On Monday, Google debuted their new Google eBookstore, and will now compete with Apple and Amazon for a share of the lucrative eBooks pie. As announced on the company’s official blog, consumers will be able to “browse and search through the largest eBooks collection in the world with more than three million titles including hundreds of thousands for sale.” This launch is significant in that Google eBooks are not linked to a specific device but are compatible across many platforms “— everything from laptops to netbooks to tablets to smartphones to e-readers.” The books themselves are stored in the cloud instead of on an individual piece of hardware. “That means you can access your eBooks like you would messages in Gmail or photos in Picasa – using a free, password-protected Google account with unlimited eBooks storage.” Read more…

Avi Steinberg’s intelligent and amusing new memoir Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian (Nan A. Talese, 416pgs) recounts his two year stint working as a librarian at Boston’s Deer Island prison library. The poorly motivated, but highly educated Harvard grad found the job posted innocuously listed on Craigslist, and was hired even though he did not hold a degree in Library Science. Despite poor conditions, strict prison regulations and interacting with felons on a daily basis, Steinberg found the job oddly appealing. In addition to duties common to most librarians such as checking out books and helping patrons with research, the 20-something academic also had the more colorful duties of examining books for “kites”, prohibited messages traded between prisoners of the opposite sex, and keeping an eye out for any library materials that could potentially be fashioned into weapons. “I am living my (quixotic) dream: a book-slinger with a badge and a streetwise attitude, part bookworm, part badass,” quotes a review in USA TODAY. Read more…

A man of many talents and interests, Steve Martin is best known for his comedic work on film and television. But the funny man has a cerebral side, too, and is also a Grammy-winning bluegrass banjo musician and author of several books, plays and memoirs. His latest novel, An Object of Beauty (Grand Central Publishing, 304pgs) debuted last week to much critical praise. The story follows Lacey Yeager, an ambitious young art dealer, through her rise in the art world and is narrated by an art critic friend who observes her climb to the top. We here at In the Stax try to avoid works by celebrity authors in general, since the writing and plot lines are usually mediocre at best. But experience with Martin’s past work has proved that he is a wry and insightful writer. Hopefully An Object of Beauty continues in that vein. Read more…

By Ally Condie
Dutton Juvenile | 369pgs
Release Date: November 30, 2010

Summary:
The future is not as perfect as the ruling Society wants its citizens to believe in the new young adult novel Matched by Ally Condie. Seventeen year-old Cassia lives in a world free of disease and the stress of making difficult life choices. Everything, ranging from where people work, who they marry, and even when they die, is decided by the big-brother-like Society. When Cassia attends her matching ceremony and sees her best friend Xander appear on the screen as designated mate, she is thrilled at the pairing. Yet, her pleasure turns to puzzlement as the face of a neighbor boy, Ky, briefly flickers on the screen before it fades out. The Society is quick to pass off the incident as an unusual technical error, but Cassia finds herself inexplicably drawn to Ky, a mysterious orphan. As the budding romance grows, so does the young woman’s awareness of the world around her. No longer living unconsciously, Cassia cannot ignore the cruelty and control of the dystopian culture she lives in. Read more…

Twenty years ago, amid the swirl of controversy surrounding the publication of The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie was inspired to write the children’s book Haroun and the Sea of Stories for his 11-year-old son Zafar. The modern fable follows Haroun, the son of a a great storyteller, on his quest into the World of Magic to find a way to restore his father’s creative talents. When Rushdie’s younger son, Milan, read the book years later, he requested a book of his own from his father. This request coincided with the author’s plan to revisit Haroun’s world. “It had always been in my mind to try to do a second one, and this kind of prompted me to do it,” Rushdie explains to The Boston Globe. The new book Luka and the Fire of Life, finished just in time for Milan’s 12th birthday, is a sequel to Haroun, but the story features a new hero and stands on its own. “I wanted to create a new, imaginative world and a new reason for going there,” states the writer. Read more…

©2010 Warner Bros.

Last weekend’s ticket sales have proclaimed The Boy Who Lived to be king of the box office with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I raking in $125.1 million in the U.S. This is the biggest opening for the franchise and the sixth largest opening for any film. Ever. President of domestic distribution for Warner Bros., Dan Fellman attributes a large part of the franchise’s success to young adults (age 18-34) “and their aging process.” “When we first started Harry Potter and cast 10-year-old Daniel Radcliffe in the title role, parents drove their 10-year-olds to see the movies. Today, those same kids are now driving themselves to the midnight shows,” he tells The Wall Street Journal. When the first film was released, only about 10% of the audience was in the 18-34 year old demographic. But, with the 7th (and penultimate) installment, 25% of the audience is now in that age group. Read more…

Mark Twain has still got it. One hundred years after his death, the author has achieved a spot on the bestsellers list with the recently released Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1 (University of California Press, 760pgs), the first in a series of three volumes. At the age of 74, just four short years before he passed away, Twain used his oratory and storytelling skills to dictate the majority of the 500,000-word autobiography to his personal secretary Isabel Van Kleek Lyon and several stenographers. According to an article in USA TODAY, “Twain ordered that the full, unexpurgated text, marked by rants against Wall Street and U.S. foreign policy, not be published until 100 years after his death.” Read more…

By Siddhartha Mukherjee
Scribner | 592pgs
Release Date: November 16, 2010

Summary:
Cancer physician and acclaimed science writer Siddhartha Mukherjee delineates the history of cancer in his new book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. To tell the detailed story of this insidious disease, the oncologist cites research and treatment methods from physicians through the ages, beginning with an ancient papyrus written by Egyptian physician Imhotep around 1600 B.C., which contains the oldest known written cancer diagnosis. Mukherjee also touches on the birth of chemotherapy, the groundbreaking advances made by Dr. Sidney Farber in treating childhood leukemia, and his partnership with philanthropist Mary Lasker to increase awareness and advance cancer research. Nearly 600,000 Americans will be killed by cancer this year. Worldwide, almost seven million cancer victims will die. The author illuminates this terrifying topic to educate readers and de-mystify the illness. He writes with the deep knowledge and compassion of one who has spent years working directly with people stricken with this dreaded disease. Read more…

Daniel Radcliffe poses for ALA's series of Harry Potter Celebrity READ posters.

In honor of the Harry Potter books and the contributions author J.K. Rowling has made in encouraging literacy and inspiring young readers, the stars of the film franchise recently posed for the American Library Association’s Celebrity READ posters. Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson and Alan Rickman are featured in a series of four posters holding books of their own choosing. Radcliffe, the film embodiment of the boy wizard, spoke with American Libraries about the book he selected and how working in the Harry Potter films has turned him into a book lover. The young actor posed with The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. “I’ve been obsessed with the novel ever since I read it about a year ago. I’ve always been a huge fan of Magical Realism. It’s an inspiring genre in which writers can just let their imaginations go wild and wonderful…I’ve read it twice now, and I just received an English first edition (Collins and Harvill, 1967) with a beautiful cover as a birthday present. That’s the one that appears on the READ poster.” Read more…

"Dust Devil" is the follow up picture book to the Caldecott winner "Swamp Angel."

In a post for The Children’s Book Review, Lori Calabrese addresses the diminishing role that picture books play in the lives of young children and lists a number of reasons why picture books are still important. In the past year sales of picture books have dropped, and while part of the dip can be blamed on the economy, a shift in parental behavior is also part of the cause. Today, many parents are pushing their young children to forgo the picture books for the more text-heavy chapter books in order to excellerate their reading skills and become academically competitive. But by doing this, parents are ignoring the key role picture books play in their child’s development. Among the main reasons why these charming and colorful books still matter, is the quality of their content. Chapter books may seem deceptively advanced, but “their vocabulary and sentence structure can be considered simplistic when compared with older level picture books. Many picture books are written at a higher reading level, use amazingly complex vocabularies and offer interesting plots.” Read more…