On Sept. 7, approximately 613 new items were released. As noted last week, release activity is increasing for the holiday season, although many of these entries are “other format” versions of the same title. Thankfully, I have not read all these new titles and won’t attempt to discuss all of them. However, several items deserve a mention.
Sara Gruen has written Ape House. If you liked Water for Elephants you will probably like Ape House (monkeys are noble, humans are evil savages).
Origin of the Universe is the new book by Prof. Steven Hawking, already denounced as blasphemous (anti-religious) by a few clergypersons. It may not be as controversial as Darwin’s “Origin …”, but still a thought-provoking read.
On the radio, we also mentioned new titles by Beverly Lewis, James Ellroy, Sherrilyn Kenyon, etc. The radio show concluded with a rant about “monkey-see, monkey-do” behavior by the publishers. Since books targeted to teenage readers are selling well, reputable writers from other genres, like James Patterson, Ridley Pearson, and John Grisham have been enticed by the publishers to write books for that market.
Publishers seem to be encouraging otherwise reputable romance writers to write paranormal romances with increasingly graphic language. I would probably risk jail time if I read even excerpts of this stuff to a radio audience.
The good news is that the Christian fiction genre is healthy and the numbers are expanding. At least at Corner Bookstore, the customers seem to be ignoring the publisher agendas and voting with their checkbooks in favor of good stories and quality writing.
