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 at rablog@lu.com.
By Cindy Orr
This Week In Books
Welcome to another week of readers’ advisory and book news. We’ve highlighted China in our Under the Radar list this week (look to the right and scroll down). The list includes 5 fiction and 5 nonfiction titles that had great reviews. I’m listening to Wolf Totem myself in the car this week, and find this Chinese bestseller fascinating.
Our second weekly featured list is the New, Noteworthy, and No-Brainer list of titles to be published in the upcoming seven days. We have a big crop of new thrillers this week, and the fiction includes titles by Sandra Brown, John Saul, Faye Kellerman, Anne Rivers Siddons, among others. On the nonfiction side, Tommy Chong has written the “unauthorized” biography of Cheech and Chong, and we also have a little more orthodox autobiography by Billie Jean King. Look directly below this post for the full list.
The Most Wanted Mashup has some new titles this week. First is The Bourne Sanction by Eric von Lustbader, and Obama Nation (clever pun, huh?), one of the first of the anti-Obama books that will flood the market. Two of the summer’s three predicted bestsellers are doing very well—The Lace Reader and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society hit the lists this week. And it’s looking like The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson will make it to the bestseller list next week. Here’s more about that from Early Word.
In other book news, Starbucks has made its next choice—The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper is a memoir of growing up in Liberia during its civil war.
Hachette reports that Breaking Dawn broke company records for book sales, with an estimated 1.3 million copies sold on August 2 alone. Apparently some fans are upset at the direction of the new book, but others love it. What are you hearing?
PW discusses The Year We Disappeared. There’s a lot of prepub buzz about this true crime book. A father and daughter write alternating chapters in this memoir of a police officer who was shot in the face and had to go into hiding with his family when his daughter was only nine. The crime is still unsolved.
And George Clooney has snapped up the film rights to Jonathan Mahler’s book The Challenge, the story of Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s Yemeni driver.
Yiddish Policemen’s Union Wins Hugo, Nebula, and Nomination for Edgar
It’s kind of a slow news week. Are you on vacation? If so, write and let us know what you took to the beach. It was a big week for awards, however. Take a look in the Lists section below for links to winners of the Hugo Awards, the RITA Awards, and the Shamus Award nominees. Michael Chabon won the Hugo Award for The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Chabon’s book also won the Nebula Award and was nominated for the Edgar. What? Did you think it was a mystery? Or a literary novel? Guess you’re not the only one! I’m reading Chabon’s Maps and Legends in which he discusses “genre fiction,” which is where he says he is comfortable. Watch for a post on that later, but for the first time in a long time, I’m feeling like—possibly—the ghetto walls around “genre” novels may be crumbling a bit. I hope so!
Decline in Book Buying Public
Minnesota Public Radio produced a discussion on factors contributing to a decline in the book buying public. And what is the publishing industry doing about the problem? See below.
How to Appeal to Boys: Publish Gross, Nasty and Gory Books—With Pictures
According to the Wall Street Journal, it’s an official trend. Will books with titles like Help! What’s Eating My Flesh: Runaway Staph and Strep Infections, Leopold II: Butcher of the Congo, It’s Disgusting and We Ate It, and Getting to Know Your Toilet: The Disgusting Story Behind Your Home’s Strangest Feature really help sales? In a desperate attempt to reach boys, whose reading drops off dramatically after the age of eight, publishers have sunk to a new low, according to some parents and teachers. Will it work?
Free Book Covers for Libraries
In a project they call half promotional, half humanitarian, Library Thing has offered libraries access to about a million digital book covers for use in their catalogs or on their web sites. Readers’ advisors know how important cover images are in helping readers choose a book, but many libraries can simply not afford them. If your library is in this category, the Library Thing project may be worth a look. And—a related thought: have you seen Zoomii Books yet? If not, take a look. It’s a very interesting idea that might be useful to libraries.
Lists
A British List of the Top Ten Western Novels
The Ten Oddest Travel Guides Ever Published
A Unified List of the Best 100 Novels
10 Oddest Travel Guides Ever Published
2008 Shamus Award Nominees
RITA Award Winners
Hugo Award Winners
Foreign Affairs Professional Reading List
September Indie Next List
Authors
Ray Bradbury on the Proposal to Close the Long Beach Main Library to the Public
Paulo Coelho – “share everything freely”
Michael Connelly
Alan Furst
George Pelecanos
Here’s the fun link of the week. Trash Talking Romance Novelists. It’s hilarious.
