by Bob Minzesheimer)
New & Noteworthy: USA TODAY's book editor, Jocelyn McClurg, previews five of the hottest books to be released this week, including two novels: Nora Roberts' The Collector,about a young novelist who witnesses a murder, and Val McDermid's Northanger Abbey, an update of Jane Austen's Gothic novel.
Prize day: A handful of publishers and authors will be celebrating this afternoon. The winners of Columbia University's prestigious Pulitzer Prizes will be announced at 3 p.m. Short of a big movie deal, nothing propels book sales like a Pulitzer. The Huffington Post predicts Rachel Kushner's The Flamethrowers will win the fiction prize. I liked it - but not that much. In a 3-star review, it wrote its appeal is its "dazzing, fluid prose."
BookCon flap: The organizers of BookCon are promising to add more diversity to its "Kids Authors That Dazzle" panel in New York May 31. Protests erupted after the lineup was announced consisting of Daniel Handler, Jeff Kinney, James Patterson, and Rick Riordan, all best sellers, but as Lerner editorial director Andrew Karre told Publishers Weekly: "four middle-aged white guys." As for the panel's title, shouldn't it be authors who dazzle - not that dazzle? (As I learned at PS 213, who for people, that for things.)
'Stars' preview: For some, the highlight of the MTV Movie Awards Sunday came during the pre-show with the first clip from the film version of John Green's best-selling teen novel, The Fault in Our Stars. Shailene Woodley stars in the movie opening June 6. Green told me in March that the film is a "wonderfully faithful adaptation."
New USA TODAY reviews: Bill Desowitz calls John Kasson's cultural history, The Little Girl Who Fought the Great Depression: Shirley Temple and 1930s America,a "must-read." (3 stars out of 4); Kevin Nance writes that Love and Treasure, Ayelet Waldman's novel revolving around a pendant stolen by the Nazis in World War II, is "generally absorbing though not fully integrated." (2 1/2 stars).
Big cheese librarian: Entertainment Weekly reports that TNT has greenlighted 10 episodes of The Librarians, starring Noah Wyle (ER) as a "big cheese librarian" whose bookish skills have "saved the world from unspeakable evil."
Indies coast to coast: New York magazine reports on six "thriving" independent bookstores in Manhattan and Brooklyn and "how they do it" in the face of competition from Amazon. The New York Times looks at how indies in Seattle are finding customers who work at Amazon's corporate headquarters but, as The Times puts it, "are not shoping at the company store."
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