Preorder Special: Man Gave Names to All the Animals

Publishers Weekly:

Arnosky offers a Peaceable Kingdom approach--minus humans--to the song from Dylan’s 1979 album Slow Train Running. The self-consciously majestic acrylic and pencil tableaus feature “different animals and plants from around the world on each and every page” (according to the introduction). While Dylan references only six animals in his song, Arnosky notes on the penultimate page that the book includes more than 170 creatures (readers are invited to identify them all, or check out the illustrator’s Web site for clues). However, the spreads and portraits feel detached from the gently funky mood of Dylan’s performance on the accompanying CD, as well as the laidback, down-home humor of the lyrics: “He saw an animal up on a hill/ Chewing up so much grass until she was filled./ He saw milk comin’ out but he didn’t know how/ Ah, think I’ll call it a COW.” Arnosky deserves props for not reaching for the most common examples of the animals from the song’s verse (using a bristly wild pig and mountain sheep), but even animal fanatics may find these compositions overwhelming. Ages 3-up.

Preorder Special: hull Three Zero

Publishers Weekly:

Multiple Hugo and Nebula winner Bear (City at the End of Time) sets this difficult but rewarding short novel on an interstellar colony ship gone astray. Teacher was supposed to be awakened just before landfall. What he finds when he gains some semblance of consciousness, however, is a dangerous and chaotic environment, with monsters roaming the ship's corridors and no one in charge. As he and a small band of equally ignorant crew members attempt to reach the gigantic ship's control center, they travel through a series of labyrinthine spaces, uncovering a variety of clues to the disaster that has destroyed large parts of the starship and damaged the controlling AIs. Not for those who prefer their space opera simpleminded, this beautifully written tale where nothing is as it seems will please readers with a well-developed sense of wonder.

Preorder Special: Fun Inc. : Why Gaming Will Dominate the Twenty-First Century

From the Publisher:

Despite the recession, video games continue to break records—and command unprecedented amounts of media coverage. The U.S. is the world’s biggest video games market and manufacturer, with a market now worth over $20 billion annually in software and hardware sales—more than quadruple its size in the mid 1990s. World of Warcraft now boasts over 11 million players worldwide, and over $1 billion per year in revenues. Gaming is flourishing as a career and a creative industry as well. 254 U.S. colleges and universities in 37 states now offer courses and degrees in computer and video game design, programming and art. Video games are increasingly for everyone: 68% of American households now play computer or video games, while the average game player is 35 years old and has been playing games for twelve years.
Against the popular image, too, 43% of online U.S. game players are female. The U.S. military alone now spends around $6 billion a year on virtual and simulated training programs, based around video games and virtual worlds. The budgets for developing the biggest games can now top the $100
million mark and are snapping up some of the biggest names in film—from Stephen Spielberg to Peter Jackson.

Preorder Special: America the Edible: A Hungry History From Sea to Dining Sea

Synopsis:


The host of Travel Channel’s most popular show explains how iconic American foods have captured our culinary imaginations—you won't look at a bagel the same way again!
In America the Edible, Travel Channel host Adam Richman tackles the ins and outs of American cuisine, demonstrating his own unique brand of culinary anthropology. Believing that regional cuisine reveals far more than just our taste for chicken fried steak or 3-way chili, Richman explores the ethnic, economic, and cultural factors that shape the way we eat—and how food, in turn, reflects who we are as a nation. Richman uses his signature wit and casual charm to take youon a tour around the country,explaining such curiosities as why bagels are shaped like circles, why fried chicken is so popular in the South, and how some of the most iconic American food—hot dogs, fries, and soda—are not really American at all. Writing with passion, curiosity, and a desire to share his knowledge, he includes recipes, secret addresses for fun and tasty finds, and tips on how to eat like a local from coast to coast.
Part travelogue, part fun fact book, part serious culinary journalism, Richman’s America the Edible illuminates the food map in a way nobody has before.

Preorder Special: The Charming Quirks of Others

Synopsis:
In this latest and most felicitous addition to the Isabel Dalhousie series, our inquisitive heroine comes to see that there are very few of us who are not flawed . . . herself included.

Isabel has been asked for her help in a rather tricky situation: A successor is being sought for the headmaster at a local boys’ school. The board has three final candidates but has received an anonymous letter alleging that one of them has a very serious skeleton in the closet. Could Isabel discreetly look into it? And so she does. What she discovers about all the candidates is surprising, but what she discovers about herself and about Jamie, the father of her young son, turns out to be equally revealing.

Isabel’s investigation will have her exploring issues of ambition, as well as of charity, forgiveness, and humility, as she moves nearer and nearer to some of the most hidden precincts of the heart.

Here is Isabel Dalhousie at her beguiling best: intelligent, insightful, and with a unique understanding of the quirks of human nature.

Preorder Special: Luka & the Fire of Life

From Publishers Weekly:

Rushdie unleashes his imagination on an alterante world informed by the surreal logic of video games, but the author's entertaining wordplay and lighter-than-air fantasies don't amount to more than a clever pastiche. A sequel of sorts to to Haroun and the Sea of Stories, this outing finds Haroun's younger brother, Luka, on a mission to save his father, guided, ironically, by Nobodaddy, a holograph-like copy of his father intent on claiming the old man's life. Along the way, they're joined by a collection of creatures, including a dog named Bear, a bear named Dog, hybrid bird-elephant beasts, and a princess with a flying carpet. As with video games, Luka stores up extra lives, proceeds to the next level after beating big baddies, and uses his wits to overcome bottomless chasms and trash-dropping otters. Rushdie makes good use of Nobodaddy, and his world occasionally brims with allegory (the colony of rats called the "Respectorate of I" brings the Tea Party to mind)...

Preorder Special: Harry Potter: A Pop Up Book

From the Publisher:

This collectible Harry Potter pop-up book, based on the creative development of the films, features exquisite original artwork by Andrew Williamson, concept artist for all eight movies. With dynamic pop-ups animating memorable moments and locations--like the Triwizard Tournament, Diagon Alley, and Hogwarts Castle--Harry Potter: A Pop-Up Book offers a 3-D glimpse into and amazing world, as seen the films. This deluxe book will delight Harry Potter fans with dynamic pop-up ingenuity, insights from the creative team who turned JK Rowling's stories into movie magic, fascinating facts about the magical universe seen in the movies, and Harry Potter memories and memorabilia packed into every page.

Preorder Special: First Family: Abigail and John Adams

Publishers Weekly:

Pulitzer Prize winning historian Ellis (Founding Brothers) gives "the premier husband-wife team in all American history" starring roles in an engrossing romance. His Abigail has an acute intellect, but is not quite a protofeminist heroine: her ambitions are limited to being a mother and helpmeet, and in the iconic correspondence she often strikes the traditional pose of a neglected wife who sacrifices her happiness by giving up her husband to the call of duty. The author's more piquant portrait of John depicts an insecure, mercurial, neurotic man stabilized by Abigail's love and advice. Ellis's implicit argument--that the John/Abigail partnership lies at the foundation of the Adams family's public acheivements--is a bit over-played, and not always to the advantage of the partnership: "Her judgment was a victim of her love for John...," Ellis writes of Abigail's support for the Alien and Sedition Acts, the ugliest blot on John's presidency, all of which explains little and excuses less. Still, Ellis's supple prose and keen psychological insight give a vivid sense of the human drama behind history's upheavals.

Preorder Special: You Had Me at Woof

From Publishers Weekly:
Klam (Please Excuse My Daughter) recounts the touching, often hilarious tales of life with Boston terriers. She adopts her first pet, Otto, after a "substantial" little dog "came slow-motion scampering through the high grass and wild daisies of sleep." With Otto, the then single Klam learned about compromise and sacrifice. Married and pregnant, the author adopts a little "doglet," Beatrice, and distracted by the newborn, forgets to have the puppy spayed--resulting in a series of hilarious misadventures worth the price of the book. She continues to rescue, foster, and adopt dogs--spirited Hank, adored Moses, chubby Sherlock--each with his or her own special needs, idiosyncrasies, and "teachable moments" in trusting one's instincts, achieving balance, helping others, finding contentment, loving fiercely, and letting go. This gem of a book is a gift to dog lovers everywhere.

Fiction Bestseller 4/16/10

This week's campus fiction bestseller. 30 % off at your University Bookstore.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Help/Kathryn-Stockett/e/9780399155345/?itm=1&USRI=the+help

Robison Booksigning 4/20/10

Its almost here! Join us in Zorn Arena April 20 at 7:30 to see John Elder Robison, author of Look Me in the Eye.

Celebrate Earth Month

After moving to ultra-eco-conscious Vancouver, Robyn Harding vows to decrease the size of her family’s carbon footprint. Ten-year-old Ethan worries about getting moobs from hormones in the food supply, so Robyn commits to buying organic. She quickly discovers that to keep the family in organic milk, she’ll have to sell a kidney. Then, eight-year-old Tegan becomes obsessed with the diminishing polar bear population. Soon Robyn finds herself making litterless lunches, greening her home, and valiantly trying to de-commercialize Christmas and birthdays. To make matters worse, she befriends a three-children, no-car single mother who shuttles her offspring and their various musical instruments (including a cello) around by bike and trailer. Who can compete with that? Harding deals with the challenges of ethical consumerism with spirit and wit, pondering how far her family has come, how far they’re willing to go, and whether she can go green and stay sane — and keep her kidneys.

#1 Best Seller for 4/2/2010

Indiana, 1818. Moonlight falls through the dense woods that surround a one-room cabin, where a nine-year-old Abraham Lincoln kneels at his suffering mother's bedside. She's been stricken with something the old-timers call "Milk Sickness.""My baby boy..." she whispers before dying.Only later will the grieving Abe learn that his mother's fatal affliction was actually the work of a vampire.When the truth becomes known to young Lincoln, he writes in his journal, "henceforth my life shall be one of rigorous study and devotion. I shall become a master of mind and body. And this mastery shall have but one purpose..." Gifted with his legendary height, strength, and skill with an ax, Abe sets out on a path of vengeance that will lead him all the way to the White House.While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for saving a Union and freeing millions of slaves, his valiant fight against the forces of the undead has remained in the shadows for hundreds of years. That is, until Seth Grahame-Smith stumbled upon The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln, and became the first living person to lay eyes on it in more than 140 years.Using the journal as his guide and writing in the grand biographical style of Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough, Seth has reconstructed the true life story of our greatest president for the first time-all while revealing the hidden history behind the Civil War and uncovering the rolevampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of our nation.

HARDCOVER BESTSELLERS
Fiction

1.Gathering Storm Robert Jordan
2.Lost Symbol Dan Brown
3.Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel
4.Help Kathryn Stockett
5.Last Night I Twisted River John Irving
6.Last Song Nicholas Sparks
7.True Blue Davis Baldacci
8.Wild Things Dave Eggers
9.Breaking Dawn Stephenie Meyer
10.Scarpetta Factor Patricia Cornwell


Non Fiction

1.Superfreakonomics Steven Levitt
2.What the Dog Saw Malcolm Gladwell
3.Book of Basketball Bill Simmons
4.Have a Little Faith Mitch Albom
5.Outliers Malcolm Gladwell
6.Greatest Show on Earth Richard Dawkins
7.PostSecret Frank Warren
8.Too Big To Fail Andrew Sorkin
9.Eating the Dinosaur Chuck Klosterman
10.True Compass Edward Kennedy

PAPERBACK BESTSELLERS

Fiction

1.Push Sapphire
2.Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Stieg Larsson
3. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Seth Grahame-Smith
4. Twilight Stephenie Meyer
5. Olive Kitteridge Elizabeth Strout
6. Elegance of the Hedgehog Muriel Barbery
7. Say You're One of Them Uwem Akpan
8. Shack William Young
9.Bed of Roses Nore Roberts
10.Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie M Shaffer

Non-Fiction
1. Freakonomics Steven Levitt
2. Nudge Richard Thaler
3. Musicophilia Oliver Sacks
4. I am America Stphen Colbert
5. Ascent of Money Niall Ferguson
6. My Life in France Jilia Child
7. In Defense of Food Michael Pollan
8. When You Are Engulfed in Flames David Sedaris
9. Waiter Rant Steve Dublanica
10. Alex and Me Irene Pepperberg