Book News
I’ll read what he’s reading.
“Watch the best-seller lists,” predicted The New Yorker recently. And they were right. President Barack Obama, it seems, has only to be seen near a book for it to soar to the top of the lists.
Most recently, the book is “Netherland,” a novel by Joseph O’Neill. Obama told The New York Times Magazine that he had turned to novels as a respite from briefings in the evenings, and apparently “Netherland” is one of the books he’d been reading.
Sales of the book shot up after Obama’s mention, says bookseller industry newsletter ShelAwarness, which also reports that Vintage Books moved up the publication date of the trade paperback edition to early May, from June 2.
Of course it’s not the first time a book has benefited from presidential proximity. Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “A Team of Rivals” felt the magic of the Obama effect before he had even reached office, and more recently “Open Veins of Latin America,” by Eduardo Galeano, had its unlikely moment in the sun after Obama was seen holding the copy presented to him by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
csmonitor.com
First Lines
Little Lamb Lost, by Margaret Fenton
I believed I could make a difference in the world until the day Michael Hennessy died. Maybe I inherited this crazy conviction from my father. Decades ago, he defied my grandfather, a White Citizens Council member, and became a Freedom Rider. Or maybe it came from my mother, who, before I was even the proverbial twinkle in her eye, marched with Dr. King from Selma to Montgomery. Their passion for social justice guided me, inevitably, to my career in social work. Make the earth a better place, Claire, they’d said. That was their legacy.
It wasn’t an easy legacy. It took fifty- hour work weeks, endless paperwork, and a lot of difficult choices. I’d worried myself out of many a good night’s sleep, questioning whether I’d made the right decision to leave young victims in a certain home, with certain people. Wondering whether or not mommy and daddy had squandered the food money on booze, cigarettes, and drugs. Hoping the kids would go to bed without fear, hunger, or bruises.
Over the years I’d developed a sense for recognizing the families that weren’t going to make it, the parents who couldn’t hold it together. Usually I was able to get the kids out before the situation totally derailed and anyone got hurt. I was good at reading people. And I’d never lost one. No child under my care had ever died.
Until that Tuesday in June.
Children’s series best sellers
1. Twilight Saga, by Stephenie Meyer
2. Diary of a Wimpy Kid, by Jeff Kinney
3. House of Night, by PC Cast and Kristin Cast
4. The Mortal Instruments, by Cassandra Clare
5. Night World, by L.J. Smith
6. Maximum Ride, by James Patterson
7. The 39 Clues, by Scholastic
8. Percy Jackson and the Olympians, by Rick Riordan
9. Magic Tree House, by Mary Pope Osborne, illustrated by Sal Murdocca
10. Junie B. Jones, by Barbara Park, illustrated by Denise Brunkus
Publishers Weekly
