For bibliophiles, a buzzworthy autumn

Book buyers and bookstore owners offer tips as to fall's best new books, from Phillip Roth's new novel to Stephen Colbert's guide to America.

from the September 7, 2007 edition

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When a book works, says Daniel Goldin, senior buyer at Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops in Milwaukee, he braces himself for a slew of imitators, be they dog memoirs or Da Vinci Code-breakers. "There's 17 books that look like 'The Kite Runner,' " Mr. Goldin says. Similarly, he predicts this season's "Freakonomics" will be Richard Wiseman's Quirkology: How We Discover the Big Truths in Small Things.

Jessa Crispin, editor and founder of the webzine bookslut.com, ignored this fall's supercharged nonfiction lineup – Oliver Sacks, Paul Krugman, Alan Greenspan, Stephen Pinker, Orhan Pamuk, and the late David Halberstam – and selected a sleeper: Shalom Auslander's Foreskin's Lament, due in October. "This is his memoir. He grew [up] in a very strict, Orthodox Jewish family," she says. "I think he's one of the funniest writers on the planet, even when it's dark material."

Beyond Edwidge Danticat's Brother, I'm Dying, Carole Horne believes the autumn list is somewhat weak in the biography and memoir categories. One self-explanatory title on people's lips is Clapton: The Autobiography, due at the beginning of October. Another: Steve Martin's Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life. "Martin is not a publicly introspective guy," says Publishers Weekly's Ms. Nelson, who describes the November release as a "history of comedy" from the 1970s onward. "I found it incredibly charming."

The presidential race may be heating up, but some booksellers are skeptical that earnest political books will do well. However, Jon Stewart proved "funny political" is a sure-fire seller. Horne predicts the book that's going to "bring people into the bookstores this fall" is Stephen Colbert's I Am America (And So Can You!). The mock-conservative pundit expounds on his "most deeply held knee-jerk beliefs," from evolution to the evils of Hollywood.

She points to another politics-lite title, the inspirational Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World, just hitting stores. "It will be a big publishing and media-attention book," Horne says. Why? The writer is Bill Clinton.

But while Horne asserts, "We've run our course on books on how terrible the Bush administration is," one sober nonfiction book likely to buck the trend is Susan Faludi's The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America, scheduled for early October. The searing treatise condemns the country's psychological response to 9/11, tying in foreign policy, the media, and America's mythic sense of self.

"She's the woman who wrote 'Backlash.' She's very smart, very serious," observes Nelson. "Maybe it's time. Maybe we can handle a serious book about 9/11 now."

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