what is going on when i request a book and it says waiting on member for more than a week? thanks!

Has it rolled over to the next copy? Look at the "Requested On:" field. Is that more recently than your initial request? If so, the first person probably either said they couldn't mail or let the request time out, and you are now waiting on the second (or third, or fourth) member.

What Elizabeth said

You can check this in your credit registry, which is on the horizontal yellow bar on your My Account page.  If you see that an order was canceled and "passed on", that means your order has been passed to a new sender.

the book is the memory keepers daughter. does popularity make a differenc? thanks for your help!

oh yea! There are probably a lot of copies of the Memory Keeper's Daughter in the system