Advance Booking

Mary Ann Gwinn of The Seattle Times was in New York to cover Book Expo America, the US publishing industry's annual get-together. After conversing with publishers and other denizens of the book business, she mentions a short list of the books likely to create the most buzz in the next few months:

- J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince (but of course)

- Bob Woodward's book on his relationship with former deputy FBI director Mark Felt, who recently owned up to being Deep Throat.

- Gabriel García Márquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores

- Ordinary Heroes, a new mystery by Scott Turow

- And finally (yes!) Salman Rushdie's Shalimar The Clown

Meanwhile, "Michael. Cunningham was photographed dancing with Jonathan Franzen to the thumping D.J. Johnnie Darnell (Mr. Cunningham’s selection), as women in paisley sarongs circulated the room with trays of chicken skewers" That's from Sheelah Kolhatkar's fascinatingly gossipy piece in the New York Observer on the same event.

She sums up: "The consensus on the annual three-day publishing and booksellers’ convention, which alternates cities like a traveling circus, was that there was no consensus—no standout theme, Bill Clinton memoir or looming election. The whole affair was a blur of cheap wine, mini empanadas and free books, punctuated by the odd wannabe author cruising the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center with a toilet seat around his neck. The fact that the expo took place in New York, as opposed to Chicago or Los Angeles, only lent a certain world-weariness to the proceedings."