A Season of Steady Buzzes
Bridget Kinsella -- 6/19/00
In the absence of a breakout title, booksellers look for
breadth within subjects and find plenty to like.
We might as well just say it: there was no big book at BEA this year. Things might have been different had Scholastic unveiled "Harry Potter IV" instead of holding it under tight embargo until the July 8, 3.8 million-copy release, but, alas, no. Still, there were plenty of books to talk about and that seemed to suit booksellers just fine.
Perhaps Karen Pennington, the inventory manager at Kepler's in Menlo Park, Calif., summed up the prevalent bookseller attitude best: "There may not have been a big book, but I'm suspicious of those anyway," she said. "We're actually interested in finding little gems. We have to have a varied approach in finding strengths within subjects. And in terms of that, it was a good show."
Even if there is no blockbuster fiction slated for the fall season--Stephen King's new book from Scribner is on writing, after all, and Tom Wolfe has a collection of essays from FSG--many noted and new authors on the lists have booksellers expecting a strong fall. Favorite authors with titles on the way include Barbara Kingsolver (HarperCollins), Jane Hamilton (Doubleday), James Patterson (Little, Brown), Stephen Coonts (St. Martin's), Caleb Carr (Random) and Michael Connelly (S&S). Of course there are the requisite celebrity titles on deck from personalities as varied as Liz Smith (Hyperion), Jesse Ventura (Pocket) and Natalie Cole (Warner). McGraw-Hill has an inspirational title by Joan Lunden and Chronicle is set to release its Beatles Anthology in October.
 | Two hopefuls:
Kingsolver's latest and Balf's debut. |
True Stories: Man (and Woman) vs. Nature
As for those "subjects" that booksellers count on, according to Pennington, the hot one right now continues to be the "man's battle with nature" books.
Several books in this burgeoning category are on the horizon and will no doubt benefit from the summer release of the film adaptation of Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm starring George Clooney. "Adventure is not over," said Kathy Sandrock, community relations coordinator of the Borders Books and Music in Davenport, Iowa. "All of this other stuff is a cascade effect of what started with Titanic."
In particular, Sandrock was referring to The Last River: The Tragic Race for Shangri-La (Crown), the account of a real-life encounter with the Tibetan "Mount Everest of whitewater rafting," as expressed by first-time author Todd Balf. With a 100,000-copy first printing in the works, Crown has high expectations for The Last River, which the house is comparing to Isaac's Storm. "There are a couple of genres at work here: strong narrative adventure and strong narrative historical nonfiction," explained Andy Martin, associate publisher at Crown. Hyperion handed out richly designed excerpts (between hard covers) to promote The Ice Master: the Damned 1913 Voyage of the Karluk and the Miraculous Rescue of Her Survivors by Jennifer Niven. Reminiscent of Alfred Lansing's Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage, Niven's TheIce Master is the historical account of a failed Canadian exhibition in which the surviving crew members were forced to abandon ship in the Arctic and wait months for the captain to travel hundreds of miles on foot for help.
Booksellers also responded strongly of the promise of an adventure in cartographic crime, The Island of Lost Maps by Miles Harvey (Random)--600 galleys were snatched up during the first day of the show. "We had to hold back 200 for the signing," said Random's Mary Bahr. Authors Balf and Harvey share a background of writing for Outside magazine, which seems to be the main outfitter for book publishers looking for the adventure of a bestselling book. In fact, Norton, publisher of The Perfect Storm, announced a new Outside imprint, which will release an anthology this fall to kick off what editor John Barstow said will be at least a five-year partnership, with a projected 25 titles. In this vein, Thunder's Mouth Press will add three titles, Everest, Explore and Dark, to its three-year-old Adrenaline Series. Two other anticipated titles in this category were Ice Bound: A Doctor's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole (Talk/Miramax), in which Dr. Jerri Nielsen tells about treating her own breast cancer and her headline-grabbing rescue, and To the Elephant Graveyard (Atlantic Monthly), in which journalist Tarquin Hall examines tribal life in India as he joins the hunt for a killer elephant.
Abrams will set off on an adventure of its own this fall with a 150,000-copy first printing of the English-language edition of The Valley of Golden Mummies by Zahi Hawass. Heralded as "the most spectacular archeological discovery since King Tut's tomb," the illustrated book chronicles the find of a 2,000-year-old cemetery in the Bahariya Oasis. Kepler's Pennington said the popularity of these kinds of titles reflect how what used to be called armchair travel has morphed into a huge adventure and discovery category. "I have never nor will I ever kayak down a Tibetan river," she said about The Last River, but joining in on someone else's real experience, "what's not to like about that?" An FSG lead title, The Talmud and the Internet, deals with a different kind of expedition. Author Jonathan Rosen, using his own grandmothers as a starting point, contrasts the experience of a Holocaust survivor and an upper-middle“class American to explore the nature of the human journey through a changing world.
Tradition and Controversy
As for titles in the more traditional regions of nonfiction, a dramatic cover for Stephen Ambrose's upcoming Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad caught the eye of fairg rs at the S&S booth. Want controversy? Just the title alone of a forthcoming book from The Free Press bothered some people. The publisher is presenting John McWhorter, author of Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America, as a new black intellectual voice, "more angry than Stephen Carter, more pragmatic and compassionate than Shelby Steele, more forward looking than Stanley Crouch." L.A. radio talk show personality Larry Elders takes on racism and just about everything else in his plain-talking The Ten Things You Can't Say in America, a lead title from St. Martin's.
In the Fictive Realm
In the world where people make things up, two Warner titles, Wish You Well by David Baldacci and The Letter of the Law by Tim Green see their authors venture into new territory, as Baldacci steps away from the thriller and Green embraces it. Kaye Assenbacher of Bay Books in California, Md., said she was particularly looking forward to the Baldacci book: "He sells well in my store no matter what he writes." Other booksellers named The Night Listener by Armistead Maupin (HarperCollins), Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher (St. Martin's) and Colleen McCullough's return to Australia in Morgan's Run (S&S) as long-awaited novels. With a 100,000-copy first printing, Grove anticipates success with Sex and the City writer Candace Bushnell's try at fiction in 4 Blondes. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Nobel Prize“winner Jose Saramago returns with All the Names from Harcourt and Kazuo Ishiguro comes out with When We Were Orphans from Knopf. Several booksellers said they expected Gore Vidal's new novel The Golden Age (Doubleday) to be a strong seller. And booksellers have the new Margaret
Atwood to look forward to,
The Blind Assassin (also from Doubleday), with its gorgeous cover.
While not on hand with a new title, Michael Cunningham (The Hours) lent his star power to The Death of Vishnu, a first novel by Manil Suri; Norton teamed the two authors in a taped interview given out at BEA. Bay Books' Assenbacher said she was particularly excited about Vishnu, which is set in an apartment building in India, treating the building itself as a metaphor for religious division in the country and the soul's progress through various stages of existence. "Anything that gets me away from the United States and into an exotic setting is a great thing," she said.
 | First novels remain
booksellers' "little gems." |
Whether set here or abroad, booksellers largely go to BEA to search for new voices in fiction in an attempt to bring their customers what Pennington described as "private pleasures." Handselling is a big part of her business. "If everyone is reading it, than we don't worry about it," she said. "Our staff would rather discover books and turn them into our own bestsellers."
For those who wanted to unearth unsung treasures there was plenty of first fiction at BEA. Soho weighed in with one of the heftiest giveaway galleys at BEA--the 600- page Gloria, a first novel by Keith Malliard that depicts the social landscape of a 1950s prom queen in John O'Hara territory. From Breakaway Books comes Perfect Silence by Jeff Hutton, a novel about baseball and the Civil War, which the press characterizes as Cold Mountain meets The Natural. Holt hopes for its own breakaway, with Canadian bestseller Bonnie Burnard's first Stateside novel, A Good House, the 50-year saga of one family in Ontario. It wasn't planned, but Houghton editor Janet Silver said the debut novel The Sugar Island by Ivonne Lamazeres, about a girl's voyage from Cuba, calls to mind a recent real-life voyage--that of Elián Gonzalez. In A Destiny of Souls, a debut novel by Christopher Rice (son of Ann), the reader is delivered to the darker side of teenage life in--where else-- New Orleans. Grove was giving away galleys of the international bestseller Artemisia by Alexandra Lapierre, translated from French. Aside from having a luscious cover going for it, Artemisia is a novel based on the real life of the daughter of a Baroque artist in Rome, who sues her rapist (a Vatican insider) and wins, only to find condemnation from her father and society at large, and art becomes her only refuge.
Remember Memoir? Still Alive
Someone once observed that all fiction is autobiography and all autobiography is really fiction. Not for us to say, but surely memoir at times has a foot in each camp. In many ways, Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes was a defining book in the category, and since it came out in '98 there have been a flood of similar books in the market. "What we may be noticing now is a stepping back by the publishers until the next one hits," said Pennington. But there were several memoirs on the lists and even Pennington said she was intrigued by Change Me into Zeus'Daughter by Barbara Robinette Moss (Scribner). "The publisher is not stepping back on this one," said Pennington. "There's a danger when the publisher says ˜don't show me another story of a poor family with an alcoholic father,' they might miss something. In Change Me into Zeus' Daughter they are poor and American and Southern, the father is an alcoholic, but that's where the resemblance ends."
Debbie Morris, buyer for Barbara's Bookstores, based in Chicago, said a memoir titled The Ecology of a Cracker Childhood from Milkweed Editions was intriguing. For starters, author Janisse Ray grew up in a Georgia junkyard along U.S. Route 1. The memoir tells how a childhood of rural isolation and religious fundamentalism led to her life trying to save the pine ecosystem that once dominated the South. Milkweed is planning a 25,000-copy first printing, which is substantial for a memoir from an unknown author, not to mention an unusually aggressive printing for an independent publisher. A work that mixes journalism with memoir, The Diary of a Political Idiot by Jasmina Tesanovic (Cleis Press), gives a firsthand account of life in Belgrade during the NATO bombing. Random is hoping Talk to Me: Listening Between the Lines by Anna Deavere Smith will expand the reputation of this playwright/actor known for the critically acclaimed works Twilight Los Angeles 1992 and Fire in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn, about riots in both places. Apparently, Ms. Smith went to Washington and came back with a lot to say. Random describes Talk to Me as part memoir, part political commentary.
Not exactly anticipated as "Daddy Dearest" memoirs, but books written by the daughters of J.D. Salinger and Frank Sinatra are expected to draw some attention when they come out in the fall. So far Washington Square Books and parent S&S are keeping the manuscripts for their respective books, Dream Catcher: Reflections on Reclusion by Margaret Salinger, and My Father's Daughter by Tina Sinatra, close to the vest, so there were no galleys. What can be told is that it was Nancy Sinatra, not Tina, whose boots were made for walking. We'll see whose boots are made for talking.
 | Among the noted novels:
Baldacci, McCullough and Vidal |
The Art of Arts (and Sciences)
Overall, Morris said that she agreed that this year's BEA was less about hot titles and hot authors. "But I thought the second Cream from Phaidon was pretty impressive," she said. Fresh Cream is the second book in Phaidon's biennial contemporary art publication series. "Every two years we will have 10 curators picking 10 artists to feature," said publicist Julia J rn. And if that wasn't enough to get people's attention, Phaidon packaged Fresh Cream in a plastic pillow. "Booksellers said they thought people would want two of them," said J rn. "One to keep as a package and the other to open and get at the book." Morris said she was already plotting where to place Phaidon's Fresh Cream dump at Barbara's.
Sticking with the arts for the moment, two titles take an insider's look at the subject. One is Jane Alexander's Command Performance: An Actress in the Theater of Politics (Public Affairs) about her tenure as director of the National Endowment of the Arts; the other, Exhibitionism: Art in the Age of Intolerance by Lynne Munson (Ivan R. Dee), looks at the devastating effect political correctness has had in the arts. "The powers that be have succumbed to it," said publisher Ivan Dee. Munson is a former NEA employee.
From art to riches, Wiley plans a 100,000-copy first printing of The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession by Peter L. Bernstein, author of Against the Gods. "This is the first history of the obsession with gold," said publicist Rachel Salzman. "People loved Against the Gods. Galleys of The Power of Gold went in one half-hour." The lead title from Perseus, Mean Genes: From Sex to Money to Food, Taming Our Primal Instincts by Terry Burnham and Jay Pheldon, g s beyond obsession and considers all things human as part of an individual's genetic makeup--a hot topic considering the current research in this area and the success of Matt Ridley's Genome. In Human Natures (Island Press), author Paul Ehrlich joins Stephen Jay Gould and Edmund Wilson in the nature vs. nurture debate.
A few titles picked up on what seems to be a growing interest in "accessible science" books, propelled by the success of Dava Sobel's Longitude and Galileo's Daughter (Walker). This fall the same publisher releases E=mc2: Autobiography of the World's Most Famous Equation by David Bodanis. Not a big leap from science is math, and Amir D. Aczel, author of Fermat's Last Theorem, examines contradictions in Cantor's theory in The Mystery of Aleph: Mathematics, the Kabbalah and the Search for Infinity (Four Walls Eight Windows). This fall Ecco Press unveils The Best American Science Writing, edited by James Glieck, and Houghton adds Science and Travel to its Best American series, along with the best essays of the century, edited by Joyce Carol Oates.
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