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Today Judi Powers muses on some of her favorite books that are coming out this summer, and takes a quick glimpse as to what is coming down the line. Read on, and see if you don't get as excited as she is!

The hot summer days we've been having in New York make me want to do two of my favorite things: cook with friends and go to the movies! And, it seems that I'm like a lot of other people if I look at DK's biggest books of the summer season.

The awesome DK PR team has gotten so much media coverage of our cookbook, Grill It! (by the dynamic barbecuing team Doc Willoughby and Chris Schlesinger), that I wake up almost daily to see yet another Google Alert with a rave review of the book. It's gotten to the point that I don't actually read the reviews, listen to radio clips, or watch videos where the authors are cooking until around lunchtime because if I look at them in the morning, I'm craving barbecued chicken for breakfast!

Another hot DK book puts me in the same type of jeopardy for selecting my first meal of the day: it's called He Said Beer, She Said Wine by Sam Calagione and Marnie Old. Their interesting and sometimes-surprisingly delicious pairings of wine and beer with some of my favorite foods (ice cream!) have not only sparked some fun conversations with friends and colleagues about which drink is better, they've actually turned me on to beer (and I used to never drink beer).

Our summer movie tie in books to Indiana Jones, Kung Fu Panda, and Wall*E have all been really popular in the past weeks. Rachel Kempster and Jenn, another colleague in marketing, saw Wall*E over the weekend and they've been gushing about how great it is! I really can't wait to see it.

The hardest-and most exciting-part of my job is keeping up with all our seasons: sometimes we're planning almost a year ahead, other times I'm revisiting a book we published a few months ago, and then there are times when I'm focused on the present and not-too-distant future. The fall is always our biggest season, though, and it's on my mind from the moment we launch the books in December of the preceding year until well into the New Year.

Looking ahead to fall, I'm beyond excited that I get to work again with author Ross King (I worked with him when I was at Viking Penguin on Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling) on our gorgeous book, Art. We featured this book in a big way at Book Expo America or BEA, the annual convention for booksellers across the US and around the globe, and it was really exciting to hear lots of enthusiasm from Roberta Rubin and Elaine Petrocelli (two prominent booksellers) among many others.

There are so many other books I could talk about but this blog post will end up going on forever!

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