Amazon's 2008 election map

Check this new tool out from Amazon.

Amazon's 2008 election map colors each state according to the book-buying habits of its residents on Amazon.com during the past 60 days.

You may choose other two-month periods during 2008, or choose the "2004" tab to find maps for the same periods during the last presidential election.

This map mimics the color-coded maps the networks use on election night, "red state" has come to represent a state favoring the Republican Party and "blue state" represents one that favors the Democratic Party or more liberal beliefs.

To calculate each state's red and blue percentages for their map, books have been classified as red or blue if they have a political leaning made evident in book promotion materials and customer classification tags. To compute totals, they used the 250 blue books that have sold the most during the time period and compared those sales against the 250 red books that have sold the most during the same time period.

Scroll at the bottom to look at red books, blue books and even a purple list. "Purple" books that present themselves as nonpartisan or as books that cross the usual party lines. Enjoy this great find from NT librarian Linda Straube!

Booker Prize finalists

Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence was bypassed this year.

Finalists include:
First time novelist Aravind Adiga "The White Tiger", a story of class struggle in India.
First time novelist Steve Toltz "A Fraction of the Whole", a tale of a son trying to understand his deceased father who travels to Paris, the Thai jungle and the Australian bush.
Sebastian Barry "The Secret Scripture", an elderly woman in Ireland and her psychiatrist who write accounts of their meetings and tragic pasts.
Amitav Ghosh, "Sea of Poppies", a tale of sailors, Indians and Westerners who bond during the Opium Wars.
Linda Grant, "The Clothes on Their Backs", a family tale told by a Jewish refugee.
Philip Hensher, "The Northern Clemency" tells the story of ties between two Sheffield families during the 1970s and 1980s.

National Book Festival Online Author Chats Begin

The Washington Post, has begun to schedule online chats with National Book Festival authors. See details.

The first three have been scheduled, and are as follows:

Bob Schieffer (CBS newsman and author), Monday, 9/15 at 2 p.m. EDT

Arthur and Pauline Frommer (noted travel writers), Tuesday, 9/16 at 10 a.m. EDT

And Alexander McCall Smith, (prolific writer of fiction and nonfiction), Friday, 9/19 at 11 a.m. EDT

Oh no. . . where did the summer go?

We hope your vacation was all that you wanted it to be and if it included reading let us know. What books did you read, what books are you still reading or what books do you still want to read?

One of my favorite reads of the summer was A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, author of the Kite Runner. Hosseini's second novel is another great work of fiction set against the very real history of Afghanistan's struggle for independence. This volatile time period is beautifully related to the reader through the eyes and emotions of two powerful and courageous Afghan women. While often troubling due to human suffering, I also found it to be very moving and inspiring.

Please jump in on the conversation and leave your comments about what you have read over the summer . . .the more the merrier!!

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

This is the story of the formation a book club during WW II is told through letters while the British island of Guernsey was under German occupation.

Co-Author Annie Barrows Talks About "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" in an Amazon video. Click to view the video promotion of this book. I think the addition of video to the Amazon website is a brilliant marketing tool. Unfortunately, the videos do not have embedding scripts like Google video or YouTube. I think this marketing trend will continue to grow.

Read a review from Bookreporter.com and/or read an excerpt from NPR.

Sunrise Over Fallujah, by Walter Dean Myers

Myers’ latest novel, Sunrise Over Fallujah, takes on the Iraq War in its early days; we meet Robin “Birdy” Perry, nephew of protagonist Richie Perry in Myers’ earlier acclaimed Vietnam War story, Fallen Angels. With letters and emails home to his mother and Uncle Richie, and, mainly, the day-to-day narration of his soldier’s story, Birdy takes us into his Civilian Affairs unit—a co-ed, diverse squad of soldiers with the mission of interacting with the Iraqi people, building trust, and helping to save lives on both sides. “Sides” is an interesting concept, as all too early Birdy perceives the deep layers of complexity regarding who is fighting whom. “The coalition forces had won the hot war and the newscasts kept telling us that we were in the stabilizing and rebuilding phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom, but the situation was getting hairy. I couldn’t understand what the Iraqis were about or what they really wanted . It was Jonesy who had the question we all wanted to ask. ‘If all the Racks are so happy with what we doing over here, who the hell is shooting at us and laying out all the IEDs?’” In a war story that conveys a young American combatant’s chill of fear and a sense of confusion and the innocent hope mixed with cynicism in its soldiers, Myers has done a great service in rendering an important work of fiction about today’s war. Is it perfect? It’s very strong and a must read in that the subject is so timely and tragic--I’m not aware of any other prominent YA novel on the war, but speak up if there is one or more. The plot and insights are great. I did not find the characters, including Birdy, overly compelling in the way that great characters manage to live in readers’ minds and just kind of inhabit our psyches. But that’s just one opinion. Read it and weigh in!