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There are so many enticing books releasing over the next few months and I literally can’t wait to get my hands on ALL of them. Debut novels and returning favorites are topping the lists of my BOOKS TO PINE FOR. I also threw in a bibliophile journal to keep track of all my reading. Make sure to put these on your lists.

BOOKS I’VE READ: A Bibliophile’s Journal

For avid readers who see books as a vital part of their lives and homes, this beautifully illustrated reading journal is a decorative object in itself. Conceived by Deborah Needleman and illustrated by Virginia Johnson, the author/illustrator team behind The Perfectly Imperfect Home, this journal reflects the same aesthetic and spirit that made the book so successful.

Whether you read print books, ebooks, or a bit of both, Books I’ve Read will serve as a tangible keepsake of your reading experiences. The journal features an elegant three-piece case and is filled with full-color illustrations of impressive home libraries and cozy reading corners from Deborah Needleman’s home décor guide The Perfectly Imperfect Home. It also contains recommended reading lists from a variety of reputable sources (Pulitzer Prize, Man Booker, and National Book Award winners, Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels, BBC’s Best Novels, etc.), as well as prompts for making your own lists (Most Beautiful Books, Books I’ve Given as Gifts, Books I Loved as a Child).

{Adorable illustrations in a journal for keeping track of the books you read…yes, please!}

Release Date: June 25, 2013

The Engagements by J. Courtney Sullivan

From the New York Times best-selling author of Maine and Commencement comes a big, sprawling novel about marriage-about those who marry in a white heat of passion, those who marry for partnership and comfort, and those who live together, love each other, and have absolutely no intention of ruining it all with a wedding.

Evelyn has been married to her husband for forty years-forty years since he slipped off her first wedding ring and put his own in its place. Delphine knows both sides of love-the ecstatic, glorious highs of seduction and the bitter, spiteful fury that descends when it’s over. James, a paramedic who works the night shift, knows his wife’s family thinks she could have done better. Kate, partnered with Dan for ten years, has seen every kind of wedding-from the Nantucket beach wedding to the Irish castle wedding-and has vowed never, ever, to have one of her own. And Mary Frances Gerety, a young advertising copywriter, knows exactly what marriage is: it’s a diamond ring on a girl’s finger-and it’s her job to make sure everyone believes that. Weaving these lives together, Sullivan gives us a sharply observed, witty, irresistible portrait of the thorny, joyful, and complicated union that is marriage.

{Loved, loved, loved Maine. This one is topping my list of Books to Pine For!}

Release Date: June 4, 2013

Someday, Someday, Maybe by Lauren Graham

A charming and laugh-out-loud novel by Lauren Graham, beloved star of Parenthood and Gilmore Girls, about an aspiring actress trying to make it in mid-nineties New York City.

Franny Banks is a struggling actress in New York City, with just six months left of the three year deadline she gave herself to succeed. But so far, all she has to show for her efforts is a single line in an ad for ugly Christmas sweaters and a degrading waitressing job. She lives in Brooklyn with two roommates-Jane, her best friend from college, and Dan, a sci-fi writer, who is very definitely not boyfriend material-and is struggling with her feelings for a suspiciously charming guy in her acting class, all while trying to find a hair-product cocktail that actually works. Meanwhile, she dreams of doing “important” work, but only ever seems to get auditions for dishwashing liquid and peanut butter commercials. It’s hard to tell if she’ll run out of time or money first, but either way, failure would mean facing the fact that she has absolutely no skills to make it in the real world. Her father wants her to come home and teach, her agent won’t call her back, and her classmate Penelope, who seems supportive, might just turn out to be her toughest competition yet. Someday, Someday, Maybe is a funny and charming debut about finding yourself, finding love, and, most difficult of all, finding an acting job.

{I always have to check out a celebrity’s novel…and Lauren Graham is always funny so this might be a hit!}

Release Date: April 30, 2013

SISTERLAND by Curtis Sittenfeld

From nationally bestselling author of Prep and American Wife, an expressive novel centered on a natural disaster that shakes a family to its core and forces a woman to confront the identity she’s been fleeing since adolescence.

St. Louis, 2009-Kate and Jeremy are caught unawares after being woken by a series of tremors just hours south of the strongest earthquake in U.S. history. The quake has taken a toll on Kate’s nerves, but it’s nothing compared with her identical twin sister, Vi-a self-proclaimed psychic medium-having broadcast a prediction that a more powerful earthquake would strike. While her sister’s performance is embarrassing to say the least, Kate can’t dismiss the hunch as wholly ungrounded, for to do so would be to deny a part of herself that exists no matter how hard she’s tried to suppress it. Faced with the question of whether she hopes her sister’s prophecy will ring false, though it would put her in the line of public scrutiny, or true, though it could mean widespread destruction and even death, Kate must decide whether or not to hone in on her long-ignored faculties to predict what will happen, and admit to her friends, family and community that she has this unusual ability.

{I loved Prep and American Wife so I can’t wait to see what else she has in store for us.}

Release Date: June 25, 2013

THE LIFE LIST by Lori Nelson

Perfect for readers of Allison Winn Scotch, Jill Smolinski, and Cecilia Ahern’s PS, I Love You, this debut novel is the emotionally resonant, utterly charming story of a woman who must reevaluate her life when her mother passes away, leaving her the task of completing a list of life goals she wrote as a teenager.

When her mother dies, Brett is grief stricken, but it comforts her to know that her future is mapped out before her. She will step into her mother’s role as the CEO of Bohlinger Cosmetics, and will continue dating her boyfriend, the detached but deliciously handsome Andrew. But her mother had a different plan for her. When the will is read, Brett gets the shock of her life. Not only will she NOT be the CEO of Bohlinger Cosmetics, but she also will only get her inheritance if she fulfills a set of life goals she wrote-and then threw out-twenty years ago. At first Brett is outraged-she long ago stopped wanting the things she desired as a teen, and she likes her life just fine. But as she begins to follow “the life list,” she realizes that her mother might just have known her better than she knows herself.

{Sounds like women’s fiction at its best!}

Release Date: July 30, 2013

THE GIRL IN THE BLUE DRESS by Emma McLaughlin & Nicola Kraus

Following college, Jamie McAllister wins a prestigious internship at the White House that she has no idea will irrevocably alter her life. An unexpected flirtation with the handsome and charismatic Gregory Rutland quickly leads to an emotional relationship she is ill equipped to handle at twenty-two. Each time she tries to extricate herself Greg is unable to find the strength to let her go. Meanwhile, the opposing party mobilizes to annihilate his presidency by any means necessary.

As Greg’s conflicting desires drive her to the breaking point, Jamie can’t help but reveal intimate details to those closest to her. But she must have unburdened herself to the wrong person—because within a matter of weeks Jamie finds herself, and everyone she loves, facing highly calculated destruction at the hands of Greg’s political enemies.

With her every mistake dragged out for the world to judge, Jamie has to endure an unprecedented trial in the court of public opinion—with the fate of the President, his party, and the country at stake.

Now, years later, can the woman infamously known as the “girl in the blue dress” make sense of this affair, and the trauma it wrought, for the world—and for herself?

{I wonder who the character is based on?}

Release Date: August 27, 2013

As with exercise regimens and New Year’s resolutions, summer reading lists are those kind of goals that, despite the best of intentions, never seem to get finished. Still, I’m pretty jazzed about the amount of reading I’ve managed on the subway and at lunch, and I forgive myself for not getting to the rest of the list – I had two trilogies to attend to!

I realize that I never expressed my post-reading feelings about some of these titles, so here’s a round up of the books I promised I’d read, and actually did!

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo AND The Girl Who Played With Fire – Stieg Larsson /

Murder mysteries aren’t exactly my thing, but I can see why this trilogy has so much buzz. If you can get through the first 250+ pages of exposition and keep up with the host of Swedish names, Larsson’s first book is a truly engrossing thriller, and the sequel takes it right on par from there.

I’m not sure why Dragon Tattoo, and especially detective/journalist/man-about-town Mikael Blomkvist, would be considered feminist in the least, as pointed out by The Rejectionist in this deliciously seething review. Blomkvist is exactly the man who male fiction writers like to fantasize they are (see Robert Langdon), and he spends way too much time being a lady-magnet in tweed to actually be a believable character. Salander, on the other hand, may be seriously screwy, but at least she is interesting.

I also agree that reading or watching highly disturbing scenes of rape and torture is not my idea of a good time (really, I only watch Law and Order SVU for Chris Meloni and Ice-T). I could stomach parts of the no-holds-barred Swedish film with the sound off, and reading those gruesome scenes left me needing some Glee songs and a cupcake.

That being said, take Stieg Larsson’s trilogy for what it is – crime fiction – not some icon of feminist literature. Maybe, like me, you don’t only read characters who hold to real-life moral standards (if that’s the case, knock yourself out with Left Behind, please). Get lost in Larsson’s cold, cold Scandinavian underworld… then come up for air and find something happy to do.

This Is Where I Leave You - Jonathan Tropper /

Several months after hearing Tropper speak and praising the cover design, I finally, finally read This Is Where I Leave You… and found a voice that I wasn’t exactly prepared for. Sure, the dark comedic elements were impeccably timed, as expected. But Tropper’s protagonist, Judd Foxman, also left me with a perspective on the middle-aged male

Lee Fiora is a modest girl from the Midwest, blessed by luck and hours of effort, who has won a place and a scholarship to the Ault school, a prestigious Northeastern boarding school. Vineyard Vines, Ralph Lauren and J. Crew labels are everywhere to be seen, while the school demands more academically than Lee has ever experienced. Awed and apprehensive, Lee begins her Ault career, unsure of her place in this affluent, preppy world. As the weeks and months continue, Lee becomes progressively more alienated, feeling friendless and very much an outsider. She is not privy to East Coast slang, the favorite brands; her hair is not long and sleek, her body not completely soft and slender. The novel follows Lee for her four years at Ault, during which time she becomes hardly more integrated. She spends the overwhelming majority of her high school years feeling self-conscious and rather miserable, because she feels that any thought, expression or action outside of the norm will alienate her further and cause others to think badly of her.

I liken this feeling of being scrutinized to the concept of the “panopticon,” in the book The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks. A panopticon is a circular jail, arranged around a central well so that the prisoners could be watched at all times. Because of the constant assumption that they were being watched, the prisoners behaved and little watching ever really had to occur. In Prep, and in The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks, the boarding school atmosphere makes for a sort of panopticon—an environment in which everyone feels as though they are always being watched, and behave accordingly. For Frankie, in Disreputable History, the panopticon serves to fascinate her and spark a rebellion within her. In Prep, the panopticon makes Lee miserable, for she feels as though her every move must be calculated to follow what the popular students are doing, and she spends more time desperately trying to fit in than she does nearly anything else. Life with a desperate and masochistic motivation such as this is not a happy one; Lee is constantly miserable and ends up allowing herself to be used sexually by a popular boy, for after wanting so long to be wanted, she grasps at the first possibility. Lee acts for almost the sole motivation of wanting not necessarily to be accepted –for being different is never desirable—but included.

Prep was written by Curtis Sittenfeld, sort of as a memoir. Sittenfeld attended a very prestigious boarding school as a teenager, and changed the name and a few key facts in the book, in order to somewhat protect its identity. Knowing this as I read was a little sad, for Curtis, alias Lee, has such an awful time in the text.

Prep is the bittersweet story of a girl who enters into a lavish world that seems ideal to her, but quickly learns that the pressure to be the unattainable elite is suffocating, and she finds herself barely gasping for breath over the four years of her life there. The really sad thing was that by the end of the novel, Lee does not seem to have really learned anything. She has not decided to be true to herself, or not care what others think of her. Perhaps this is more realistic, but it is still rather melancholy.

Prep is basically a depressing read. And though the insights on life at such an institution as Ault were interesting and well-explored, often the book lagged in Lee’s despair and alienation.

In an effort to be bipartisan, author Curtis Sittenfeld is following up her beautifully written novel American Wife that was loosely based on the life of Laura Bush, with a novella written for Slate that will be based on Barack Obama’s inauguration. The five part series entitled, All Along, This Was What Was Supposed to Happen, will end on Inauguration day. Sittenfeld says that her next book will not be politically-based. She is the author of Prep and The Man of My Dreams.

I’ve looked on Abe, AddAll, Bookfinder, Amazon and I find no price reference anywhere. Google will tell me that the book sits in a few collections but this information does not help me set a price. What do I do?

If you are selling books online this scenario will present itself fairly regularly. If it doesn’t I might suggest that you are not buying books that will help you stay in the game long term.

As you may have guessed, a book that is this hard to find usually means one of two things. 1. It is so rare that it never comes up for sale so it must be a true gem $$$.
2. It is so utterly useless that only a handful were ever made and the author’s Mom has most copies up in the attic.

As always the amount of gray area in between is vast and your book’s price will no doubt be found there. OK, enough with what you already know - how about some tips?

One of the first things that a new book seller assumes is that if it’s old it must be worth a lot. This is often incorrect especially for fiction. Keep in mind at the turn of the century there was no television, no tabloids, no cheesy movies. Folks got a lot of their less weighty drama in the form of novels. That being said, a good place to start is a quick lookup of the author. Is he well respected or has he written other works of notoriety? If he happens to have two other books selling online for a pretty penny and you have an earlier work then you may have something. You can look up the author and perhaps a year of publication range at Abebooks or do a simple search on the author at Wikipedia (a great place for background info). You should also take note of the publisher. After a while certain names will reappear. Some will tell you that a particular book was mass produced and is not too valuable while others will lead to more questions.

A few other tips to remember. There are a few online booksellers that consistently overprice books (I mean way over price). You will get to know their names fast enough. If you see one of them price a book at $150.00 please do not price yours at $145.00. Do your own research, perhaps simply say to yourself, “What would I pay for this?” If you feel that it’s a $40.00 book then mark it at $40.00 or even $20.00 if you need a quick sale or if you picked it up for $1.00. This train of thought though should not apply to works of historical value of those in demand by collectors. But how do you know if it’s collectible or not? One of the most important skills you will need to develop is instinct. What does it seem like to you? If you are really stuck there is nothing wrong with putting it on the back burner for a while. You may start one shelf in your back room with ‘books of uncertain value’ and just re-research them every once in a while. One tool I like to use while my books are sitting around is a custom search on eBay. You can create and save searches and also have eBay send you an email when an item comes up in the search results. Set up a search for each book on your backroom shelf.

Sometimes finances comes into play. If your bills aren’t piling up on you then perhaps you could give it a healthy price and wait. Jungle Books mentioned at The Bookshop Blog Forum that he likes to put a starting price of $200. That’s fair enough as you can always lower the price after a few months if it doesn’t move.

There may be times when you come across a book that you think has some serious value. In this case it may be wise to bring it to a more experienced dealer in your area for an appraisal. Hopefully he will treat you as a colleague and give you his honest opinion. If you go this route make sure to thank him not in words but pick up a book for yourself. He’ll look forward to your next visit. If there are no such gentlemen in your area then you might want to try Joe Orlando’s email list (for B & M owners), or if you only sell books online then you’ll want to start a conversation at one or two of your favorite booksellers forums.

Recap:
Do some investigative work using some of the resources listed below.
Keep a Go-To list for future research.
Trust your own instincts.
Put it on the back burner or backroom shelf for a while if you really can’t decide or if you think there is a possibility that it may have some serious value.
Ask another dealer.
Ask others on your favorite forums.

Resources:
Abe Wants List (under your booksellers menu - for Abe Sellers only)
eBay Completed Items
Americana Exchange
Wikipedia - for Author’s Bio
Joe’s Bookstore Group
Bookshop Blog booksellers forum
Faded Giant

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