Yesterday on a bitterly cold evening, I walked from my office on East 25th Street down to the New School in Greenwich Village to hear 24 of the 30 finalists for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Awards read brief excerpts from their nominated works. Since my job limits my precious reading time to the categories I assign (popular and genre fiction; natural history and sciences), I was curious to hear from the authors of the nominated autobiographies, works of criticism, biographies, literary novels, poetry collections, and general nonfiction.

I was not disappointed. I felt like a kid in a Baskin-Robbins store, sampling its 31 ice cream flavors from classic vanilla to yummy pistachio almond. Each author reflected his or her own unique reading and writing style. Comics artist Alison Bechdel displayed panels from her poignant graphic novel memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic as she narrated the story. Flaubert biographer Frederick Brown’s mellifluous voice and perfect French accent conjured up the rainy, muddy funeral of Flaubert’s dear friend, novelist George Sand. Novelist Dave Eggers introduced the real-life hero of his heartbreaking What is the What, Sudanese refugee Valentino Achak Deng, who movingly read the book’s final paragraph. And poet Daisy Fried, with two-month-old Quinn strapped to her chest (how’s that for a captive audience?) revealed her gritty, streetwise view of life in My Brother is Getting Arrested Again.  

For those who missed the reading or don’t live in New York City, all is not lost. BookTV on C-Span 2 plans to air the reading on Sunday March 11 at 7pm and Monday March 12 at 12am. For readers interested in learning more about the nominees, the NBCC blog Critical Mass is running an interesting series, “30 Books in 30 Days”, that profiles the authors and their books. The winners will be announced tonight in a ceremony at the New School.

There comes a moment in every editor’s life when she just wants to scream, “Eat me!” at a precarious stack of galleys. This was my situation a few days ago as I was sorting through the diet and fitness titles. In all seriousness, I hardly need a gym membership given how many of these books I have to haul from the Bookroom to my desk, where I do my assigning. This round, I counted no fewer than 34, out of which I could assign only three.

To call this overkill is an understatement. I’m of the mind it’s an epidemic. Americans are addicted to the idea that there’s an alternative to weight loss beyond eating less and exercising. The publishing world feeds that delusion with an appealing goulash of gimmicks—see Jim Karas’s The Cadio-Free Diet (Simon Spotlight Entertainment, May), Joe Marion’s The Cheat To Lose Diet (Crown, May), and Ronald Glassman’s The Alpha Solution for Permanent Weight Loss: Harnass the Power of Your Subconscious Mind To Change Your Relationship with Food—Forever (April, Broadway).

Although it’s my job to bring some of these books to librarians’ attention, I take solace in the fact that there are voices of dissent out there. Just when I was about to lose it over another sugar-water diet, I came across Gina Kolata’s latest book, Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss—And the Myths and Realities of Dieting (May, Farrar).

Author of the notable Clone and the best-selling Flu, Kolata, the head science writer for the New York Times, now analyzes the first study to contrast the Atkins diet to a low-calorie diet and purports to answer questions of eating and self-control, genetics and weight, the sensation of hunger across individuals, and diet plateaus. To an editor like me, this book is a gunshot blast of fresh air. Of course, only the review will tell. Stay tuned.

At the beginning of my minibreak from reviewing (”mini” because it will last only until I find something intriguing in the bookroom or find an editor that needs a last-minute review of something I dig or know a little bit about) I am excited to get back to the three books I’ve left unfinished, along with loads of magazines.  

I was reminded to return to Danielle Trussoni’s memoir, Falling Through the Earth, as I was reading the books section of this week’s New York magazine. The favorable review of The Father of All Things reads, “Remarkably, Bissel comes at the subject [Vietnam] with a fresh perspective”: his father is a Vietnam War vet, and he travels there to find out more about his father’s defining experience.  What of Trussoni’s similar venture?  Her book, just out in paperback, made the Time’s “10 Best Books of 2006″ just 3 months ago. Perhaps along with roundups on arts and China (forthcoming), we’ll soon need one on memoirs by children of Vietnam veterans.

In the rest of my unfinished collection, I have The Little Prince and Volume 2 of the first graphic novel series I’ve read, Fables.  I’d recommend the latter to any adult looking for an entertaining introduction to the genre. (Download issue #1 or a sneak peak from DC’s web site.) However, it doesn’t even begin to represent the subgenres; check out the latest GN reviews coming in the March 15 issue, and read new ones nearly every week as Xpress Reviews.

It was 13 degrees this morning as I trekked past Brooklyn’s McCarren Park with my back to a wind that felt like acid-dipped razor blades. As bad as this sounds, it wasn’t as awful as being sandwiched between two pod people blasting crappy nu metal on the L train. I looked around for my savior, and when he didn’t materialize (he was back the way I’d come, making toast probably), my eyes came across a watery blue book jacket: The History of Love by Nicole Krauss.

While the title conjured nonfiction, I pegged it for a novel, which it is, indeed. Krauss, a Brooklyn-based writer, offers a sweeping tale about a book (and a love) lost in World War II Poland. That this was picked up by a young woman in my environs makes a lovely poetic sense: Williamburg and Greenpoint especially bear the mark of Polish immigrants. I hear Polish, in fact, more than I hear English on my side of McGuinness Boulevard. It’s the only place in New York City where natural blue eyes and blonde hair abound.

Even though Krauss’s book fast-forwards to contemporary New York City (the Lower East Side, I think), I can’t help but take this sighting as, well, a sign. I just finished an exhausting 650-page biography and am looking for an absorbing, economical read. It seems I’ve found my match, just out in very subway-friendly paperback. 

In light of today’s rapid technological advances, the future of the printed book is constantly debated. But think about those poor medieval monks whose beloved illuminated scrolls were replaced by those new-fangled books. How did you open those damn things? Check out the hilarious results at http://youtube.com/watch?v=aX0-nqRmtos .  And anyone who has called their company’s IT department for assistance in turning on their new computer can relate.

As you  know by now, the steamy novel about baseball great Mickey Mantle that led to publisher Judith Regan’s downfall has found new life and a new home. On April 3 Lyons Press plans to publish Peter Golenbock’s controversial  7: The Mickey Mantle Novel, which was cancelled by HarperCollins after it fired Regan and disbanded her imprint. With an initial print run of 250,000 copies, Lyons obviously has high hopes, although judging from all the negative hoopla when the book was first announced, one wonders.

At least I don’t have to worry about assigning this book for review again. When HarperCollins killed the novel in January, we were put in the embarrassing position of running a review that too late for us to pull from our February 1 issue. But now you can re-read our review and judge for yourself whether to order 7 for your patrons.

If 7 is not your cup of tea, coming out this month is another novel featuring a rookie ball player also named Mickey. Published by Kent State University Press, James T. Farrell’s Dreaming Baseball revolves around the infamous 1919 Chicago Black Sox scandal. (Look for our review in the March 15 issue of Library Journal.)  

The author of the classic Studs Lonigan trilogy was a passionate baseball fan, longing to play second base for his beloved Chicago White Sox. HIs 1957 My Baseball Diary is considered one of the very best fan books ever written. At the same time, Farrell was unable to find a publisher for his novel, and the work remained unpublished for more than 50 years, until editors Ron Briley, Margaret Davidson, and James Barbour joined forces with Farrell’s family  to bring the book into print. The trio were careful not to tamper with Farrell’s words except to correct typos and to change Farrell’s fictional names to the historical names of the players involved. The foreword is written by Eliot Asinof, who in 1960 consulted with Farrell when he began his reseach on what is now the classic history of the scandal, Eight Men Out. 

A year ago, several of us Book Review editors were sweating bullets over a one-time supplement called Spiritual Living, LJ’s first concerted effort to size up the growing market of self-helpish titles with a spiritual angle (Raya Kuzyk defines the market better in “Brave New Genre”).

To keep up with the rainbow of, e.g., Jewish child rearing and Buddhist-infused medical titles, Arts & Humanities Editor Mirela Roncevic recently renamed and rejiggered the “Spirtual Reading” column by Graham Christian. So far in 2007, two entries of “Spiritual Living” have run (in the January and March 1 issues), and the titles covered go way beyond the devotional titles of old. Graham tackles marriage woes, soul lessons courtesy of cats and dogs, and punk rock Buddhism.

For more soul glow–inducing material, don’t miss the May 1 issue. 

When this year’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees were announced (the actual ceremony is on March 12), I had the sneaking suspicion that Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five would be the first practitioners of hip-hop to make the cut. A quick check of the inductees since the hall’s inception indicates as much, and while I’m not stunned, I’m also somewhat perplexed.

Sure, it’s the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but this is America, the melting pot, a metaphor that can be applied to our native music. Everything, in theory, mixes, and the results are often exciting and, as in the case of hip-hop, world-shaking. Before it even turned 25, hip-hop music and culture boasted a global audience, from Brazil to Japan. And already seven years into the 21st century, hip-hop still has a hold on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart.

Strangely, as popular as hip-hop is, it still doesn’t generate that many hit trade nonfiction books (the magic formula seems to be put “Tupac” or “Notorious B.I.G.” in your title). For the most part, I still see the stuff of African American studies syllabi, a la T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting’s Pimps Up, Ho’s Down: Hip Hop’s Hold on Young Black Women (April, NYU Press). Commercial houses, meanwhile, will try their luck this spring with the anthology Beats, Rhymes, and Life: What We Love and Hate About Hip-Hop (May, Harlem Moon) and Roni Sarig’s Third Coast: Outkast, Timbaland, and How Hip Hop Became a Southern Thing (May, Da Capo).

Then, again, I shouldn’t forget street lit. We tackled the genre in a collection development article last summer (“Streetwise Urban Fiction”), and it’s no stretch to say it’s probably the most powerful propagator of the “thug rapper” lifestyle outside of MTV. This platinum-selling pulp will be the subject of our best sellers list in July, and our own Barbara Hoffert moderated a panel on street lit at lasts year’s Day of Dialogue in Washington, DC. For a recap complete with authors and titles mentioned, click here.