Get This Book: The Autobiography of Mark Twain

The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Mark Twain, Harriet E. Smith, Benjamin Griffin, Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, Sharon K. Goetz, Leslie Diane Myrick
Hardcover: 760 pages
Publisher: University of California Press; First edition (November 15, 2010)
Language: English


Bob over at Fiction Prediction noted last week that The Autobiography of Mark Twain, released only a couple of weeks ago (& believed to have a first run of 75,000) is already showing up on eBay and AbeBooks. The eBay copy sold for $400, and the listings on AbeBooks are in the $200 - $300 range.


He also noted that Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Amazon are all sold out (post Black Friday). I just checked Amazon and they're listing 2 collectibles from $400, 3 used from $59.99, and 9 new from $39.99.


Barnes & Noble is listing 11 copies, 2 collectibles from $200, and 9 new from $23.85. Since the second printing hasn't hit stores yet, I'm guessing those "new" copies are first runs (although don't hold me to that).


Initially, the first run was thought to be 7,500 (current thinking, however, is that this was a typo, since so many major stores were carrying the title). This potential misunderstanding could explain why these first edition copies are listing for such a high price so quickly, but I'm guessing even at a first run of 75,000 the value of the book is going to be high.


Addendum: My mom tried to purchase the book through BN.com and just got a notice that it wouldn't be shipping until December 20th, so I'm guessing that's when the 2nd printing will become available.


I also went to Books-a-Million and they said that the whole state of North Carolina is sold out of this book. The store clerk was bemoaning the fact that the Greensboro store never even got their shipment of the first run.

Do You Know Who Tim Davys Is?

According to the Fantasy Book Critic Web site, Tim Davys is a pseudonym for a Swedish writer. Surprisingly, though, he has not been swept up in the recent fervor for Swedish novelists (unlike John Ajvide Lindqvist). Davys is the progenitor of the noir-esque Mollisan Town Quartet, which takes place in a world populated by stuffed animals.

I really don't know how this series got under my radar. Usually, I'm a magnet for quirky fiction (Jasper Fforde and Christopher Moore practically have their own shelves in my ever expansive bookcase). So, the fact that this author and title just crossed my virtual desk amazes me.

I recall eying Lanceheim, Davys' second in this odd little series, when it hit the New Fiction shelf, but for whatever reason, I never bought it. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people did the same, as I only found one review of the book on Amazon & noticed that new, hardcovers are selling for less than the price of shipping from Independent retailers.

From what I can tell, the critics seem to like the idea behind the series, but they didn't seem to like the execution of the second book.

The first book in the series, Amberville, completely escaped my notice. It got some decent reviews, but apparently didn't get much press - so, again, you can pick up a copy for less than the shipping charges.

Davys' third book, Tourquai will be released 2/15/11:

When Oswald Vulture, a rich and powerful finance mogul, is found beheaded in his office, it sets off a chain of events for the stuffed animal citizens of Mollisan Town that questions whether they are free or whether they are ruled by destiny in this third book of Tim Davy’s Mollisan Town quartet.

As I am one who enjoys the quirkier side of fiction, I am indeed intrigued to read this series. The collectibility of these books seems negligible. The highest listing I could find was for an uncorrected proof of Amberville - going for $35 on Abebooks. Alibris has a similar listing for $7. So, my friends, it looks like you'll just have to buy these books 'cuz you like them.

Indie Next Notables: November 2010

Daniel: A Novel, Henning Mankell (New Press)
Hardcover: 288 pages

U.K. Publisher: Harvill Secker, translated edition (2 Sep 2010) *shown

U.S. Publisher: New Press, translated edition (November 9, 2010)

Language: English

• Product Description: In the 1870s, Hans Bengler arrives in Cape Town from Småland, Sweden, driven by a singular desire: to discover an insect no one has seen before and name it after himself. But then he impulsively adopts a young San orphan, a boy he christens Daniel and brings with him back to Sweden—a quite different specimen than he first contemplated. Daniel is told to call Bengler "Father," taught to knock on doors and bow, and continually struggles to understand this strange new land of mud and snow that surrounds and seemingly entraps him. At the same time, he is haunted by visions of his murdered parents calling him home to Africa. Knowing that the only way home is by sea, he decides he must learn to walk on water if he is ever to reclaim his true place in the world.

Foreign Bodies, Cynthia Ozick (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Hardcover: 272 pages 

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; First edition (November 1, 2010) 

Language: English

• Booklist starred review: "Ozick’s heady fiction springs from her deep critical involvement in literature, especially her fascination with Henry James, which emboldened her to lift the plot of his masterpiece, The Ambassadors, and recast it in a taut and flaying novel that is utterly her own….Ozick’s dramatic inquiry into the malignance of betrayal; exile literal and emotional; the many tentacles of anti-Semitism; and the balm and aberrance of artistic obsession is brilliantly nuanced and profoundly disquieting."

The Instructions, Adam Levin (McSweeney's)

Hardcover: 1030 pages 

Publisher: McSweeney's (November 1, 2010) 

Language: English

• Publishers Weekly review: Only four days pass between the opening scene of boys waterboarding one another to the moment when 10-year-old Gurion Maccabee and his army attempt to take down their unfair school system, but in the dense, frenzied pages of Levin's outsized debut, those few days feel like forever. Gurion, who narrates and refers to the text as "a work of scripture," sees himself as the hero of a yet-to-be-recognized Jewish holiday that celebrates the birth of "perfect justice," and recruits an army of misfits and Torah scholars. But nothing happens quickly, and Levin is as content to tend to the screwy plot as he is to allow Gurion to go on extended digressions about Philip Roth and any number of other topics. Between the hubris it takes to expect readers to digest more than 1,000 pages about a tween who says "the likelihood that I was seemed to me to be increasing by the second" and the shoving in of e-mails, diagrams, and transcripts of television footage, the idea that this could be a great novel is overshadowed by the fact that this is a great big novel, shaggy and undisciplined, but with moments of brilliance. 
  

The Love Goddess' Cooking School, Melissa Senate (Gallery)
Paperback: 352 pages 
Publisher: Gallery; Original edition (October 26, 2010) 
Language: English

• Product Description: 
  • Holly Maguire’s grandmother Camilla was the Love Goddess of Blue Crab Island, Maine—a Milanese fortune-teller who could predict the right man for you, and whose Italian cooking was rumored to save marriages. Holly has been waiting years for her unlikely fortune: her true love will like sa cordula, an unappetizing old-world delicacy. But Holly can’t make a decent marinara sauce, let alone sa cordula. Maybe that’s why the man she hopes to marry breaks her heart. So when Holly inherits Camilla’s Cucinotta, she’s determined to forget about fortunes and love and become an Italian cooking teacher worthy of her grandmother’s legacy.
  But Holly’s four students are seeking much more than how to make Camilla’s chicken alla Milanese. Simon, a single father, hopes to cook his way back into his daughter’s heart. Juliet, Holly’s childhood friend, hides a painful secret. Tamara, a serial dater, can’t find the love she longs for. And twelve-year-old Mia thinks learning to cook will stop her dad, Liam, from marrying his phony lasagna-queen girlfriend. As the class gathers each week, adding Camilla’s essential ingredients of wishes and memories in every pot and pan, unexpected friendships and romances are formed—andtested. Especially when Holly falls hard for Liam . . . and learns a thing or two about finding her own recipe for happiness.
  
  
  

Visitation, Jenny Erpenbeck (New Directions)

Paperback: 192 pages 

Publisher: New Directions; First Edition edition (September 30, 2010) Language: English
Hardcover edition released October 7, 2010

• Publishers Weekly review: In this original and evocative novel, Erpenbeck (The Book of Words) charts the history of a property in the Brandenburg hills through snippets--temporarily opened windows offering brief, tantalizing glimpses before slamming shut. There is a Jewish girl murdered during the Holocaust; a disillusioned Communist activist who leaves Nazi Germany and returns after WWII; an architect who collaborated with Albert Speers on the Germania Project; two hard-partying structural engineering students who try to escape to the West, and so on. Amid all these protagonists, there is the recurring figure of "The Gardener," who goes about the bucolic business of maintaining the property with unwavering application. Erpenbeck's elliptical style, rife with naturalistic descriptions of landscape and geology, is better at describing the physical world than the emotional life of her characters, but in so doing, she hammers home her basic point--that people are part of the same continuum as the trees and glaciers that come and go over eons, and that "eternal life already exists during a human lifetime." 

Nightshade Reprinting Bacigalupi's Pump Six as a Paperback

Pump Six, Paolo Bacigalupi
Hardcover: 248 pages
Publisher: Night Shade Books (March 11, 2008)
Language: English


Originally published as a hard cover in 2008, a year prior to Bacigalupi's award winning The Windup Girl, Pump Six will be released as a paperback December 1, 2010.  


According to the publisher, "[t]he stories in Pump Six chart the evolution of Paolo Bacigalupi's work, including the Hugo nominated "Yellow Card Man," and the Sturgeon Award-winning story "The Calorie Man," both set in the world of his novel The Windup Girl."


A signed, limited edition of Pump Six (published in 2008), lists for between $600 - $1,000 on both AbeBooks and Amazon (print run of 100). It's not quite clear if the limited edition run is considered THE first edition, but I've not been able to find other listings claiming to be the definitive first. I did find a listing claiming to be a "second printing" of the first edition for less than $100, although average prices (for what I assume is the second printing) run around $250. You can check price listings @ Amazon.com, Alibris, Amazon.ca, Barnes & Noble.


Update from Jason over at Nightshade: He says that both the limited, signed edition and the first printing were released at the same time - so they'd both be considered firsts. There you have it.

In the Post: The Paris Enigma...

The Paris Enigma, Pablo De Santis
Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Harper; First U.S. Edition (November 11, 2008)
Language: English


Product Description: Discriminating general readers as well as whodunit fans will enjoy this outstanding puzzler, winner of the first Casa de las Americas prize for best Latin American novel. Argentine author De Santis conjures up a veritable Justice League of 19th-century master sleuths--the 12 Detectives--who meet for the first time in Paris, at the 1889 World's Fair. Argentine Sigmundo Salvatrio, loyal assistant to founding member Renaldo Craig, represents the absent Craig. When Louis Darbon, one of two claimants among the 12 for the title of Detective of Paris, falls to his death from the Eiffel Tower shortly before the fair's opening, Darbon's rival, Polish expatriate Viktor Arkazy, takes Salvatrio on as his apprentice, and the pair struggle to solve the mystery before more victims are claimed. De Santis adroitly explores such issues as the difference between image and reality while providing intelligent and entertaining discussions of alternate approaches to detection. [Publisher's Weekly, starred review].

The Legal Limit, Martin Clark (signed)
Paperback: 416 pages
Publisher: Vintage; First Vintage Contemporaries Edition (aka: reprint edition), June 2, 2009
Language: English


Chicago Sun-Times Review: In this crime/legal thriller, Clark explores the boundaries between law and justice, sin and forgiveness, fraternal bonds and betrayal. Mason stands at the center of an ethical dilemma, but he is no less compelling than his brother, their mother, and even Mason's partner. Clark "draws characters as well as Scott Turow and crafts plots as well as John Grisham," notes the Oregonian, but reviewers agreed that Clark's background has given him superior understanding of legal intricacies. Humor, sharp, regional dialogue, and impeccable plotting make for an unstoppable narrative. Only theLos Angeles Times faulted Clark for sinking "into that soft-focus therapeutic argot that now passes for American moralizing." In the end, however,The Legal Limit compellingly shows that "doing justice does not always flow from a rigid application of the law." [Bookmarks Magazine]

Huge, James W. Fuerst (signed)
Paperback: 305 pages
Publisher: Three Rivers Press; 1 edition (July 7, 2009)
Language: English


Product Description: In his mind's eye, precocious 12-year-old Eugene Huge Smalls, the narrator of Fuerst's quirky debut, is the lineal descendant of Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade and other pulp detectives he admires. When the nursing home where his beloved grandmother stays is vandalized, Huge sees a chance to follow in their footsteps by solving the crime. What follows is a picaresque romp around suburban New Jersey as Huge misreads clues, misinterprets motives and mistakes mundane incidents for diabolical schemes as only an inexperienced adolescent with a restless imagination can. Largely plotless, this coming-of-age story is full of awkward digressions. Still, Fuerst demonstrates a sensitive ear for contemporary teen talk, delicacy at handling the amusingly contentious relationship between Huge and his older sister and mom, and skill at conveying a child's-eye view of the world that is full of nostalgia, humor, candor and emotions that all readers can relate to. [Publisher's Weekly]

Hudson Picks it's Best Books of 2010

Yet another "Best Books of 2010" list, this time from Hudson Booksellers (located at an airport terminal near you). A company press release stated that the books were "selected through a nominated short list and voting process by a panel of the company's booksellers and managers across the country. Books were selected for achievements ranging from literary style and innovation, entertainment value and readability, to timeliness and treatment of subjects and themes. The Big Short by Michael Lewis was chosen as Book of the Year.


Best Fiction (listed in alphabetical order by author): 

1. The Passage – Justin Cronin* 
2. Room – Emma Donoghue* 
3. A Visit from the Goon Squad– Jennifer Egan, 
4. Freedom – Jonathan Franzen* 
5. Tinkers – Paul Harding* 
6. The Eden Hunter – Skip Horack 
7. Matterhorn – Karl Marlantes* 
8. Super Sad True Love Story – Gary Shteyngart* 
9. Bitter in the Mouth – Monique Truong 
10. The Lonely Polygamist – Brady Udall*

*hypermodern collectibles

Best Non Fiction:

1. The Possessed – Elif Batuman, 
2. Let's Take the Long Way Home – Gail Caldwell, 
3. The Wave – Susan Casey, 
4. Sh*t My Dad Says – Justin Halpern, 
5. Unbroken – Laura Hillenbrand, 
6. Fatal System Error –Joseph Menn, 
7. Birdology – Sy Montgomery, 
8. The Emperor of All Maladies – Siddhartha Mukherjee,
9. Last Call – Daniel Okrent, 
10. Packing for Mars – Mary Roach

Best Young Readers: 

1. Mockingjay – Suzanne Collins, 
2. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth – Jeff Kinney, 
3. I am Number Four – Pittacus Lore, 
4. It's a Book – Lane Smith, 
5. Art & Max – David Wiesner

Best Business Interest: 

1. Switch – Chip & Dean Heath, 
2. Delivering Happiness – Tony Hsieh, 
3. Getting Naked – Patrick Lencioni, 
4. The Big Short – Michael Lewis, 
5. Aftershock – Robert Reich

This Year's National Book Award Winner Is...

Announced last night at the 2010 National Book Awards Ceremony, Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon beat out Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier and Nicole Krauss' Great House to win the 2010 NBA for fiction.  Other nominees included:

• Lionel Shriver, So Much for That  (Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)
• Karen Tei Yamashita, I Hotel (Coffee House Press)

From Publisher's Weekly: Gordon's [fourth] novel begins and ends at a backwoods race track in early-1970s West Virginia, where horse trainer Tommy Hansel dreams up a scam. He'll run four horses in claiming races at long odds and get out before anyone realizes how good his horses are. But at a track as small as Indian Mound Downs, where everyone knows everybody's business, Hansel's hopes are quickly dashed.


First editions are currently listing for between $20 - $55 on AbeBooks, Alibris, and Amazon.


Also announced were awards for Young People's Lit, Poetry, and Non Fiction.

Young People's Literature winner: Kathryn Erskine, Mockingbird

other nominees included, Paolo Bacigalupi, Ship Breaker; Laura McNeal, Dark Water; Walter Dean Myers; Lockdown Rita Williams-Garcia, One Crazy Summer  

Poetry winner: Terrance Hayes, Lighthead

other nominees included, Kathleen Graber, The Eternal City; James Richardson, By the Numbers; C.D. Wright, One with Others; Monica Youn, Ignatz.

Non Fiction winner: Patti Smith, Just Kids

other nominees included,  Barbara DemickNothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea; John W. Dower, Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9-11, Iraq; Justin Spring, Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward; Megan K. Stack, Every Man in This Village Is a Liar: An Education in War

Warren Wins Governor General’s Literary Award

Dianne Warren has won Canada's Governor General’s Literary Award for her debut novel Cool Water. The $25,000 prize was announced Tuesday November 16.  

From the product description: Juliet, Saskatchewan, is a blink-of-an-eye kind of town--the welcome sign announces a population of 1,011 people--and it's easy to imagine that nothing happens on its hot and dusty streets. Situated on the edge of the Little Snake sand hills, Juliet and its inhabitants are caught in limbo between a century-old promise of prosperity and whatever lies ahead.

But the heart of the town beats in the rich and overlapping stories of its people: the foundling who now owns the farm his adoptive family left him; the pregnant teenager and her mother, planning a fairytale wedding; a shy couple, well beyond middle age, struggling with the recognition of their feelings for one another; a camel named Antoinette; and the ubiquitous wind and sand that forever shift the landscape. Their stories bring the prairie desert and the town of Juliet to vivid and enduring life.

Other titles/authors on the shortlist included: 

• Annabel , Kathleen Winter
• Waiting for Joe, Sandra Birdsell
• Room, Emma Donoghue 
• Motorcycles & Sweetgrass, Drew Hayden Taylor

• To note, Amazon.ca is temporarily out of stock, which probably speaks to a lower print run. The title doesn't currently have a U.S. publisher, nor could I find plans to release the title in the U.S. Used copies can be found on AbeBooks, Alibris, and Amazon for between $17 - $27 (U.S.)
• 
  
• Cool Water, Dianne Warren
• Hardcover: 326 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins Canada (March 8, 2010)
• Language: English
• Retail Price: CDN$29.99
• Average listing: US$27