The folks at BookBeast went to Nielson BookSkan for 2011 sales figures to determine What America’s Reading: Bestsellers By City.  The cities were selected by their size, LARGE.  Interesting that of the ten metropolitan areas surveyed, only Washington, D.C., Boston and San Francisco made the 2011 most literate cities list.  This got me thinking about just what books Seattleites are reading.  Seattle consistently ranks one or two on the most literate list and since I live near-by, definitely my demographic. The best info I could dig up online was this 2011 Seattle Times article  10 most-in-demand Books at the King County library.  This list is a little skewed towards YA readers since they are heavy users of the library and tend to borrow more books than buy as evidenced by the multiple titles appearing by authors Suzanne Collins and Rick Riordan. Nonetheless, adult readers showed their preference for State of Wonder (a personal favorite), The Help, Unbroken and Bossypants. Parenting concerns or maybe just plain curiosity contributed to the popularity of the very controversial book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.  

April…spring….showers…flowers…GARDENING  

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Each year, the American Horticultural Society recognizes outstanding gardening books published in North America with its annual Book Award.  The 2012 winners cover the gamut from holistic orcharding (I didn’t know that was a word) to small green roofs.  My favorite?  Nikki Jabbour’s The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener.  http://www.ahs.org/awards/book_awards/2012_AHS_Book_Award_Winners.pdf

vegetables…healthy…eating….fixing…RECIPES

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On a recent Chowhound forum about “Best Vegetarian Cookbooks”, one cookbook was recommended over and over again, Plenty by Yottam Ottolegnhi.  Some of the comments:  ”Beautiful book with great recipes.”;   “I second this. This is one of my new favourite books – I have used it often and absolutely love it.”    http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/835938

Plenty was also a favorite of the Guardian food blogger Catherine Phipps, …”You also won’t go far wrong with Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty – my favourite dish is the intensely sweet yet savoury caramelised garlic tart.”   Philpps also lists her favorite veggie cookbooks for kids, entertaining and name dropping (Paul McCartney’s Meat Free Monday Cookbook).  http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2012/jan/24/vegetarian-cookbooks-pick-crop

OK  So, where was I?

eating… full…exercise…outside…BASEBALL

I must admit to being a fair weather baseball fan (Go Mariners!), so the cold spring Seattle rains are more conducive to reading about baseball than actually attending a game.  One book that sits top of my ‘to read’ list is The Art of Fielding by Char Harbach.  A good old fashioned story about a college baseball stand out,  Henry Skrimshander, who seems destined for big league stardom until a routine throw goes disastrously off course and the fates of five people are upended.  Even more fascinating for author wannabes, the companion e-book How a Book is Born by Keith Gessen, tells the tale of just what it took  in today’s publishing world to get The Art of Fielding to print and a big dollar advance.  http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/ebooks

P.S. Just in time for Father’s Day, USA Today is buzzing about a new baseball themed novel out this month by John Grisham Calico Joe.  

http://books.usatoday.com/bookbuzz/post/2012-01-17/new-baseball-novel-coming-from-john-grisham/605382/1

In One Person by John Irving

His most political novel since The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving’s In One Person is an intimate and unforgettable portrait of the solitariness of a bisexual man who is dedicated to making himself “worthwhile.”

Due May 2012

Sacre Bleu by  Christopher Moore

A magnificent “Comedy d’Art” from the author of Lamb, Fool, and Bite Me, Moore’s Sacre Bleu is part mystery, part history (sort of), part love story, and wholly hilarious as it follows a young baker-painter as he joins the dapper Henri Toulouse-Lautrec on a quest to unravel the mystery behind the supposed “suicide” of Vincent van Gogh.

 Due April 2012

Carry the One by Carol Anshaw

Carry the One begins in the hours following Carmen’s wedding reception, when a car filled with stoned, drunk, and sleepy guests accidentally hits and kills a girl on a dark country road. For the next twenty-five years, those involved, including Carmen and her brother and sister, craft their lives in response to this single tragic moment.

Due March 2012

The Lola Quartet by Emily St. John Mandel

“…The Lola Quartet is her 3rd novel and in my opinion, her best yet. Florida, New York, Utah. Journalism, drugs, jazz, and gambling addictions. Characters who seem to be real people, who elicit a visceral response from the reader. And, an ending that was an emotional punch in the gut. Emily’s books only get better and better and I look at her as one of my personal writing teachers.” -Drew Goodman, University of Utah Campus Bookstore, UT     

Due May 2012

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The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

I loved this book.  I thought the author did an incredible job of showing the raw emotional sides of a marriage as it slowly unravels. We follow the courtship and marriage of  a young Ernest Hemingway to a sheltered spinster nine years his senior and accompany them as they make their way to Paris to follow the writer’s dream. The love they have for each other, however, proves no match for the decadent lifestyle of 1920s Paris.  Full of lush period detail, this book made me want to listen to a Josephine Baker CD and sip a glass of  vin rouge.  As one Amazon reviewer  so aptly writes,

At the end of Ernest Hemingway’s memoir, A Moveable Feast , he writes of his first wife, Hadley Richardson, “I wish I had died before I loved anyone but her.” After their divorce, Hemingway marries three more times, each one prompt to follow, like serial wives. This is the story of the woman that loved him before he was famous.

 

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The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern  

This book is unlike anything I have read before. The author describes the scents, smells and sites of the black and white circus, known as The Night Circus, in such detail that it is truly a feast for the senses. The Night Circus or Le Cirque des Reves arrives without notice and is open only from dusk to dawn. We slowly learn that it is also the playing field for a very serious game between two young illusionists who have been bound at an early age to a contest that pits them against each other to the death. The trouble is, they fall in love. A magical story that is an adult delight to read.

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Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron 

This is a story about a young Tutsi boy, Jean Patrick and his quest to become an Olympic long distance runner.  A tender coming of age story, set against the years leading up to the Rwanda genocide where Hutu’s killed over one million Tutsi.  We follow Jean Patrick as he grows up and heads off to University, where he meets and immediately falls in love with Bea a fellow student of a different social class. As the persecution of the Tutsi by the Hutu increases, Jean Patrick must choose between living his dreams  by escaping with help from his Hutu coach or staying behind and face being killed along with the girl and her family that he has grown to love.

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Fans of Downton Abbey, the UK-produced drama about the Crawley family and their servants that PBS imported for Masterpiece Classic, will be happy to know that NY publishers have taken notice.   In addition to the companion book, The World of Downton Abbey by Jessica Fellowes, dozens of 20th century novels about the British aristocracy are being rushed to print in hopes of cashing in on  what one New York editor describes as the Downton Abbey wave.  According to the New York Times “Mad for Downton?” , the last time this much interest in the British aristocracy was shown by the book buying public occurred in the 70′s when “Upstairs, Downstairs” was the PBS darling.  Booksellers are also looking to push titles about the Titanic and World War I as well.

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For an inside peek at the real Downton Abbey, the Countess of Carnarvon has written a biography of  Lady Almina and  Highclere Castle, the setting for the series.  As Bookbeast so aptly puts it,

Despite the fact that Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle  contains no references to Downton Abbey beyond its sales-friendly title, it is a fascinating insight into how the seriously rich once lived.

The British online Daily Mail suggests the following Downton  inspired literature on shelves now.

1.   New paperback edition of Parade’s End by Ford Madox Ford

2.  The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy by David Cannadine

3.   Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford

4.   A Bitter Truth by Charles Todd

5.   Rose: My Life in Service to Lady Astor by Rosina Harrison

]]> http://helensreads.com/2012/01/reading-the-downton-abbey-wave/feed/ 0 http://helensreads.com/2012/01/2012-reading-trends/ http://helensreads.com/2012/01/2012-reading-trends/#comments Wed, 04 Jan 2012 22:58:26 +0000 helen http://helensreads.com/?p=3958

Happy 2012 readers!  Even tho’ I can’t predict what new titles will become this year’s hot reads, I did run across a few note worthy trends that book insiders are betting on and buzzing about.

Contemporary dilemma-type titles, sequels of classic tales, YA/adult crossover titles and short story collections are just a few of the fiction trends that Bookseller editor Alice O’Keefe reflects on in Looking Ahead to 2012.  

“There’s a strong showing for unreliable narrators—always an intriguing read. Three of the best I’ve read so far are Alys, Always (W&N, February), a debut by Harriet Lane and a Barbara Vine-esque tale about a lowly newspaper sub-editor who sees an opportunity to upgrade her social circumstances. The heroine of Charlotte Hogan’s The Lifeboat(Virago, March) relays her experiences of three weeks on the open sea—was she innocent or complicit in the events which took place? And In When Nights Were Cold (Mantle, March) by Susanna Jones, a young Edwardian lady escapes her stifling upbringing to pursue her mountaineering dreams, with tragic consequences.”

Don’t ask me where the month of November went.  Somewhere between dishing out the Halloween candy; creating a book group blog for The Mercer Island Patch;  attending my first ever ACBL bridge convention over Thanksgiving weekend;  finalizing the refinancing of our home; celebrating my mom’s 96th birthday and creating a family photo Christmas calendar… the days simply have melted away.  So here it is, December 9th and way past time to get my nose back to the blogging grindstone, so to speak.

As the year winds down, the best of 2011 lists are slowly coming out.  What I like to pay attention to is  ’the best book club lists’ since those are the type of books I like to read and there are less of them to pour over and become over whelmed by. So far, only Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder (a personal favorite), Julie Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic and Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 appear on two lists each.  However, I don’t think you can go wrong with any of the suggested titles.  I will keep adding when and if other lists pop up. Let me know if you run across a good list yourself.  Have a great holiday season and

Happy Reading and Book Giving to All!

The Washington Post’s Best Books of 2011 would all make excellent book club choices.

NPR’s Conversation Starters: 2011′s Top Five Book Club Picks

Book Group Buzz recommends The Kansas City Star’s top ten list because they combine fiction, non fiction, YA and children’s for “a Best of the Best list.  All of the nonfiction selections would be great titles for books groups.”

The Women’s National Book Association lists 20 titles on this year’s 2011 Great Group Reads.

Library Journal came out with their first ever top ten list last year stating,  ”Librarians—and booksellers—should feel confident in recommending them to their readers, suggesting them to book groups, and promoting them through a variety of venues.”  Here is the 2011 list.

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There has been a lot of  TV hoopla surrounding the ‘exclusive’ interviews with Ruth Madoff and her youngest son Andrew as part off the promotion for a new book Truth and Consequences: Life Inside the Madoff Family by Laurie Sandell.  Bernie Madoff, of course, is the financier convicted of running a 50 billion dollar Ponzi scheme which led to his oldest son, Mark, committing sucide.  What you might not know is that Mark Madoff’s widow, Stephanie Madoff Mack,  has written her own book The End of Normal which was released last month to much less fanfare.  Below is part one of an interview Mack did with Robin Roberts when she appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America.  I could only find the link to the second part of that interview which I have provided for you  here.

“For starters, as a legal matter no book in America is banned, period, full stop (not counting, I suppose, some hard-core illegal child porn or some such out there). Any citizen can go to a bookstore or Amazon.com and buy any book legally in print — or out of print for that matter.”

He goes on to point out that the number of challenged books is down from an average 400-500 a year to just 348 last year which is the equivalent of having less than one parent for every 200 public schools or 100,000 students even registering a challenge at all.  Goldberg is all for encouraging reading in young people but wonders about Banned Book Week’s less desirable themes.

“As an educational enterprise, it denigrates the United States as a backward, censorial country when it’s anything but. It demeans parents and other citizens who take an interest in the schools. And it attempts to elevate the judgment of professional librarians to unimpeachable heights — the same librarians who’ve sometimes pushed to allow nearly unfettered access to porn in public libraries. Fighting mythical censorship with real propaganda hardly seems like a worthwhile trade.”

I personally like Banned Book Week and all the hoopla surrounding it. For one, it gets students, parents, libraries, and schools on the same band wagon…your First Amendment rights as an American citizen.  And consider this,  taken from a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) compendium titled To Read or Not to Read.  

“Less than one-third of 13-year-olds are daily readers, a 14 percent decline from 20 years earlier. Among 17-year-olds, the percentage of non-readers doubled over a 20-year period, from nineteen percent in 1984 to nine percent in 2004. On average, Americans ages 15 to 24 spend almost two hours a day watching TV, and only seven minutes of their daily leisure time on reading.”

photo via  The Lisa Simpson Book Club