Book Buzz

• Remember JK Rowling? The Tales of Beedle the Bard will be released December 4. Get in your library queue now. Or follow the rest of the nation and preorder it on Amazon. Currently, the book is #8 and #16 on its bestsellers list.
  

• Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows’s The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society is #21. USA Today calls the book about the Nazi occupation of the British island “one of the summer’s sleeper hits.”
  

• New releases this week include Sandra Brown’s Smoke Screen and Faye Kellerman’s The Mercedes Coffin. I first read Brown when she was a romance writer, but I like her even better for her thrillers.
  

• Romance Writers of America announced its 2008 RITA awards. My favorite title? Dead Girls are Easy by Terri Garey. If romance isn’t your dish, the Hugo Award for best science fiction novel went to Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.

• David Carr appeared on The Colbert Report last week to promote his memoir, The Night of the Gun, about life as a New York Times columnist and “cokehead.” Colbert asked him which was more damaging, drugs or The Times? Carr might change his answer since The Times review describes the book as “flat.”
  

• Obama Nation will be #1 on The New York Times bestseller list on Sunday. NPR reported on the anti-Barack Obama book which perpetuates rampant falsehoods about the presidential candidate, including ties to Islam and drug use. I can't believe this book is a bestseller, and I am afraid of and for our nation (and don’t even get me started on the U.S. response to the Georgian invasion). USA Today gives an overview of political titles, including Obama Nation.