The Short List

Our New Release Alerts Service isn’t new, but we wanted to refresh your memory about what a great thing it is. There are thousands of books published in the US every month; many will go unnoticed but others will quickly become bestsellers which also are highly sought-after in libraries by patrons.

The New Release Alerts page on our website is updated every month with 15-20, or so, books to be released by publishers in the next 60-90 days which we believe will be of popular interest to our patrons. We provide a link to each of these books in our catalog which allows patrons to put a hold on the book even before the Library has its copy–and perhaps before the 200 other interested patrons get in the queue. Nice, right?

The New Release Alerts also include books which are expected to be bestsellers even though they’re not by A-List authors or coming from well-known publishers. Recent examples include: The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski, The Beach House by Jane Green and Love The One You’re With by Emily Giffin.

Click here to see July’s New Release Alerts.

Joe Nocera is The New York Times’ Talking Business columnist. He also writes a business-oriented blog at The Times called Executive Suite. A few years ago he asked his regular readers for suggestions for the best business fiction books. Unable to come up with a sufficient list of fiction, he turned his eye toward non-fiction books; narrative non-fiction, that is, and consulted a few other business-minded authorities for their advice. They agreed on the following list as the very best business books. If you have a title you feel has been unfairly excluded, you can let him know at the original blog post.

“Barbarians At The Gate by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar ~~ a rollicking account of KKR’s leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco.
Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis ~~ (even though I’ve since become convinced that the anecdote that gives the book its title never happened).
The Devil’s Candy by Julie Salamon ~~ (Greatest dissection of the movie business ever written.)
The Box by Marc Levinson ~~ (Hard to believe you can write a great book about the rise and importance of the shipping container, but he pulled it off.)
Indecent Exposure by David McClintick. (Published in 1982, it single-handedly created the business narrative genre).
The Go-Go Years by John Brooks ~~ (The best book by the most elegant writer to ever make business his subject.)
The Kingdom and the Power by Gay Talese ~~ (Yes, the subject is The New York Times, but how can you leave it off any list of great business books?)
Titan by Ron Chernow ~~ (Chernow’s magisterial biography of John D. Rockefeller.)
Do You Sincerely Want To Be Rich by Godfrey Hodgson, Bruce Page and Charles Raw ~~ (Hard to believe that this committee of authors could write a sensational narrative about the rise and fall of Bernard Cornfeld, but that they did.)
Disney War by James Stewart ~~ (”Best corporate psychoanalysis I’ve ever read,” says John Huey.)
The Informant by Kurt Eichenwald ~~ (Forget his Enron book, “Conspiracy of Fools.” This book, about the strange saga of Mark Whitacre and Archer Daniels Midland, is his masterpiece.)
Father, Son and Co.: My Life at IBM and Beyond by Thomas J. Watson and Peter Petre ~~ (The only great ghost-written C.E.O. autobiography ever written. No one else — not even Lee Iacocca or Jack Welch — even comes close.)
When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein ~~ (Another one of those “how-did-he-do-it?” books: this account of the fall of Long Term Capital Management, which by all rights should be a tough slog, is crackling good read.)
Greed and Glory on Wall Street by Ken Auletta ~~ (This book, about the crack up of Lehman Brothers, has a great cast of characters, starting with Steve Schwartzman.)
The Smartest Guys in the Room by Peter Elkind and Bethany McLean ~~ (O.K., O.K., they are former colleagues of mine, and I was deeply involved in editing this book — but I have to say, I think it turned out pretty well!)”

Liam Durcan is a writer whose most recent novel is Garcia’s Heart. He lives in Montreal and works as a neurologist. Recently, he wrote an essay for The Globe And Mail entitled: You’ve Got Me Under Your Skin. He asserts that reading fiction is good for us, not because it teaches life lessons but because it immerses us in other minds and other experiences. He goes on to defend this contention with evidence from a recent study conducted by University of Toronto psychologists where subjects who read a short story in The New Yorker scored higher on social reasoning tests than those subjects who read an essay from The New Yorker. Read the entire article if you’d like to learn more about why reading fiction is good for you.

The Globe And Mail is a Toronto-based Canadian newspaper which is running a series of articles in their Books section called 50 Greatest Books. Each week one of the 50 books selected is reviewed and dissected for its greatness; their aim–generally successful, is to make you want to read the book. Read Books Editor Martin Levin’s full introduction to the series here.

“A great book is adjudged a great book over time by virtue of offering things — astonishing ideas, unforgettable characters, imaginative sublimity, glorious prose — that cannot be got elsewhere, and that tell us something new about the human (or other) condition.

“The 50 will not be ranked in order,” he wrote. “We figure just choosing them is adventurous enough. The entries will be derived from discussions among members of our panel of experts (as if anyone’s really expert). Their carefully guarded identities will be revealed only at the end of the series, when readers will be invited to engage with them more directly. Each entry will be written by someone with knowledge, usually extensive knowledge, of the book in question.”

You can select from the 27 essays published so far on the update page of the series here.

The winners of the 2008 Thriller awards were announced last week at the annual ThrillerFest gala. The 2008 Thriller Award Winners include:

For Best Novel:
THE GHOST by Robert Harris

For Best First Novel:
HEART-SHAPED BOX by Joe Hill

The 2008 Thriller Award Nominees include:

For Best Novel
NO TIME FOR GOODBYE by Linwood Barclay
THE WATCHMAN by Robert Crais
THE CRIME WRITER by Gregg Hurwitz
TROUBLE by Jesse Kellerman

For Best First Novel
INTERRED WITH THEIR BONES by Jennifer Lee Carrell
BIG CITY, BAD BLOOD by Sean Chercover
FROM THE DEPTHS by Gerry Doyle
VOLK’S GAME by Brent Ghelfi

Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, “a detailed account of the famous murder, in 1860, of a three-year-old child of a respectable middle-class family,” won of the £30,000 (US$60,064) Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction. Patrick French’s biography of V.S. Naipaul had been the favorite.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Samuel Johnson Prize. Sponsored by BBC Four, it celebrates diverse and thought-provoking writing in non-fiction. The prize covers current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts. The competition is open to authors of any nationality whose work is published in the UK in English.

“The judges were unanimous: this is one of those great non-fiction books that uses the techniques of fiction to magnificent effect,” said judging panel chair Rosie Boycott. “On first reading, it is an absolute page-turner. Then, when you reread it, you realise how many levels it has, how much it tells you.”

The shortlist included:

The World Is What It Is: the authorized biography of V.S. Naipaul by Patrick French - available in the US in November, 2008

Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart by Tim Butcher -available in the US in October, 2008

Crow Country by Mark Cocker - currently unavailable in the US

The Whisperers by Orlando Figes

The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross.

Manly men, that is. The following list of books will be a good counterpoint refuge from all those chick-lit lists of late:

Collision by Jeff Abbott ~~ Two men, one a successful corporate consultant who is mourning the murder of his new bride; the other, a former CIA agent known only as “Pilgrim,” whose current assignment for a fringe espionage agency is so treacherous he doesn’t trust even his own boss are thrown together in a violent, unexpected event. They realize that they’ve been framed in an elaborate setup. Unsure who to trust and who may just be trying to draw them into the open, the unlikely partners have no choice but to work together.

Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks ~~ An Algerian drug runner is savagely executed in the desolate outskirts of Paris. This seemingly isolated event leads to the recall of Agent 007 from his sabbatical in Rome and his return to the world of intrigue and danger where he is most at home. The head of MI6, M, assigns him to shadow the mysterious Dr. Julius Gorner, a power-crazed pharmaceutical magnate, whose wealth is exceeded only by his greed. Gorner has lately taken a disquieting interest in opiate derivatives, both legal and illegal, and this urgently bears looking into.

Empires Of The Sea by Roger Crowley ~~ Acclaimed historian Roger Crowley has written his most mesmerizing work to date–a thrilling account of this brutal decades-long battle between Christendom and Islam for the soul of Europe, a fast-paced tale of spiraling intensity that ranges from Istanbul to the Gates of Gibraltar and features a cast of extraordinary characters: Barbarossa, “The King of Evil,” the pirate who terrified Europe; the risk-taking Emperor Charles V; the Knights of St. John, the last crusading order after the passing of the Templars; the messianic Pope Pius V; and the brilliant Christian admiral Don Juan of Austria.

Death And Honor by W.E.B. Griffin ~~ The year is 1943, and Argentina is officially neutral, but crawling with every kind of spy, sympathizer, and military official imaginable. The hero is Cletus Frade, a Marine pilot recruited by the OSS, with strong family ties to Argentina, and in Death and Honor—Griffin’s fourth book in the series and the first since 1999—he’s got a lot on his hands.

Moscow Rules by Daniel Silva ~~ the death of a journalist leads Allon to Russia, where he finds that, in terms of spycraft, even he has something to learn. He’s playing by Moscow rules now. This is not the grim, gray Moscow of Soviet times but a new Moscow, awash in oil wealth and choked with bulletproof Bentleys. A Moscow where power resides once more behind the walls of the Kremlin and where critics of the ruling class are ruthlessly silenced. A Moscow where a new generation of Stalinists is plotting to reclaim an empire lost and to challenge the global dominance of its old enemy, the United States.

Patriot Pirates by Robert H. Patton ~~ “In this deeply considered book, based on overlooked primary sources, Robert H. Patton illuminates the raucous, illicit origins of our American democracy. The privateers of the Revolution operated in a twilit world of idealism and greed, launching the new nation on the double edge that would thereafter define it. Many familiar names–the Browns of Providence, the Cabots and Derbys of Salem, the Binghams and Franklins of Philadelphia–appear here in unfamiliar, less admirable ways. With neither rancor nor illusions, Patriot Pirates reminds us again of the mystery and unpredictability of true history.” –Stephen Fox

Mack To The Rescue by Jim Lehrer ~~ When Governor “Buffalo Joe” Hayman calls for privatizing state government, Mack decides to oppose his re-election bid, but a medical mishap prevents Mack from running. While attending a lieutenant governors’ conference in Washington, he suddenly collapses. Hospitalized, he is given a heart bypass operation intended for another patient. Mack backs out of the race and throws his support behind his flaky friend and former state house Speaker, Luther Wallace. Embroiled in a medical malpractice suit while following Luther’s questionable shenanigans, Mack finally has no choice but to come to the rescue when the governor’s race takes a particularly ugly turn.

We Would Have Played For Nothing by Fay Vincent ~~ Former Major League Baseball commissioner Fay Vincent brings together a stellar roster of ballplayers from the 1950s and 1960s in this wonderful new history of the game. These were the decades when baseball expanded across the country and truly became the national pastime. The era opened, though, with the domination of the New York teams: the Yankees, Dodgers, or Giants were in every World Series of the 1950s — but by the end of the decade the two National League teams had moved to California. Representing those great teams in this volume are Whitey Ford, Ralph Branca, Carl Erskine, Duke Snider, and Bill Rigney. They recall the great 1951 Dodgers-Giants playoff that ended with Bobby Thomson’s famous home run (served up by Branca). They remember the mighty Yankees, defeated at last in 1955 by the Dodgers, only to recover the World Series crown from their Brooklyn rivals a year later. They talk about their most feared opponents and most valued teammates, from Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle to Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella to Willie Mays.

Janet Maslin recently posted her favorite summer chick-lit book list at the New York Times in an article entitled “On The Beach, Under A Tiffany-Blue Sky”. Interestingly, her favorite doesn’t quite meet the normal standards–it’s non-fiction and it’s written by a man. Nevertheless, her list is The Word on this summer’s most popular books of that genre:

The Favorite: BRINGING HOME THE BIRKIN: MY LIFE IN HOT PURSUIT OF THE WORLD’S MOST COVETED HANDBAG by Michael Tonello

AN ABSOLUTE SCANDAL by Penny Vincenzi

ALL WE EVER WANTED WAS EVERYTHING by Janelle Brown

THE BEACH HOUSE by Jane Green

CHASING HARRY WINSTON by Lauren Weisberger ~~ from the author of The Devil Wears Prada

THE DAY I ATE WHATEVER I WANTED: AND OTHER SMALL ACTS OF LIBERATION by Elizabeth Berg

LOVE THE ONE YOU’RE WITH by Emily Giffin

SUNDAYS AT TIFFANY’S by James Patterson and Gabrielle Charbonnet

SWEET LOVE by Sarah Strohmeyer

TROPHIES by Heather Thomas

We just got a new shipment of YA books, some of which are on summer reading lists, and they’re on our shelves now:

Ivy by Julie Hearn ~~ In mid-nineteenth-century London, young, mistreated, and destitute Ivy, whose main asset is her beautiful red hair, comes to the attention of an aspiring painter of the pre-Raphaelite school of artists who, with the connivance of Ivy’s unsavory family, is determined to make her his model and muse.

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow ~~ After being interrogated for days by the Department of Homeland Security in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco, California, seventeen-year-old Marcus, released into what is now a police state, decides to use his expertise in computer hacking to set things right.

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld ~~ Just before their sixteenth birthdays, when they will will be transformed into beauties whose only job is to have a great time, Tally’s best friend runs away and Tally must find her and turn her in, or never become pretty at all. A Nutmeg 2009 book.

Wolf Brother by Michelle Paver ~~ 6,000 years ago, twelve-year-old Torak and his guide, a wolf cub, set out on a dangerous journey to fulfill an oath the boy made to his dying father–to travel to the Mountain of the World Spirit to destroy a demon-possessed bear that threatens all the clans.

Looks by Madeleine George ~~ Two high school girls, one an anorexic poet and the other an obese loner, form an unlikely friendship.

The Schwa Was Here by Neal Shusterman ~~ A Brooklyn eighth-grader nicknamed Antsy befriends the Schwa, an “invisible-ish” boy who is tired of blending into his surroundings and going unnoticed by nearly everyone.

Tweak by Nic Sheff ~~ Nic Sheff was drunk for the first time at age eleven. In the years that followed, he developed addictions to crystal meth and heroin. Even so, he felt like he would always be able to quit and put his life together whenever he needed to.

“The 2008 Kids & Family Reading Report, a follow up to a similar 2006 study, both of which were conducted by Scholastic, the global children’s publishing, education and media company, and TSC, a division of Yankelovich, a leader in consumer trends research, again found that the time kids spend reading books for fun declines after age eight and continues to drop off through the teen years.”

Some excerpts from the report include: that 89% of the 5-17 year-olds in the study said that the books theirfavorite books were the ones they picked out themselves and that parents who are a good resource for selecting books their children would enjoy reading have a difficult time finding information on books for their children–especially those aged 15-17.

We have many resources available to help parents and children find books they’ll enjoy. Please stop in at the Library and discover what’s at your fingertips.