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.

This Week In Books
Hello…Happy Almost New Year! Good news…we’re past the Christmas lull and have a good choice of new books hitting the shelves this week. In nonfiction, they’re pretty much predictable New Year’s resolution types—several on diets and losing weight, money matters, health, transforming your life, finding love, etc. But buried among them we have Azar Nafisi’s Things I’ve Been Silent About. On the fiction side there’s a lot of choice: Marie Arana, Lawrence Block, Sandra Brown, Julie Garwood, Jan Burke, Jayne Ann Krentz, W. E. B. Griffin, Charles Todd, Carol O’Connell, and Colleen McCullough among others. Scroll down to the next entry to see the entire list of New, Noteworthy, and No-Brainers.

Our Under the Radar list this week is Inspirational Politics. Look to the righthand column just under the Most Wanted Mashup for that list, and speaking of Most Wanted, there’s not much new on the bestseller lists this week, though holiday shopping has brought back Team of Rivals and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Check the column on the right side to see what’s selling this week. And now on to the news.

The Wind in the Willows at 100
Yep, that’s right, Kenneth Grahame’s classic The Wind in the Willows is one hundred years old. Salon has a wonderful tribute.

Craft Book Sales Are Up
The New York Times reports that sales of craft books and craft supplies were up as many people gave handmade gifts this Christmas. As the economy shows no signs of turning around anytime soon, it might be time to restock the library shelves with some do-it-yourself titles.

The Book Was Better—Movies That Didn’t Measure Up.
The headline says it all. Here’s the list.

Man Booker Prize to Continue
Even though the Man Group lost over $300 million in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, a spokesperson assured reporters that they would continue to sponsor the Booker Prize as they have in the past.

A New Twist on Chick Lit?
PW thinks they’ve found one: Quiche Lit—Chick Lit for those who enjoy food and cooking. They give three examples for their new subgenre.

Waterstones Adds Personal Shoppers
It seems a bit redundant, but Waterstone’s booksellers have added the position of personal shopper for customers who are looking for good books to read. You’d think they would have been doing this for years. On the other hand, I kind of like this name better than readers advisor.

Catcher in the Rye for Young Muslims
Some American Muslim rebellious youth have rallied around a book called The Taqwacores by Michael Muhammad Knight. Dog-eared photocopies of the novel were passed around and inspired the formation of a punk rock subculture. Knight says he found validation in the life of Muhammad, who instructed people to ignore their leaders, destroy their petty deities and follow only Allah. Luckily, Soft Skull Press has an edition coming out in February.

Les Mis Sequel Approved
A French court has decided that descendants of Victor Hugo cannot prevent the publication of sequels to Les Miserables, and actually charged them for court costs and penalties. Story here.

Unpublished Graham Greene Manuscript Found
Five chapters of an unpublished Graham Greene mystery story were discovered and published. The work, written when Greene was 22, was found in the archives of the Humanities Research Center at Austin, Texas. The story, called The Empty Chair, can be read here.

A Lion Called Christian
Chances are that you’ve seen the inspiring video of the lion raised by a couple of young men, then released into the wild. No one expected Christian the lion to remember them, but the scene of their reunion with the lion hugging and snuggling with the men is quite something. Well, of course there is a book. Though it was originally published in 1971, until the video, no one paid much attention. Random House will release a new edition in March. Expect this one to be a bestseller.

HarperStudio Will Not Take Returns
In a move toward changing a publishing model that many agree is broken, HarperStudio has made a deal with Borders to take their books with a no-returns policy. A stunningly high percentage of returns from bookstores has put publishing houses under an increasing amount of pressure recently. In fact, the news is so bad in the publishing industry, that some are wondering how literature will survive, or whether this means the end of the book.

Should Bargain Hunting for Books Make Us Feel Guilty?
Part of the reason the book industry is in trouble, according to this article in the New York Times, is that avid readers shop online for the best prices, or buy used books. What do you think? Do you buy this argument?

eBooks Grow in Popularity
On the up side, eBooks have begun a surge in popularity—possibly because of Amazon’s Kindle, but the Sony Reader and the Apple iPhone are doing a good business in eBooks as well. Libraries who have embraced downloadable audiobooks should pay attention to the trend of reading on a screen, because with many false starts, it’s finally happening. The Amazon Kindle is proprietary, and you can’t read books on it that you haven’t purchased through Amazon, but the Sony Reader will work with the OverDrive downloadable model, allowing library users to check out titles and read them on a convenient paperback sized reader rather than just on a computer screen. It’s impressive how many articles were published recently about this trend:

Turning Page, E-Books Start to Take Hold
E-books Grow in Popularity this Holiday Season
Electronic books getting their day at last
S&S quadruples e-book sales
People of the Screen

Authors
Connie Briscoe - cleared in libel suit filed by her mother
Patricia Cornwell – queen of forensic fiction
Julius Fast – obituary
Conor Cruise O’Brien – obituary
Harold Pinter – obituary
Hilary Waugh – obituary
Natasha Wimmer (translator of Robert Bola̱o) Рinterview

RAO’s Cumulative List of Lists of the Year’s Best Books
Amazon’s Best Books of 2008 and here
The Atlantic’s Books of the Year
Barnes & Noble Best of 2008
AudioFile’s Best Audiobooks of 2008
Best Books We’ve Read This Year – by Stephen King, Amy Sedaris, others
Bookmarks Magazine Best Books of 2008
The Boston Globe’s Seasons Readings
Boston Globe Vampires, Obama and Oprah: Hits of 2008
Business Week’s Best Business Books of 2008
Chicago Sun-Times Favorite Books of 2008
Christian Science Monitor’s Best Novels of 2008
Christian Science Monitor’s Best Nonfiction Books of 2008
The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Best Books of 2008
Crime Authors’ 3 Favorite Books of 2008, Part 1
Crime Authors’ 3 Favorite Books of 2008, Part 2
Crime Authors’ 3 Favorite Books of 2008, Part 3
Entertainment Weekly’s Best and Worst of 2008
The Guardian’s Ten Best Books of 2008
Harvard Book Store’s Holiday Hundred
Hudson Booksellers Best Books of 2008
Independent Bookstores 2008 Bestsellers
International Herald Tribune’s Best Books of 2008
Michiko Kakutani’s Best Books of 2008
Kansas City Star’s Noteworthy Books of 2008
Stephen King’s 10 Best Books of 2008
LA Times Favorite Books 2008
LA Times Best Science Fiction of 2008
Library Journal Best Books of 2008
London Times Books of the Year
Janet Maslin’s Favorites of 2008
The Millions: a Year in Reading
NPR’s 10 Best Cookbooks of 2008
NPR’s Best Gift Books of 2008
NPR’s Booksellers Picks for Your Holiday List
NPR’s Complete Holiday Book Recommendations 2008
NPR’s Top Ten Mystery Books of 2008
New York Magazine’s The Year in Books
NY Times 100 Notable Books of 2008
NY Times 10 Best Books of 2008
NY Times Notable Crime Fiction of 2008
NY Times Best Travel Books of 2008NY Times of 2008
NY Times Best Visual Books of 2008
NY Times Best Cookbooks of 2008
NY Times Best Gardening Books of 2008
NY Times Notable Children’s Books of 2008
Penguin Authors What to Get, What to Give
PW’s Best Books of 2008
RAO’s Great General Fiction of 2008
RAO’s Great Mysteries of 2008
RAO’s Great Romances of 2008
RAO’s Great Speculative Fiction of 2008
RAO’s Great Thrillers of 2008
St. Louis Post-Dispatch 2008 Books: Fiction
Salon Book Awards 2008
San Francisco Chronicle’s Holiday Books
School Library Journal’s Best Books 2008
Seattle Times Best Books of 2008
Shelf-Awareness Picks of the Year, Part One
Slate’s Best Books of 2008
Spoken Word Grammy Award Nominees
Time’s Best Book of 2008
Top Ten Hockey Books of 2008
Top Ten Texas Books of the Year
USA Today’s Stunning Science Books for Holiday Giving
USA Today’s Holiday Guide Gift Books
The Village Voice Best Books of 2008
Wall Street Journal’s Shelf of Standouts 2008
Washington Post’s Best Books of 2008
Sarah Weinman’s Best Crime Books of 2008
YALSA Teens Top Ten of 2008

Lighthearted Link of the Week
How to Make a Purse Out of Books

See you next week! Have a great New Year’s.

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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 at rablog@lu.com.

By Cindy Orr

This Week In Books

We had a few technical problems that delayed the blog this week. Sorry about that! But let’s get going now that that’s all behind us. This week’s Under the Radar is Great General Fiction of 2008. Take a look at the right column under The Most Wanted Mashup. Speaking of the Most Wanted, we have a couple of new titles on the nonfiction list. Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher and champion swimmer Michael Phelps’s new book No Limits. The fiction list is the same as last week’s. And, as usual, look just below this post for our New, Noteworthy, and No-Brainer List. You won’t be surprised that there aren’t many new titles hitting the shelves this week. It’s a little late to count on getting into someone’s Christmas shopping bag But, things will begin picking up after the holidays as we begin the approach to the Spring List.

Depressing News Department
The crashing economy has begun affecting the book business in a big way. I’ll just make a list of the latest news you should know about:

• Borders will close four stores.
• Macmillan, whose subsidiaries include Farrar, Straus & Giroux, St. Martin’s Press, Holt, Picador and others, lays off 4% of its staff—64 people.
  and sadly, Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
• Layoffs at Doubleday and Broadway.
• Powell’s Books has asked staff to cut back hours, take sabbaticals.

Publishers’ net book sales fell 20.1% to $644.5 million in October, as reported by 80 publishers to the Association of American Publishers. Sales for the year through October were down 3.4% to $8.362 billion.

Among categories:

• E-book sales rose 73% to $5.2 million.
• Adult mass market rose 6.3% to $65.3 million.
• Children’s/YA hardcover rose 0.8% to $86.4 million.
• Professional and scholarly sales slipped 4.4% to $46.3 million.
• Audiobook sales dropped 9.1% to $18.4 million.
• University press paperbacks fell 13.9% to $4.2 million.
• Children’s/YA paperback fell 14.8% to $43.8 million.
• University press hardcovers dropped 20.4% to $6 million.
• Adult paperback dropped 23% to $95 million.
• Adult hardcover fell 25% to $246.2 million.
• Religious books fell 25.6% to $57.1 million.

More Best Books of the Year
Seattle Times Children’s Books to Give and to Cherish -
NY Daily News Best Books to Buy for Kids
Bloomberg – Ogres and Dragons and Muggles, Oh My!
Dog (and Cat) Lovers Pant for These Holiday Books -
8 Books to Rekindle the Hannukah Spirit –
Kansas City Star The Gift of Books for Young Readers

NY Times 2 Minutes for Booking: Hockey Holiday Gift Books –
USA Today’s Top Ten Books of 2008 -
LJ’s Best Books of 2008 -
The Newbery Award: Does It Dampen Kids Reading?
Twilight Sequel Movie November 2009

The Future of the Internet
The Pew Internet & American Life Project surveyed several expert and gathered their answers into a report on the future of the Internet. Click here for some interesting observations.

Graywolf Press to Publish Inauguration Poem
Poet Elizabeth Alexander has been asked to read a work at the inauguration of President-Elect Barack Obama. Graywolf Press will make it into an instabook in commemoration of the occasion. More here.

Second Sawtelle Book
David Wroblewski , author of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle will deliver a trilogy about the same characters. In a statement Ecco said that Mr. Wroblewski’s new book, as yet untitled, would be the second entry in a trilogy, and that it would trace the origins of Edgar Sawtelle’s father and uncle. 

Lists
Spring Chick Lit for Food Lovers
IMPAC Dublin Award Longlist
Top Ten Most Wanted Out of Print Books

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