News - Books

Author Michael Gerber is not afraid of being sued over the publication of his new book, Barry Trotter and the Unauthorized Parody. He is a first-time author who is still working a day job to make ends meet. "The worst thing that could happen to me is my cats would be jointly owned by Warner Brothers and Scholastic," Gerber said during a program at the American Library Association convention in Atlanta on Monday.

Oates was a runaway #1 pick. The Summer Teen pad is going to press and will be in the July box, but a PDF will be posted at BookWeb.org soon, in the event you’d like to print and photocopy some sooner. P.S. The Mystery 76 Top Ten is mailing now, and the top five will be featured in a USA Today snapshot on Wednesday, July 3! Carl carl@booksense.com

Selection Comes One Week After GMA Book Club Taps 76 Pick

Pulpwood Queens recommend Ann Packer’s The Dive from Clausen’s Pier

Titles Not Selected for the Children’s Book Sense 76, But Still Worthy of Attention This is strictly if you are interested in discovering a sleeper or two that might turn into a nice stock item or handsell. I just can’t bear to let these passionate recommendations go unrecognized in some fashion. Enjoy. Carl Carl@booksense.com Arranged in age sequence:

On April 25, Wyoming's Teton County Board of Education (TCBE) voted 4-2 to ban Julius Lester’s When Dad Killed Mom (Silver Whistle) from the Jackson Hole Middle School (JHMS) library. However, after much attention from local media and the book’s author, district policy is being "reviewed and re-written so that incidents like this will not happen again," Board member Zia Yasrobie told BTW via e-mail.

The Southeast Booksellers Association (SEBA) recently announced the winners of the SEBA Book Awards. The winners of the 2002 awards will be honored at the "Rep Appreciation, Book Awards, and More Celebration" at Books & Books in Coral Gables, Florida on Thursday, September 19. The Awards are given to recognize the year's best books either by a Southern author or set in the South. This year’s winners are:

With its enthusiastic jacket endorsement from Jonathan Franzen ("Alive with intelligence, comedy, and inside dope ... sure-handedly captures the uncertainties of our times") and its choice as a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, Mark Costello's Big If (Norton) would seem to be the promising debut of a terrific new American writer. But, as it happens, Big If is in fact the second novel by Mark Costello -- though only the first to bear his name.

The Mountains & Plains Booksellers Association (MPBA) has announced the winners of the association's 2002 Regional Book Awards, which are presented annually "to honor outstanding books set in our region that were published in the prior year." The 2002 Regional Book Award winners are:

By 1936, two New Yorkers were touted as the greatest political leaders of the century -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Alfred Emanuel Smith Jr. While every American can recall some accomplishments of FDR, only those who lived through the 1920s and 1930s will likely even remember who Smith was.