Since Mitch Albom’s latest treacly opus, For One More Day, went on sale at Starbucks October 3, it has sold 45,000 copies , which Publishers Weekly reports accounts for 12% of the  total number of books sold. What does Starbucks put in its frappuccino to get readers to throw their money away on this sentimental garbage? When I first heard that Starbucks had chosen Albom as the first author the company was going to promote in its stores, I was so disappointed. What a wasted opportunity, I thought. Already a best selling author for such masterpieces of icky sentimentality as Tuesdays with Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Albom certainly didn’t need the extra marketing attention. Why couldn’t have Starbucks been as adventurous, or at least as eclectic, in their first  book choice as they are with their music CDs? (This past Sunday’s New York Times has an interesting article on the Starbucks cultural asethetic.)

This would have been a perfect moment to introduce exciting and original first novelists like Keith Donohue (The Stolen Child), Leyne Mehu (Song of the Crow), and Maria Arana (Cellophane). But as I skimmed through Albom’s book, I realized why Starbucks chose it. The novel is short (197 pages, making for a quick read), compact (easily held in one hand while you grasp a grande latte in the other), and easy to display by the cash register. (Try doing that with Thomas Pynchon’s forthcoming 1000 page opus Against the Day!) With a built-in-reader fan base, Albom is the perfect Starbucks author—as easy to package and market as its coffee. [Starbucks is apparently searching for its second author and Galleycat.com speculates on who it might be.]

Do you know about National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)?  Librarians like to keep track of these ”national” months in planning book displays, readers’ advisories, public programs and the like, but there are so many proclaimed observances now that we can’t note them all, and many are self-serving and tedious. Still, some remain worthy of attention. In September you may have acknowledged National Library Card Sign-up Month and National Hispanic Heritage Month, while eschewing National Self-Improvement Month, figuring that self-help books are popular enough already, thank you very much. 

But here in October, I’m letting you know ahead of time that National Novel Writing Month in November has a lot going for it: its focus is very specific (”Write fiction!”), while its parameters are broad (”Let your imagination fly!”); it promotes a kind of self-discipline, while inspiring participants to feel energized, involved, and excited;and it is managed with good humor and lack of pretense.

Check out its web site.

This “rockin’ literary marathon,” founded in 1999 by Chris Baty, a California freelance writer, now attracts tens of thousands of aspiring novelists from around the world each year. It’s simple: sign up at the web site–it’s free–and then, between November 1 and midnight at the end of November 30th, write a 50,000 word novel (approx. 175 pages). His site simply offers a framework within which to awaken your long-dormant hunger to write that novel, whether the Great American one, chick-lit with a twist, or contemporary noir.

Baty’s book from 2004, No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days is an excellent guide and could promote a community of new novelists in your library. (There is also his The No-Plot? No Problem! Novel Writing Kit, which is an enouraging tool, but not formatted for library circulation.) Baty reminds us that it’s when people are already busy that they get the most done: therefore, busy as we may feel we are, and stressed-out already by obligations, this month-long burst of creativity can happen and will be a boon. Don’t revise! Don’t work on an existing piece! Start afresh and go for the quantity! Save editing and obsessive re-writes for another month!

Of course you can try to do this without joining NaNoWriMo, but being part of Baty’s global community, and being able to use his word-count mechanism, and forums, can keep you going! And when December comes? Have no fear!  It’s National Stress-Free Family Holidays Month and National Read a New Book Month. Next year, we could all be reading your new novel!

After discovering the wacky coincidence that I am, at the same time as Heather, making my way slowly through White Teeth, I thought I should add my thoughts. Judging by the receipt sticking out of the copy I saw laying on her desk, I’d say my green Shakespeare & Co. bookmark is a little further in. I wouldn’t call it a half-read (or a quarter-read) for me, but I’ve been reading it in segments of about 10 pages at a time on my commute, which might make authors and literature connoisseurs everywhere cringe. I won’t spoil it, and I don’t know how the plot resolves, but everything does seem to be spiraling out of control as Heather fears. Only, much of the trouble is caused by those characters that do have more in common than Archie and Samad–their children, born and raised together in London (and Samad’s are twins), and other middle-class British citizens.

Not as much of a half-reader as Heather or Joe Queenan (as he revealed in an essay in the New York Times book review), I tend to be a plan-to-reader. The stacks of books on my nightstand aren’t yet started (like Smith’s second, On Beauty, reviewed in LJ more than one year ago), but I look at them fondly, read the jacket, and can’t wait to start them, once I finish… But now I’m working on finishing White Teeth, planning to get back to Programming the Universe, and starting a new one for LJ. This job may turn me into a half-reader yet, and perhaps all of you who have resorted to marking your page with receipts and other odd scraps of paper–all of your bookmarks occupied marking pages in 10 different books–have the better of readers’ ailments.

I know for a fact that I’m not the only person out there who’s started a book, loved it, and then shelved it for reasons beyond her control. Perhaps my half-read (er, quarter-read) list is a bit longer than that of other book types—The Lord of the Rings, This Boy’s Life, and One Hundred Years of Solitude have been lingering for years—but I don’t sweat it too much. In essence, I’ve always got piping hot food for thought at my disposal. Last week, I was craving something funny, dark, sprawling, and (here’s the clincher)optimistic to match the rapidly shifting weather. I came up with Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, an LJ Best Book of 2000, not to mention the winner of nearly every major award a young writer covets. I’m glad to say the book still crackles with confidence and verve, and even better it’s more relevant now than it was six years ago. Back in the early 00’s, we liked to think we lived in a fairly well-adjusted, “multicultural” world. Meanwhile, the plans for 9/11 were being laid down. What’s great about Smith’s story, beyond the effervescent, nearly drinkable prose, is the unlikely friendship it chronicles: that of a proud Muslim Bangladeshi man and a rather bumbling white (Protestant?) English doughboy. By all appearances, Samad and Archie have no right to be friends, except that they do. Their differences are the glue that keeps them together; without conflict, they have nothing in common. Of course, I’m not done with the book—everthing could go to hell—but for the time being, I’m savoring Smith’s vision of the great London melting pot.

With several hundred galleys flooding our bookroom daily, my job as a book review editor is bit like an emergency room physician performing triage. I have to sort through the pile and divide the candidates into three categories: the must be-reviewed (big-name authors, highly touted debuts from big publishers, original takes on old or new subjects); interesting small-press possibilities; and finally the definite no’s: new books by long-dead authors, self-published manuscripts, books submitted too late, very dry dissertations, the umpteenth series title. Stilll, there are times when I (and my colleagues)  miss small literary jewels. Such is the case with Troy Cook’s 47 Rules of Highly Effective Bank Robbers, a first mystery out this month from Capitol Crime Press. Here’s what my fiction reviewer—and tipster—Stacy Alesi had to say: “This debut novel about a father training his 9-year-old daughter in bank robbery is zany black comedy at its best. Wyatt Evans is a brilliant psychopath who has made a career out of robbing banks. Along the way, he killed his wife and taught his daughter the 47 rules of the family business. But by the time Tara is 23, she is chafing under her father’s rigid, psychotic thumb and wondering if it is time to move out on her own. Then she meets Max, who empathizes with Tara as he has a nut of a father himself, although on the other side of the law— his father is the Sheriff. Meanwhile Wyatt is heading the FBI’s ten most wanted list, Tara & Max take off and Wyatt, the Sheriff and the FBI are all on the chase. 47 Rules is well written, original, clever and laugh out loud funny. Don’t miss it.”

With each depressing daily news flash, Israel seems to be getting closer of achieving its goal of bombing its Lebanese neighbor back to the strife-torn years of the 1970s and  early 1980s when  the country was torn apart by a bloody civil war. To better understand the tragic destruction of Lebanon’s new-found stability, readers may be interested in a first novel that Tatra Press will publish this October. Written by Margaret Lowerie Robertson, a former CNN International and CBS News correspondant , Season of Betrayal is set in Beirut 1983 just as the U.S. Marines have been sent into the city to serve as part of a peacekeeping force. Against this tense backdrop, Lara struggles to save her marriage to an American journalist while befriending another reporter with disastrous results. The author’s impressive journalistic connections are evident with strong blurbs from such luminaries as Anderson Cooper, Chris Matthews, and Washington Post columnist David Ignatius.