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BookExpo Themes
May. 25th, 2006 02:26 pm1. Thrillers featuring famous people. Sure, there was the usual historical fiction -- Mary, a fictional life of Mary Todd Lincoln; Mrs. Shakespeare, a fictional life of Anne Hathaway; and Abundance, a fictional life of Marie Antoinette -- but there was also a mystery/thriller set at West Point featuring Edgar Allen Poe and a mystery/thriller set in New York featuring Freud and Jung. (And heiresses in the plural. And it is titled Interpretation of Murder. It is to giggle. Apparently, this book is expected to kick up the fiction market in the fall, which has been pretty soft so far this year.)
2. A tremendous decrease in memoir and autobiography. Last year was the year of memoirs; this year, we've got non-fiction on all sorts of subjects, including a tremendous quantity of September 11th/Katrina/political stuff, but I don't think I saw memoir at all except from already famous people -- food reviewers doing Their Life In Food sort of thing, people related to baseball players doing My Life in Baseball, political relatives doing How Cool Bush, Sr Is, Really or How Cool Cheney Is, Really. (That would be George H.W. Bush's daughter and Mary Cheney, respectively.)
3. That brings me to the biggest category of nonfiction: 9/11! Katrina! Iraq! Bush!
3a. Katrina as an aberration! Historical perspectives on hurricanes! Anniversary books for Katrina! The Katrina titles include: The Great Deluge (Douglas Brinkley), Breach of Faith (Jed Horne), and Path of Destruction (Mark Schleifstein). We've even got historical focuses: LSU press is doing a book called Conservative Conservationist about some mid-century Republican's efforts to preserve wetlands, and Vintage is re-releasing Bayou Farewell, all about Why We Get Bad Hurricanes These Days.
3b. Anniversary books for 9/11! Including the graphic novel of the 9/11 report. (I kid you not. Buzz around this one is actually really positive, but I haven't seen it.)
3c. The Bush/Iraq/election category. We loves Bush! We hates Bush! How the Democrats can win! Why we can't let the Democrats win! Books by politicians (yes, in the plural), journalists, bloggers. John Ashcroft. Barak Obama. Edward Kennedy. Ariana Huffington (who claims to not mention Bush by name in her book; the political is all implied rather than outright.) Bob Woodward. Michael Isikoff. Markos Zuniga, of the Daily Kos, and Jerome Armstrong collaborating. Books about puppies being adopted by marines in Baghdad, about soldiers who are saying no to Iraq, about soldiers' letters, even a graphic novel about a pride of lions in Baghdad. (I did not see the text for that one, so I can't make a statement about the intent of same. It's called Pride of Baghdad, as I recall. The lions are freed when Baghdad is bombed, or something. *vague*)
4. In YA fiction, the biggest trend continues to be As Cool As Harry Potter But Not a Rip-Off, Really, but there are some other areas of interest as well. Tokyopop and others are taking advantage of anime and manga and attempting to do novels in the style of manga. There's a little bump in YA historical fiction to match the overall historical fiction surge (M.T. Anderson's latest book, actually, is YA historical fiction set before the Revolutionary War.) I credit J.K. Rowling with the other major change in YA fiction in the last several years: YA fiction of more than two hundred pages, especially from major publishers who were leary of that sort of thing before. (I held up Black Tattoo as an example of this: it's 500+ pages long. Oy.)
***
Also, today I have a lilac icon from last year and, by pure happenstance, a handtowel in my bag. (I actually don't know why said handtowel is in my bag, but perhaps it's because I wrapped wine in it when I flew to D.C. and then forgot to remove it. Or something. Thus I attempt to give meaning to the inexplicable.) How's that for looking geeky without doing any geek-related work?
2. A tremendous decrease in memoir and autobiography. Last year was the year of memoirs; this year, we've got non-fiction on all sorts of subjects, including a tremendous quantity of September 11th/Katrina/political stuff, but I don't think I saw memoir at all except from already famous people -- food reviewers doing Their Life In Food sort of thing, people related to baseball players doing My Life in Baseball, political relatives doing How Cool Bush, Sr Is, Really or How Cool Cheney Is, Really. (That would be George H.W. Bush's daughter and Mary Cheney, respectively.)
3. That brings me to the biggest category of nonfiction: 9/11! Katrina! Iraq! Bush!
3a. Katrina as an aberration! Historical perspectives on hurricanes! Anniversary books for Katrina! The Katrina titles include: The Great Deluge (Douglas Brinkley), Breach of Faith (Jed Horne), and Path of Destruction (Mark Schleifstein). We've even got historical focuses: LSU press is doing a book called Conservative Conservationist about some mid-century Republican's efforts to preserve wetlands, and Vintage is re-releasing Bayou Farewell, all about Why We Get Bad Hurricanes These Days.
3b. Anniversary books for 9/11! Including the graphic novel of the 9/11 report. (I kid you not. Buzz around this one is actually really positive, but I haven't seen it.)
3c. The Bush/Iraq/election category. We loves Bush! We hates Bush! How the Democrats can win! Why we can't let the Democrats win! Books by politicians (yes, in the plural), journalists, bloggers. John Ashcroft. Barak Obama. Edward Kennedy. Ariana Huffington (who claims to not mention Bush by name in her book; the political is all implied rather than outright.) Bob Woodward. Michael Isikoff. Markos Zuniga, of the Daily Kos, and Jerome Armstrong collaborating. Books about puppies being adopted by marines in Baghdad, about soldiers who are saying no to Iraq, about soldiers' letters, even a graphic novel about a pride of lions in Baghdad. (I did not see the text for that one, so I can't make a statement about the intent of same. It's called Pride of Baghdad, as I recall. The lions are freed when Baghdad is bombed, or something. *vague*)
4. In YA fiction, the biggest trend continues to be As Cool As Harry Potter But Not a Rip-Off, Really, but there are some other areas of interest as well. Tokyopop and others are taking advantage of anime and manga and attempting to do novels in the style of manga. There's a little bump in YA historical fiction to match the overall historical fiction surge (M.T. Anderson's latest book, actually, is YA historical fiction set before the Revolutionary War.) I credit J.K. Rowling with the other major change in YA fiction in the last several years: YA fiction of more than two hundred pages, especially from major publishers who were leary of that sort of thing before. (I held up Black Tattoo as an example of this: it's 500+ pages long. Oy.)
***
Also, today I have a lilac icon from last year and, by pure happenstance, a handtowel in my bag. (I actually don't know why said handtowel is in my bag, but perhaps it's because I wrapped wine in it when I flew to D.C. and then forgot to remove it. Or something. Thus I attempt to give meaning to the inexplicable.) How's that for looking geeky without doing any geek-related work?
