We’ve all sacrificed for our loved ones. But there’s a big difference between letting your significant other watch hour after hour of LA Law (as I did in one relationship) and doing something that will drastically improve his or her life . . . or even save it.
Moonface, a memoir on sale tomorrow, is the story of Angela Balcita, whose then-boyfriend (now husband) offered her his kidney when hers began to fail. Though there is clearly plenty of medical stuff in the book, it’s more a story of love than of medicine, as you can see in the below video from USA Today (accompanying article here):
Angela will be touring in February and March—check here to see if she’ll be near you. Or just click on the link to check out her website, which is lovely.
There’s a book that just hit the bestseller list this week that you might have heard of: Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. An excerpt of the book, entitled “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior,” appeared on WallStreetJournal.com with the tagline “Can a regimen of no playdates, no TV, no computer games and hours of music practice create happy kids? And what happens when they fight back?” and ignited a ton of debate online. Personally, I was horrified at the thought of a childhood with no TV, as my own was fairly TV-heavy (and I still read more than any other kid I knew.)
One of the voices coming out against the style of parenting practiced by Chua is one of our authors, Lac Su. His book, I Love Yous Are For White People, offers a very different perspective on the type of parenting described in Chua’s book. He had no piano lessons or upscale education like Amy Chua’s kids; he had not just a Tiger Mother but the ultimate Tiger Father, whose harrowing parenting approach led Lac to a dangerous life in the Crips gang in LA but, eventually, through his own strength, to college and beyond.
You can read Lac’s essay about BHOTTM on AOL News here. His parents went even farther than Amy Chua in some ways, and it’s just as shocking.
(This post is mostly for booksellers. If you’re a blogger, rest assured that you’ll be offered galleys of these books very soon as well. And if you’re just a general Harper Perennial fan, they’ll both be available this summer.)
Hi booksellers! While many of you are in DC this week for the winter institute, I know that some of you are still at home, selling books. But we don’t want you to miss out! Below are descriptions of the two books we’re featuring at the institute: Seeds and The Beekeeper’s Lament. If you’re interested, I’ve got galleys and I would love to give them to you. Just fill out the google form below the descriptions—and if I run out, I’ll send you a copy once we’ve got finished copies.
Ready?
Seeds by Richard Horan:
Seeds is the baby of Carl Lennertz, sales guy, friend to indies everywhere, and now sometime-editor. It’s about a guy—a normal guy, a college professor—who decides to travel around the country collecting seeds from the trees outside writers’ homes. Part memoir, part nature book, part travelogue, it’s already gotten praise from Thomas Powers, William Bryan Logan, Spike Carlsen, Bill McKibben, and many others. On sale April 19.
The Beekeeper’s Lament by Hannah Nordhaus:
The Beekeeper’s Lament focuses mainly on John Miller, who brings his bees from crop to crop. Bees are in more danger than ever before—from bears to bugs to a mysterious epidemic called colony collapse disorder—leaving our food chain at risk. But Miller, a true homespun hero, forges ahead with determination and humor. The Beekeeper’s Lament is the story of him and his bees—a moving portrait of a man in the new natural world. Bernd Heinrich, author of Winter World, “loved it,” saying: “With great reporting and great writing, Hannah Nordhaus gives a new angle on an ever-evolving topic.” On sale May 24.
I’d like to call your attention to one of the books we have going on sale today. It’s a favorite of mine, and the author is well-known around the office for being one of the nicest we have.
Drinking Closer to Home is the story of siblings Anna, Portia, and Emery, who travel home after their mother’s health scare. It’s about their insane childhoods, and how they led to their sometimes-not-so-successful adulthoods. It’s about California, and growing up, and learning to love your family for who they are, not who you wish they were. It’s also really, really funny, so funny that at one point my boyfriend heard me laughing from clear across his apartment and came in to find out what was so hysterical.
Some news from our inbox: Two small presses have offered lifetime subscriptions to readers who get tattoos based on their books. The post at the link notes the interesting implications of this for other companies, asking what would happen if McDonald’s offered free Big Macs to anyone with a tattoo of the golden arches. (Which of course leads me to wonder: would I get a chipotle tattoo for free burrito bowls?) As for Harper Perennial, we can’t offer any lifetime subscriptions, but if someone showed up with a tattoo of our olive logo I would happily throw them some books (and be incredibly weirded out.)
And just for the record, I would not get a chipotle tattoo.
A while back, we ran a contest asking people which books they’d love to see as olive editions, promising to randomly pick a winner to win a set of the new ones. We let this contest go on a little longer than normal to give as many people as possible a chance to enter, so, to make up for all that time, I’m not going to give away one set . . . I’m going to give away FIVE!
The winners are:
Sharon
Vic
Traci
Kate
Jean
I’ll be emailing you all shortly to get your addresses. For those of you who didn’t win, if you’re still interested in the olive editions, stay tuned for the next entry.
So, somewhere out there in the world there existed this photo of Bob Dylan and The Band jamming with Cher:
Inspired, our friends at the improvisational writing site QuickMuse asked Rick Moody and David Lehman to compose responses. You can find them here and here. But they didn’t stop there. Now, QuickMuse and the 14th Street Y are also presenting Moody and Lehman in conversation about Bob Dylan on January 19.
What do you guys think—what led to Bob Dylan and Cher playing together? What the heck did they talk about? What did they play?
