PLA 2010: Nancy Pearl's Book Buzz

What a great way to open PLA 2010 in Portland: Nancy Pearl invites leading library representatives to brag about their hot books for summer and fall at her always-mobbed Book Buzz. Big authors mentioned included Oscar Hijuelos (Beautiful Maria of My Soul), Dorothea Benton Frank (Lowcountry Summer), Ivan Doig (Worksong), Walter Mosley (Known To Evil), Tana French (Faithful Place), Ken Follett (Fall of Giants), and Laura Lippman (I’d Know You Anywhere), not to mention Richard North Patterson, John Le Carre, and Kitty Kelley, who’s got an Oprah bio in the works. But what’s cool is to get that insider’s view on authors who will be big, like first novelists Anne Fortier (Juliet), Jean Kwok (Girl in Translation), and Susanna Daniels (Stiltsville). Nancy’s callouts: Nathaniel Philbrick’s The Last Stand, Guy Gavriel Kay’s Under Heaven, and Sharyn McCrumb’s The Devil Amongst the Lawyers. Audience interest(big murmur): Laurence Gonzalez’s Lucy, about a girl who is half human and half bonobo ape. The book I most want to see that that I didn’t know about before: Dinaw Mengestu’s How To Read the Air. Click here for more PLA 2101 conference coverage, including extended coverage of Book Buzz.–Barbara Hoffert