The readers’ advisory librarian’s weekly update, from a scan of more than 100 blogs, newsletters, magazines, newspapers and television. This blog is brought to you by the Reader’s Advisor Online, the subscription database based on Libraries Unlimited’s Genreflecting Advisory series. We’d love to hear from you. Feel free to comment on any of our posts, or contact us here.

By Cindy Orr

This Week In Books
We have some important books this week: Louise Erdrich’s Plague of Doves, Augusten Burroughs’s latest memoir A Wolf at the Table, which may not be entirely “true” as some people would define true, Ursula K. LeGuin’s Lavinia , Simon Winchester’s The Man Who Loved China, just to name a handful. For a complete list of new books hitting he shelves this week, scroll down and take a look at the New, Noteworthy and No-Brainer list below. It’s quite long this week. As usual, our Most Wanted Mashup is to the right, and just below that, Under the Radar this week lists ten great reads from earlier decades. Now on with the news of the week!

More People Writing Books Than Reading Them?
The New York Times published a story this week about the huge proliferation of self-published books. It seems that maybe there are more writers out there than readers!

Starbuck’s Next Book Selection
Starbucks has chosen Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain as its next book selection. The book will be sold in Starbucks stores beginning on May 12.

LJ’s Day of Dialog at BEA to Cover RA Sites
If you haven’t signed up for BookExpo America, to be held in LA in a few weeks, you may want to get going. As usual, Library Journal will sponsor its traditional Day of Dialog on the Thursday of the book industry’s biggest conference, May 29. Their program this year is of special interest to readers’ advisors, featuring a comparison of the profession’s best known subscription tools, with representatives from this product, Reader’s Advisor Online, Gale’s Books and Authors, Ebsco’s NoveList and Bowker’s Fiction Connection talking about their features and what makes them unique. There are typically upwards of 20,000 attendees at BEA, so do connect with other librarians through LJ if you’re going.

Library Uses Shelfari to Manage Staff Reading Logs
Thanks to Kathy Sexton and the staff of the Berwyn Public Library, IL for this description of how they use Shelfari to organize reading logs on their website. Kathy posted the following message to FictionL.

“At our library, we just started (and I mean just) using Shelfari. We had a bunch of reading logs on our website and when we started revamping the site, we decided to use Shelfari for the logs. We created a group that is by invite only, and each of us RA librarians are a member of the group.

Our new site will link directly to the group. In my reviews I still include read-a-likes and recommended audience in addition to appeal.

I like this arrangement because each person can do as much or as little as they wish and they have complete control over it. I also like it because patrons generally latch on to the one of us who seems to have similar reading tastes, so now they can check that person’s shelf directly. The group is called “RA Reading Logs at the Berwyn Public Library.” We are still in the midst of revamping our website and the Shelfari section but feel free to check it out. Oh yeah, that’s the other nice thing, patrons do not have to belong to Shelfari to use it. And in the future we could include patrons in our group. AND you can tag the books, which is nice.”

Kathy Sexton
Readers’ Advisory Librarian
Berwyn Public Library
2701 S. Harlem
Berwyn, IL 60401
708-795-8000 x3005

Lists
The Travel Bookshop’s Top Ten Books About the Wilderness
The Telegraph’s Fifty Best Cult Books
Locus Award Finalists:

SF NOVEL
The Accidental Time Machine, Joe Haldeman (Ace)
Brasyl, Ian McDonald (Pyr)
Halting State, Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)
Spook Country, William Gibson (Putnam; Viking UK)
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Michael Chabon (HarperCollins)

FANTASY NOVEL
Endless Things, John Crowley (Small Beer Press; Overlook)
Making Money, Terry Pratchett (Doubleday UK; HarperCollins)
Pirate Freedom, Gene Wolfe (Tor)
Territory, Emma Bull (Tor)
Ysabel, Guy Gavriel Kay (Viking Canada; Roc)

FIRST NOVEL
City of Bones, Cassandra Clare (Simon & Schuster/McElderry)
Flora Segunda, Ysabeau S. Wilce (Harcourt)
Heart-Shaped Box, Joe Hill (Morrow; Gollancz)
The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss (DAW; Gollancz)
One for Sorrow, Christopher Barzak (Bantam Spectra)

That’s it for this week, folks. More later, but I taught a workshop over the weekend, and it’s late! Speaking of late, don’t forget to enter our contest for a $50 American Express gift card. The deadline is midnight on April 29, so hurry. Click here for details.

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The readers’ advisory librarian’s weekly update, from a scan of more than 100 blogs, newsletters, magazines, newspapers and television. This blog is brought to you by the Reader’s Advisor Online, the subscription database based on Libraries Unlimited’s Genreflecting Advisory series. We’d love to hear from you. Feel free to comment on any of our posts, or contact us here.

By Cindy Orr

This Week In Books
We have a few new and in demand titles this week, including new books by both Mary Higgins Clark and her daughter Carol Higgins Clark, David Baldacci, Iris Johansen, Stuart Woods, Lois McMaster Bujold, Leif Enger, Amanda Quick, Dorothea Benton Frank, Maria Shriver, Jennifer Weiner, Cokie Roberts, and Isabel Allende, just to mention a few recognizable names. Makes you want to take some time off and stay home to read if you know what I mean.

For a complete list, take a look below for the New, Noteworthy and No-Brainer titles that will hit the shelves for the first time this week. To the right, we have our Most Wanted Mashup—a sort of conglomeration of the top titles from several different bestseller lists, with an emphasis on titles new to the lists. Below that, our Under the Radar list this week is top reviewed Historical Mysteries from the past few months. Enjoy! (I’ll be out on the deck if you’re looking for me—the Macmillan Fall catalogs arrived this week!)

Orange Prize Shortlist Released:
The winner of the Orange Prize, an award given each year to a woman for fiction in English, will be announced on June 4. The newly released shortlist of six books includes three first novels, one by American author Patricia Wood, two books by Canadians, and three others by British authors. The finalists are:

Nancy Huston – Fault Lines
Sadie Jones – The Outcast
Charlotte Mendelson – When We Were Bad
Heather O’Neill – Lullabies for Little Criminals
Rose Tremain – The Road Home
Patricia Wood – Lottery

Library Finds Good News About Reading
The Cuyahoga County Public Library in suburban Cleveland has released results of a survey on local reading habits. The results were much better than two recent surveys done by the National Endowment of the Arts. The news from the NEA “has been dark and darker,” said Sari Feldman, director of the library system. But her library continues to break circulation records. She hired Triad Research Group to check the trends in her service area.

Results:
78 per cent of adults had read a book unrelated to work or school in the past year.
71 per cent had read something “literary,” such as a novel or book of poetry.
Those aged 18 to 24 were just as likely to have read a book as other age groups, though they did read fewer titles.

Feldman has dedicated this year to “reconnect to reading.” She’s hired Nancy Pearl for one week per month to conduct training sessions for staff and programs for the public. She expects to repeat the survey in a year to see if the program has made a difference in the public’s rate of reading for pleasure. Book reading, she says, is the core value of public libraries. Hear, hear!

The NEA study is here, and here is another take from the New York Times, and here’s one that will really make you feel good. Do you know of any other local studies that show different numbers on reading rates? Let us know.

Lonely Planet Author Says He Made It All Up
Yup. You read that right. “They didn’t pay me enough to go to Colombia,” he said. Oh, yeah…and he sold a few drugs to help make ends meet too. Read all about it here. Thomas Kohnstamm reveals all in his new book, Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?: A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventures, Questionable Ethics, and Professional Hedonism. It probably doesn’t seem right to the Lonely Planet guys that he’s cashing in at their expense. They are definitely not amused, and are scrambling to “investigate thoroughly.”

Book Sales to the Movies
Here’s an article from Variety on how the writer’s strike left a big gap in content, which has movie producers scrambling to buy up book rights. On a related note, one of those lucky authors is Patricia Cornwell, who has made a huge deal.

How to Write an Annotation
Thanks to Sarah Nagle for this tip. Click here for a very useful document called “Creating an Annotation” by the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped at the Library of Congress. Writing an annotation may seem simple, but experts agree that it is anything but. Take a look at this document for great examples that will let you see exactly what they mean.

J. K. Rowling Makes the Poor Guy Cry
In case you haven’t been following it, the three day trial on whether the blogger who started a Harry Potter Encyclopedia online has the right to publish it, has ended now. The poor guy seemed overwhelmed at the idea that Rowling thought he did anything wrong, and broke into tears on the stand.

Author Info and Interviews
Nicholson Baker
Peter Carey
Richard Price
Philip Roth’s 75th Birthday Celebration
Jennifer Weiner
Tobias Wolff

Lists
Audie Awards Finalists
Independent Mystery Booksellers Association March Bestsellers
Top Ten Book Group Choices of 2007

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