Every spring, this editor gets the itch to throw a party to banish the winter blues. And for the first time in nearly a decade, I’m acting on that urge and hosting some good friends tonight in my humble Brooklyn firetrap.

On the modest dinner menu, you will find both meat and vegetarian chili, cornbread, and for dessert (my favorite part of every meal), cupcakes—chocolate w/chocolate buttercream icing, vanilla w/vanilla buttercream icing, and by special request, red velvet w/cream cheese icing. For the first two varieties, I got recipes from my baking genius of a mother, who, alas, doesn’t know diddly about red velvet (she’s a damn Yankee, after all).

For that Southern delicacy, I wanted the best of the best, and the web’s many ardent cupcake bloggers all agree that Sylvia Woods of Sylvia’s Restaurant in Harlem blows the door off the oven with her concoction. One “Sweet Monkey Cakes” on the Cooks’ Illustrated message board swears by it, but with two minor changes (more cocoa and buttermilk!).

Last night, I tried Sweet Monkey Cake’s take, which is based on Woods’s recipe from Sylvia’s Family Soul Food Cookbook (Morrow, 1999), and I’m happy to say I got the most delectable red gems, moist with just the right amount of smoky cocoa taste. Mine aren’t probably going to look as professional as the one pictured below when they’re frosted later today, but they’re going to go down like butter—two sticks, to be exact.

I said it last year, but I’m going to say it again, kittles—April is Autism Awareness Month, and I’ve been steadily increasing our coverage of conditions on the autistic spectrum since 2002. I couldn’t have done it, of course, without one Corey Seeman, an LJ star reviewer if there ever was one. The father of an autistic child, he signed on to tackle autism for LJ five years ago when there wasn’t a lot being published. That all changed when autism made the cover of Time magazine in May 2002—soon, the New York houses were treading the traditional turf of Woodbine House, Guilford Press, and Jessica Kingsley.

To keep up with the resulting boost, I sent poor Corey a book a month, and he kept his head above water, dutifully reviewing the likes of groundbreakers like Judy Karasik and Paul Karasik’s The Ride Together (Washington Square), Carolyn Thorwarth Bruey’s Demystifying Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Guide to Diagnosis for Parents and Professionals (Woodbine), and Charlotte Moore’s George & Sam: Two Boys, One Family, and Autism (St. Martin’s).

Thank you, Corey, for your valuable contributions, including what I’m pretty sure is the first analysis of relevant literature, “Sending Postcards from the Airport,” a 2003 entry in our collection development series, and its sequel, “More Postcards from the Airport: Playing Catch-Up with Autistic Spectrum Disorders.” Thank you, too, Lisa Jordan and Elizabeth Safford for bringing up the back and helping expand LJ’s scope. 

• 8:15-9:00           Registration and Buffet Breakfast
• 9:15-10:15         The most banned children’s book of the year: Authors Peter Parnell (playwright, author of QED; screenwriter/producer for West Wing and The Guardian) and Justin Richardson, MD [co-author of Everything You Never Wanted Your Kids to Know about Sex (But Were Afraid They’d Ask)], their editor, David Gale (S. & S.), and  librarian Pat Scales discuss the creation of And Tango Makes Three and the reaction to it. 
• 10:15-11:30       Editor’s hot picks: Top editors from adult trade houses reveal what fiction and nonfiction you should be buying for the fall and what the latest trends to watch are.
• 11:30-11:40       Break
• 11:40-12:15       LJ Talks to:  A conversation with a long-time editor/publisher.
• 12:15-1:15        Lunch
• 1:15-2:30        YA crossover: Many books speak to both adults and young people, but how do the editors and authors make the decision to pitch them to one audience or the other—or both. (TK).
• 2:30-2:40         Break
• 2:40-3:55        Romance: An editor, author, reviewer, and librarian discuss the latest trends in the most popular genre, including erotica, ebooks and e-marketing, and more.  Panelists include Eloisa James, whose latest book, due in June from Avon is Desperate Duchesses, and Kris Ramsdell, LJ’s romance columnist.   
• 3:55-4:00       Wrap up.
• 4:00-5:00       Cocktails

So I forgot to post my Subway Sighting of last week, and to make up for it, I’m going to bombard you with the book titles I’ve spied over the past two weeks. This is my highly unscientific experiment to determine if the good people of Gotham—at least those who ride and L and R trains—have a preference between fiction and nonfiction.

Fiction wins in this match-up, with Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, Kinky Friedman’s The Mile High Club, George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game (Bk. 1), and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness contributing to its victory. This doesn’t surprise me considering how much New Yorkers are assaulted with incarnations of “fact” via newspapers, subway ads, billboards, and street hustlers. Sometimes, a person just wants to go to a different (quieter?) place. 

Yet nonfiction’s no slouch either. Check Edward Luce’s In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India, W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, Will Blythe’s To Hate Like This Is To Be Happy Forever, and Brian W. Jones’s The Emperor Domitian, which give credence to the oft-repeated idea that New Yorkers are an informed, cerebral bunch all too eager to debate sport and politics.

Of course, you could read into these sightings for the length of the A train (the longest at 31 miles), and that’s what’s so fun. Books make me think, even when I’m only glancing at their covers.

It’s been holding the No. 1 slot on the New York Times best seller list in hardcover advice/how-to/miscellaneous. The Divine Miss O. dedicated two episodes to it in February, sparking the biggest book reorder in history (two million!). And, oh, yeah: the old Polish lady who walks a half-dead shitzu on my street in Brooklyn was reading a copy in the park.

Inquiring minds want to know: Why wasn’t Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret (BeyondWords/Atria) reviewed by your favorite library publication?Just who do I think I am not to assign this megaseller? It’s like this, book fiends: Publishers don’t submit every book to LJ; submissions get lost, stolen, or possibly eaten by feral dogs; and we certainly can’t assign everything that does land in the Bookroom. While our Xpress (that is, online-only) reviews allow for more coverage, there still aren’t enough reviewers at the ready—and not all books merit reviews. Some are simply more appropriate for LJ’s audience than others.

To be honest, I don’t remember The Secret. If it was submitted, it would’ve arrived around last September, three months before its November pub date, which means it was part of the fall deluge. I could’ve sent it to our trusty self-help columnist, Deborah Bigelow, who upon reading the press material wasn’t all that impressed by what the book purported to do. What self-respecting empowerment text doesn’t aim to “transform” or “teach”? Byrne’s credentials as a seeker/compiler of deep thoughts don’t make her unique, either.

My point is, it’s impossible to predict a best seller in the MySpaced-out age. Books with million-dollar publicity campaigns flop like dead fish. All that is certain is that Oprah has the Midas touch, and we Book Review editors don’t get fair warning. Ta.

In my first performing arts assigning (I recently adopted the section from Heather McCormack), the grand theme was pop celebs writing. Due out in May from three big publishers, we have Don’t Hassel the Hoff, David Hasselhoff’s autobiography from Thomas Dunne, Alice Cooper, Golf Monster: A Rock ‘n’ Roller’s 12 Steps to Becoming a Gold Addict from Crown, and Criss Angel’s Mindfreak coming from HarperCollins, complete with “40 mindfreaks you can master.”

 This odd little group, linked primarily by the similar chuckle they brought forth as I flipped through them (after all, they feature two TV stars and one musician; cover sports, magic, and memoir; and appeal to vastly different audiences) somehow seems more than the trashy celebrity cash-in book. Nicole Ritchie’s disparaged dip into writing comes to mind: see Bookroom classics “Anticlimactic didactic,” on Judith Regan’s less-than-classy buys, and Heather McCormack’s reaction to book awards season, ”The biggest losers.”

 Maybe it is the artist behind these performing arts titles—whether he is a master of rippling muscles, shock rock, or street magic—that makes these books worth looking at for something a little more than dissing a now-defunct publishing powerhouse or dreaming up awards for the biggest literary bombs. Or maybe they’ll go down with an even bigger splash!  Look for reviews in forthcoming issues.

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.

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. 

Diaper-wearing stalker astronauts! Celebrity corpses awarded custody to six-month old babies! Judges weeping in courtrooms! Pop singers shaving their heads while checking in and out of rehab! Airline passengers trapped on blizzard stranded planes for 11 hours! Canine scrotums striking terror in the hearts of school librarians! I guess there must be something to this whole Mercury in Retrograde business in which everything goes wacky for three weeks. Come to think of it, my computer was acting oddly yesterday. Therefore I don’t plan to sign a contract, buy a car, or get married until March 8 when Mercury’s malevolent  influence on our lives eases up. Ah, but then we have the Ides of March to look foward to.