News - Books

By Carl Lennertz Sales news from data gathered this week from 350 indies. Hardcover fiction: To watch:

While baseball's Oakland A's shoot for 21 in a row, Book Sense has its own literary streak going: For the seventh straight time, one of the network morning shows has selected a Book Sense 76 title as its book club feature.

NBC's The Today Show has announced that the latest selection of its book club is A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel (Broadway Books). In its Doubleday hardcover edition, Kimmel's memoir of small town life was a Book Sense 76 Top Ten selection for the March/April 2001 list.

Based on the last four weeks of sales from over 350 independent bookstores across America. Thanks to all the stores that report, the new expanded electronic reporting options, and the software our team here has built to sort and slice a ton of data according to BISAC categories, this is the latest of many subject category lists to run in BTW. These are intended as inventory checking tools for booksellers, alerts to publishers as to what’s selling, and lists that the media can run.

The winners of the 2002 Great Lakes Book Awards were recently announced. They are: Fiction: The Dive from Clausen's Pier by Ann Packer (Knopf) General: Lake Effect by Rich Cohen (Knopf) Children's Medal Winner: Fair Weather by Richard Peck (Dial Press) Children's Honor Book: The Shoe Tree of Chagrin by J. Patrick Lewis, illustrated by Chris Sheban (Creative Editions)

Based on the last eight weeks of sales from over 350 independent bookstores across America. Last week, we ran a list for teens and up, so here's one for the Middle Readers. Yes, Harry and Redwall appear on both lists, but there are a lot of great-selling, new and classic books for ages nine to 12. And kudos to Aladdin and their $2.95 paperback reissues. Attention Media: Please contact Kristen Gilligan at kristen@bookweb.org for reprint guidelines for your newspaper or magazine.

This week marks the trade paper publication of Leif Enger's Peace Like a River. The title was an independent bookseller favorite from the moment it was published. It was a No. 1 Book Sense 76 pick and won the 2002 Book Sense Book of the Year Award for fiction.

Spicy Old Favorites, Tasty New Treats (and Glimpses of Crazy Uncles in the Parlor)

The 30 contributors to The Cancer Monologue Project, an upcoming October publication from MacAdam/Cage, had been neither writers nor performers. They were patients. Cancer patients at varying levels of treatment, remission, or recovery, were drawn together by actors Tanya Taylor and Pamela Thompson to participate in free workshops for those who have experienced cancer, HIV, and AIDS.