
Imperfect is the glass of other’s eyes
Wherein we seek in hope of handsome glimpse
Yet find dim shapes, reversed and versed again,
Which will not ease our self-love’s appetites.
But let us make more pleasant now our thoughts:
I’ll hood myself and from my bloodied twin
[Hooding himself]
Glean news of Lincoln’s fate and mine.
From the Book, THE TRAGEDY OF ARTHUR by Arthur Phillips. Copyright © 2011 by Arthur Phillips. Reprinted by arrangement with The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
BARBARA'S TOP THREE ALL-TIME FAVORITE BOOKS The Crystal Cabinet: An Invitation to Poetry ed. by Horace Gregory & Marya Zaturenska, Poeta en Nueva Yorkby Gabriel García Lorca, and The Tempest by William Shakespeare
PAST EDITORS’ PICKS Giraffe by J.M. Ledgard (2006), The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam (2008), and World Enough: Poemsby Maureen N. McLane (2010)
| Photo ©2011 Lusasfilm |
Craft the Force
The Star Wars Craft Book by Bonnie Burton. LucasBooks: Del Rey. Mar. ISBN 9780345511164. $24.
In The Star Wars Craft Book, Bonnie Burton, a writer for StarWars.com and author of You Can Draw: Star Wars, shares simple, inventive projects—from Han Solo encased in a bar of soap to an Emperor Palpatine doll with a dehydrated-apple face—inspired by the original films, the prequel trilogy, and The Clone Wars. Her book perfectly combines two dorkdoms—Star Wars fanaticism and craftiness—that may seem at odds but come together in one fantastic how-to for obsessives. I talked to Burton about opportunities to nerd out with glitter in the library and her plans to make sassy robot sidekicks.
How did you come up with these projects?
I’m always looking for ways to reuse materials instead of throwing them out. I have a slight peanut butter and jelly addiction, so I go through jars of the good stuff regularly. Instead of recycling jars, I make things out of them like flower vases and snow globes. Many of my craft ideas just come from years of looking at things differently. The more you craft, the more you’ll start seeing a Bith band in a pile of wooden spoons or AT-AT legs when you see Pringles cans.
Any advice for libraries hosting crafting programs?
It’s easy to organize a craft program on a zero budget. I like to ask kids to bring things from their recycling bins at home so I can show them how simple it is to transform trash into toys. If you supply the glitter, googly eyes, glue, beads, felt, and sewing supplies, they can get crafting very easily. Kids are imaginative from the get-go; they can see a spaceship in a cardboard box or an Ewok in a brown sock. They just need a place to unleash their craftiness, and a library is the perfect setting for that.
How did you score a dream job like writing for StarWars.com?
I’ve always been a writer, and being a lifelong geek as well only makes my job dreamier. I think Lucasfilm hired me because I brought more of a mainstream angle to the site, and I really wanted to do fun low-tech activities in the kids’ section, too—like drawing tutorials and craft projects.
I love gaming and TV, but I think I had the most fun as a kid when I was in our playroom drawing or making sock puppets. We live in a world of so many ways to spend our time online or plugged in, and often it’s a good idea to step away from the TV or computer and do something with our hands—even if we end up accidently covered in glitter.
What’s next for you?
I’d love to continue writing drawing books for other geeky franchises. I’m tackling more extreme crafting activities for fun. I have a dream of making a robot that will do all my chores, but most likely I’d make sassy robots to watch movies with me like the sidekicks on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Currently, I’m making a dog bed that looks like the Sarlaac pit Boba Fett fell into.—Anna Katterjohn
ANNA’S TOP THREE FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2010 (BECAUSE SHE HATES ALL-TIME LISTS) Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins, Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, and This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper
PAST EDITORS’ PICKS Legends of the Chelsea Hotel: Living with the Artists and Outlaws of New York’s Rebel Mecca by Ed Hamilton (2007), The Self-Esteem Trap: Raising Confident and Compassionate Kids in an Age of Self-Importanceby Polly Young-Eisendrath (2008), and HAMMER! Making Movies Out of Sex and Life by Barbara Hammer (2010)
Quantum Audio
Quantum Man: Richard Feynman’s Life in Science by Lawrence M. Krauss. Blackstone Audio. (Great Discoveries). Mar. ISBN 9781441780249. $100; 9 CDs. retail ed.; 1 MP3-CD. retail ed.; digital download.
Richard Feynman’s colorful personality and critical contributions to the field of quantum mechanics combine to render him a most attractive subject for biographers. This study on the late Nobel prize–winning physicist by theoretical physicist and best-selling author Krauss (director, Origins Project, Arizona State Univ.; The Physics of Star Trek) sets itself apart from the many other recently published Feynman bios because Krauss shares with his subject that rare affinity for making science appealing to all manner of audiences. While the Norton hardcover of Quantum Man publishes simultaneously on March 21 (ISBN 9780393064711) with this multiformat Blackstone Audio edition, I’m personally holding out for the latter, which Krauss himself reads. A sample audio clip (bit.ly/fBsTO0) indicates Krauss to be, while by no means a professional narrator, a comforting-voiced and authoritative guide to Feynman’s world. Plus, nothing beats hearing an enthusiast in any field speak on a subject that captivates him—particularly on one this flat-out captivating. More at www.blackstoneaudio.com. —Raya Kuzyk
RAYA’S TOP THREE ALL-TIME FAVORITE BOOKS Home of the Gentry by Ivan Turgenev, A Book of Common Prayer by Joan Didion, and The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer
PAST EDITORS’ PICKS Autumnal Tints by Henry David Thoreau (audio; 2008), Nelson Mandela’s Favorite African Folktales (audio; 2009), Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson (audio; 2010)
| Photo by Cynthia Larson |
In John Lennon’s Honor
Strawberry Fields: Central Park’s Memorial to John Lennon by Sara Cedar Miller. Abrams. May. ISBN 9780810997868. $16.95.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Strawberry Fields, the international peace garden in Central Park that is a memorial to the life and work of John Lennon and a mecca for his fans. In commemoration, Abrams is releasing Strawberry Fields: Central Park’s Memorial to John Lennon. Having enjoyed a sneak peek, I can assure fellow Beatles heads that this beauty will be an essential purchase. And at an extremely reasonable $16.95, public libraries also will be able to afford it. I talked to Sara Cedar Miller, official historian and photographer of the Central Park Conservancy, about the book’s origins and what she hopes readers will get from it. Note that another great reason to pick up this book is that a portion of the proceeds will go to the Conservancy to maintain Strawberry Fields and its surrounding landscapes. What could be better?
How did the book come together?
I was aware of the 25th anniversary of Strawberry Fields and felt the need to commemorate it with a beautiful keepsake book. I suggested the concept to Andrea Danese, my editor at Abrams, while we were working on Seeing Central Park: The Official Guide to the World’s Greatest Urban Park, and she was very receptive. Then we both went to Conservancy president Doug Blonsky, who wrote the foreword. He was very happy to have it be part of my professional responsibilities at the Conservancy.
How much, if at all, was Yoko Ono involved?
We asked Yoko at the start, and she agreed to participate and to read the manuscript. She and her staff were extremely helpful. She edited a portion of the text and loaned photos and archival material. She also helped us to acquire rights to print the lyrics to “Imagine.”
One of the most fascinating facets of the book is the assertion that the creation of Strawberry Fields was a catalyst for rejuvenating Central Park.
John Lennon was killed only five days after the first board meeting of the Central Park Conservancy on December 3, 1980. The next year, the city council adopted the area of the park as Strawberry Fields. The Conservancy was just beginning to transform the park, and Strawberry Fields was the first $1 million project underwritten by a single donor (Yoko). The project gave a huge lift to the fledgling organization, leading the way for other successful restorations and other donors to step forward the way Yoko did.
What would you like readers to take away from your book?
I would very much like them to be inspired about the life and work of John Lennon as well as Yoko’s vision for an international garden of peace. What is most fitting is that the words to “Imagine” and its idealistic and utopian message are the very same reasons that Central Park was created 152 years ago. I am hoping that the park’s beauty and its amazing history will inspire people, especially New Yorkers, to support the Central Park Conservancy’s mission to maintain and manage the park so it never reverts back to the deteriorated park of the 1970s that John experienced. —Michael Rogers
MIKE'S TOP THREE ALL-TIME FAVORITE BOOKS The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, The Complete Short Stories by Ernest Hemingway, and The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
PREPUB TIME LINE
MARCH
1 Binchy, Maeve.Minding Frankie. Knopf. ISBN 9780307273567. $26.95. CD: Random Audio.
Upbeat Irish: everyone pitches in when recovering alcoholic Noel takes on the care of a child his terminally ill ex-girlfriend swears is his.
8 Obreht, Téa. The Tiger’s Wife. Random. ISBN 9780385343831. $25. CD: Random Audio.
A New Yorker 20 Under 40, Obreht turns in the vibrant, complex story of a young doctor in the Balkans who recalls illuminating stories told by her grandfather.
8 Michaud, Jon. When Tito Loved Clara. Algonquin. ISBN 9781565129498. $23.95.
Yes, Tito loves Clara, but it’s been 15 years since high school graduation, and she’s in the suburbs. A debut novel by the head librarian at The New Yorker.
8 Edgarian, Carol. Three Stages of Amazement. Scribner. ISBN 9781439198308. $25. CD: Random Audio.
After 15 years, Edgarian aims to repeat the success of her debut novel, Rise the Euphrates, in this tale of golden futures gone wrong.
15 Komunyakaa, Yusef. The Chameleon Couch. Farrar. ISBN 9780374120382. $24.
Black man, bluesman, Pulitzer Prize winner, and “ scrappy old lion,” poet Komunyakaa turns personal while retaining his voice of conscience.
22 Doctorow, E.L. All the Time in the World: New and Selected Stories. Random. ISBN 9781400069637. $26.
The essential short Doctorow: six new stories never before in book form, plus the best of the rest.
22 Allen, Sarah Addison.The Peach Keeper. Bantam. ISBN 9780553807226. $25; eISBN 9780553908138.
All is not peachy keen when Willa Jackson returns home, though beloved author Allen can be expected to deliver more small-town charm.
29 Collins, Billy. Horoscopes for the Dead: Poems. Random. ISBN 9781400064922. $24.
A former poet laureate waxes witty and slightly macabre in his latest collection.
29 Bezmozgis, David. The Free World. Farrar. ISBN 9780374281403. $26.
This breathtaking first novel from one of The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 expands on the territory he first explored in the multi-award-winning story collection Natasha.
APRIL
4 Ackerman, Diane. One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing. Norton. ISBN 9780393072419. $26.95.
Poet and science essayist Ackerman uses all the considerable tools at her disposal to help her husband learn to speak again after a stroke.
5 Gordon, Mary. The Love of My Youth. Pantheon. ISBN 9780307377425. $24.95.
Baby boomers Miranda and Adam recall a first love that went bust while they were still in high school.
5 Fey, Tina. Bossypants. Reagan Arthur Bks: Little, Brown. ISBN 9780316056861. $26.99. CD: Hachette Audio.
Fey on how she got to be Fey and learned that to be a superstar you must act tough.
15 Wallace, David Foster. The Pale King. Little, Brown. ISBN 9780316074230. $27.99. lrg. prnt. CD: Hachette Audio.
This last, unfinished work by the late, great author of Infinite Jest stars a character named David Foster Wallace who must survive a soul-killing IRS job.
20 Clark, Marcia. Guilt by Association. Mulholland: Little, Brown. ISBN 9780316129510. $25.99.
Other Clarks (Mary Higgins and Carol Higgins) are publishing this spring, but catch this first thriller from the famed D.A. who didn’t nail O.J. Simpson.
26 Jacobsen, Rowan. Shadows on the Gulf: A Journey Through Our Last Great Wetland. Bloomsbury, dist. by Macmillan. ISBN 9781608195817. $25.
Author of American Terroir, an LJ Best Book of 2010, Jacobsen envisions the BP oil spill as a last-chance opportunity for the much-sinned-against Gulf of Mexico.
26 Adrian, Chris. The Great Night. Farrar. ISBN 9780374166410. $26.
Adrian, one of The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40, sets Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in contemporary times.
MAY
3 Parker, Robert B. Sixkill.Putnam. ISBN 9780399157264. $26.95.
In his final outing (Parker died in January 2010), Spenser investigates charges against movie star Jumbo Nelson with the help of Nelson’s bodyguard, Zebulon Sixkill.
3 Ozma, Alice. The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared. Grand Central. ISBN 9780446583770. $24.99.
Ozma on her school librarian father’s reading to her for 3,218 consecutive nights, starting when she was in fourth grade and ending only when she left for college.
3 Brooks, Geraldine. Caleb’s Crossing. Viking. ISBN 9780670021048. $26.95. CD: Penguin Audio.
Pulitzer Prize winner Brooks invents a story for Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College—in 1665.
4 Simon, Rachel. The Story of Beautiful Girl. Grand Central. ISBN 9780446574464. $24.99. lrg prnt. CD: Hachette Audio.
From the author of the affecting memoir Riding the Bus with My Sister, a novel about developmentally impaired Lynnie and deaf African American Homan.
10 Nesbø, Jo. The Snowman. Knopf. ISBN 9780307595867. $25.95. lrg. prnt. eISBN 9780307599575. CD: Random Audio.
A snowman bears the pink scarf of the latest woman to disappear in Oslo; from an author who helped put Scandinavian crime fiction on the map.
10 Larson, Erik. In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin. Crown. ISBN 9780307408846. $26; eISBN 9780307887955. lrg. prnt. trade pap. CD/Download: Random Audio.
Devil in Berlin? Larson explains how America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Germany and his wild daughter slowly begin to see the evil around them.
17 Kissinger, Henry. On China.Penguin Pr: Penguin Group (USA). ISBN 9781594202711. $35. CD: Penguin Audio.
Kissinger gives us his naked truth on China past, present, and future.
31 See, Lisa. Dreams of Joy.Random. ISBN 9781400067121. $26; eISBN 9780679604891. lrg. prnt. CD: Random Audio.
What happened to Chinese sisters May and Pearl, featured in See’s wildly popular Shanghai Girls? Find out in this sure-to-be-hugely-promoted sequel.
JUNE
1 Hastings, Michael. The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan. Little, Brown. ISBN 9780316176255. $27.99. CD: Hachette Audio.
The journalist whose Rolling Stone story got Gen. Stanley McChrystal fired gives us a deeper picture of Afghanistan.
2 Hijuelos, Oscar. Thoughts Without Cigarettes: A Memoir. Gotham: Penguin Group (USA). ISBN 9781592406296. $27.50.
This memoir from Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Hijuelos is his first nonfiction ever.
7 Wilson, Daniel H. Robopocalypse. Doubleday. ISBN 9780385533850. $25; eISBN 9780385533867. CD/Download: Random Audio.
Machines worldwide rise up to attack humans in a thriller already set for the big screen, with Steven Spielberg directing.
7 Patchett, Ann. State of Wonder. Harper: Harper-Collins. ISBN 9780062049803. $26.99. lrg. prnt. CD: HarperAudio.
No surprise: there’s a 300,000-copy first printing for Patchett’s latest, in which doctor-turned-researcher Marina Singh investigates a colleague’s death in the Amazon.
8 Koryta, Michael.The Ridge. Little, Brown. ISBN 9780316053662. $24.99.
In this latest from rising thriller star Koryta, a journalist investigates the local lighthouse—far from water—and finds its walls inscribed with the names of the dead.
9 Makkai, Rebecca. The Borrower. Viking. ISBN 9780670022816. $25.95.
In this debut novel, children’s librarian Lucy Hall finds herself on the run with ten-year-old Ian Drake, her loyal but unhappy patron.
14 Watson, S.J. Before I Go To Sleep. Harper: HarperCollins. ISBN 9780062060556. $25.99. lrg. prnt.
Pay attention to this debut psychological thriller, whose heroine suffers from profound amnesia; rights have been sold to 34 countries and film producer Ridley Scott.
14 Deaver, Jeffery. Carte Blanche: The New James Bond Novel. S. & S. ISBN 9781451620696. $26.99.
No, not your typical Deaver thriller; he’s signed on to give us a Bond for the 21st century.
17 Lewis, Michael. Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World. Norton. ISBN 9780393081817. $26.95.
Having enjoyed cheap credit in the early 2000s, many nations now face crisis and will become part of a “new Third World,” claims this unerring financial journalist
28 Foreman, Amanda. A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War. Random. ISBN 9780375504945. $35. CD: Random Audio.
A Whitbread Prize winner and best-selling author, Foreman should vividly portray the British soldiers who served on both sides of America’s Civil War.
