November 23, 2011

The Holly Channel is back on XM. I heard ads for it, but refuse to listen 'til Friday. I prefer doing my holidays in order. This morning I was in the supermarket shopping at 7:45. I told my husband we would be done and home by 8:30. He doubted me. I should have bet him; I was right. For some reason that defies me, they were out of fresh thyme and sage, thus there will be a second trip later, but that one is NOT my fault. I think last year it took four trips to get everything. It’s a record that I do not want to beat!

Last night I went to a screening of Hugo, which is an adaptation of Brian Selznick’s brilliant book, THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET. It’s spellbindingly brilliant. I saw it in 3D and loved the way the format made viewers feel like they are part of the story. It was lush and grand and stylized and just wonderful. Great choice for this weekend.

Also last night, Katherine in our office went to the Lady Gaga event at The New Museum where she was first in line to get a signed copy of LADY GAGA X TERRY RICHARDSON, a book of photos Richardson compiled after a year of following Gaga everywhere with a camera. See the photo above. Apparently, this is Lady Gaga acting "naturally." I confess that I have a weakness for the outrageousness of Lady Gaga! I wonder if I am too old to be one of her “Little Monsters.”

As promised, I have written a blog about my weekend at the Miami Book Fair, which you can read here. As always it was a great experience, and I saw/heard/met MANY authors who I was not familiar with. You can see me photographed above with the Henley Family of Wimpy Kid fame, which was part of the promotion for CABIN FEVER at the Fair. Could not resist the opportunity!

I am happy to announce our latest Suspense/Thriller Author Spotlight feature. It’s Raymond Khoury, whose latest book, THE DEVIL’S ELIXIR, will be in stores on December 22nd. Once again, Raymond delivers a brilliant thriller, but this time he pushes his writing to a new level, alternating first and third person voices throughout the book. Sean Reilly and Tess Chaykin, who you may remember from his Templar books, are back. This time, they are on the hunt for a drug kingpin who has formulated a catastrophic drug, and they are also embroiled with the DEA as they try to track it down. And along the way, Sean comes across a surprise that ups the stakes higher than he would have thought. His writing is vivid, and I found myself thinking breathe more than once as I read. We have 20 copies of THE DEVIL’S ELIXIR to give away to readers who enter here by Thursday, December 8th at noon ET. By the way, this would be an excellent holiday gift, and the timing could not be better for it to be just that!

Yesterday, we posted the first of our Holiday Cheer contests, which was for A CHRISTMAS BLIZZARD by Garrison Keillor. Our winners will be posted early next week. If you didn’t get a chance to enter, no worries --- there will be three contests next week for OMG PANCAKES! by Jim Belosic, CHRISTMAS AT COLD COMFORT FARM by Stella Gibbons and WHEN SHE WOKE by Hillary Jordan, and more in the weeks to come. Keep checking back on the site for your chance to win one of the books in our Holiday Cheer feature, and sign up here to receive our special Holiday Cheer newsletter so you know when to enter. We love spreading holiday cheer this way.

Also, be sure to check out our other holiday feature, What to Give, What to Get, for some great ideas for your friends, family…and yourself! This week we are spotlighting our Faces & Places category for all you nonfiction lovers.

As part of our holiday features, we are also bringing back our Author Holiday Blogs. Starting Monday, we will be featuring new blog posts from authors every day of the holidays! Click here to see some of last year's Holiday Blog posts. And don't forget to check in on Monday for the first of this new season.

Bookreporter.com is not the only one of our sites caught up in the holiday spirit. If you have a teen, be sure to let him or her know about our Holiday Bundle of Cheer Contest and Feature on Teenreads.com. As part of the contest, five lucky teens will walk away with holiday “bundles” --- stockings filled with some great books and other holiday goodies. To check out the titles we are giving away and to read more about the feature, click here.

In other teen-related news, this week we re-launched Teenreads.com with a whole new look. Take a peek. It’s the next step in the total relaunch of all the sites in The Book Report Network. We still are moving over a number of features (with Teenreads.com it’s 14 years of content, while Bookreporter.com was 15 years!) but hope to have it all completed by May. FaithfulReader.com, our site for Christian readers, has a new look as well. Take a look at that here. Also, FaithfulReader.com contests will now be promoted along with Bookreporter.com contests on this page, so it will be easy to enter all the contests in one place.

Speaking of housekeeping, we heard from a few of you that the design of our Word of Mouth feature on the new site was not as easy to read as it had been in the past. Thus, we worked on the page. Let me know if it’s now easier to read, or if you have any suggestions. As always, if you enter our Word of Mouth contest by telling us what you are reading, you could win three books. The prizes this contest period are THE DROP by Michael Connelly, MICRO by Michael Crichton and Richard Preston, and THE SCOTTISH PRISONER by Diana Gabaldon. Click here to go to this feature.

On a sad note, I wanted to note the passing of science fiction/fantasy author Anne McCaffrey. Her best known novels were those in her Dragonriders of Pern series, a New York Times bestselling series that includes DRAGON'S FIRE: A New Novel of Pern. Our reviewer Stephen Hubbard called this book "strong and exciting" and explains "millions of readers worldwide have been caught up in her wondrous tales set in this other world, a mixture of science fiction and fantasy." She died of a stroke in Wicklow County, Ireland. She was 85 years old.

Though this is a short week, we still have a full review lineup for you thanks to our stellar editorial team.

First up is our review of Walter Isaacson’s biography, STEVE JOBS. Reviewer Harvey Freedenberg says, "Walter Isaacson’s book is more a work of journalism than it is the kind of biography he’s written of subjects like Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin. With that caveat, it’s a thoroughly researched (more than 40 interviews with Jobs and over 100 with family, friends, business rivals and others) and comprehensive portrait of the life of an American business icon."

Also among our reviews, THE HOUSE OF SILK is a new Sherlock Holmes novel from Anthony Horowitz. By the way, there will be a new Sherlock Holmes movie that's coming out in December, so it’s a good time for things Sherlockian! We are also featuring reviews of collections by author favorites Daphne du Maurier, whose book THE DOLL is a collection of her “lost” short stories, and Jonathan Lethem, who has just published THE ECSTASY OF INFLUENCE, a collection of his nonfiction work.

In this week’s poll, we want to know if you prefer watching an author video or reading an author interview. And in our Question of the Week, we follow up by asking you to name up to three authors you would like to see interviewed on video or in print.

And if you are in a reading group, answer our current poll on ReadingGroupGuides.com. We want to know if your group would read a book if there is no discussion guide available for it.

After the turkey extravaganza tomorrow and besides turkey leftover eating, the weekend plans include hunting around the attic for Christmas decorations and getting some decorating done. We are going to see Paul Simon on Sunday night. This concert totally crept up on me. I bought the tickets a while ago and promptly forgot about them until they arrived in the mail this week. I bought something called the “Silver Circle” tickets so we would have great seats. The Silver package includes a Paul Simon exclusive merchandise item and collectible laminate, which will be shipped 30 days after the show date. They go on to tell me that the merchandise is not needed for entry to the show, which is clearly a good thing as it arrives after the show. Also, the collectible laminate is "commemorative only and does not gain or authorize access into the venue or backstage areas." I love legalese. I also wonder what it IS!

And these 4.5 days of downtime also should mean lots of time for reading. My stacks await me.

I am off to chop chop chop, which is the staccato sound of Thanksgiving. May there be no need for bandages. I am jazzed about the scraps that will go into my compost pile. I know. I am easily amused.

Here’s wishing you all the Happiest of Thanksgivings. May you enjoy celebrating with family and friends. We all give thanks to you, our readers. We appreciate you…thanks so much for reading!

Carol Fitzgerald (Carol@bookreporter.com)

More about THE DEVIL'S ELIXIR:
In Raymond Khoury's million-copy-selling Templar novels, FBI agent Sean Reilly and his girlfriend, archaeologist Tess Chaykin, traveled the globe to unravel ancient mysteries with present-day ramifications. In THE DEVIL'S ELIXIR, Sean and Tess find themselves in a race --- against the clock, against drug kingpins, and even against the DEA --- to merge two divergent trails, one several hundred years old, the other as current as a heartbeat, which together may lead humanity to the brink of annihilation.
 

THE ANGEL ESMERALDA: Nine Stories by Don DeLillo (Fiction/Short Stories)
Set in Greece, the Caribbean, Manhattan, a white-collar prison and outer space, these nine stories are an introduction to Don DeLillo’s iconic voice --- from the rich, startling, jazz-infused rhythms of his early work to the spare, distilled, monastic language of the later stories. Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman.
 

Poll:

Do you prefer watching an author video or reading an online interview?

I usually prefer watching an author video.
I usually prefer reading an online interview.
Only if I like the author a lot would I prefer watching a video.
If I like the author a lot, I would prefer reading an interview.
I enjoy watching author videos, but dislike waiting for them to load.
I have no preference; I like doing both.
I have no preference; I don’t do either.
I’m not sure how I feel.

-Click here to answer the poll.

Question:

Name up to three authors you would love to see interviewed on video or in an online interview.

-Click here to answer the question.