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

Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez!

Yes, it’s Mardi Gras week. In honor of that, look in the righthand column for our Under the Radar list of fiction and nonfiction with a Mardi Gras theme. You’ll find this list directly under our usual Most Wanted Mashup list of the most popular books of the week. New to the Most Wanted list this week are two titles in fiction and three in nonfiction: Fool by Christopher Moore, The Women by T.C. Boyle, No Angel by Jay Dobyns and Nils Johnson-Shelton, The Gamble by Thomas E. Ricks, and A. Lincoln by Ronald C. White, Jr.

For the titles new to the shelves in the next seven days, look directly below this post to our New, Noteworthy, and No-Brainer list, and ooh, there are a ton of brand new books to choose from this week!

There’s new fiction by M.C. Beaton, Lincoln Child, Robert B. Parker, Stephanie Laurens, Danielle Steel, J.D. Robb, Joanne Fluke, and more. On the nonfiction side, we have Elaine Showalter’s A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx, The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann, and the timely Catching the Wolf of Wall Street: More Incredible True Stories of Fortunes, Schemes, Parties, and Prison by Jordan Belfort. And that’s just the beginning. Again…look below to see the whole list.

Now, on to the news for Mardi Gras week.

Oscars, Oscars, Oscars
Everyone knows by now that Slumdog Millionaire cleaned up at the Oscars last night. The film was based on the book Q & A by Vikas Swarup. The book is available with its original title, and also in a tie-in edition with the Slumdog Millionaire title.

Kate Winslet won the Best Actress award for her role in The Reader, based on the book by Bernhard Schlink. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, won three awards.

And don’t forget Slumdog Millionaire: The Shooting Script and Milk: The Script. Milk actually won for the best original screenplay. Thanks to Shelf-Awareness for the details.

BEA Negotiates Lower Hotel Rates
If you were thinking about attending this year’s Book Expo in New York, but were concerned about the cost, we have good news for you. Show officials have negotiated discount rates for hotels.

Atwood Pulls Out of Dubai Festival in Censorship Protest
The Dubai Festival of Literature is facing a bit of a flack since officials decided not to allow Penguin to launch Geraldine Bedell’s The Gulf Between Us at the event because it refers to a gay relationship. Margaret Atwood has refused to attend the festival because of the controversy.

Philip K. Dick’s Ex-Wife Publishes Novel Based on His Last Story Idea
Tessa Dick, who was married to Philip K. Dick in the 1970s has self-published a novel called The Owl in Daylight based on the story that Dick intended to write before he died. The publication is an interesting and complicated story in itself, and you can get the first hand scoop here.

Grisham’s The Associate Heads to the Big Screen
Paramount has hired a writer to adapt John Grisham’s The Associate as a film vehicle for Shia LaBeouf.

Steel, Grisham, Clancy Finally Allow Digital Books
Danielle Steel has joined Tom Clancy and John Grisham in the roster of big name authors who have finally agreed to allow the release of their titles in eBook format. In Steel’s case, that’s 71, count ‘em, 71 titles.

Len Deighton Back in Print
Time for some good looking replacements! In honor of Len Deighton’s 80th birthday, HarperCollins will be republishing eight of his titles, including The Ipcress File in 2009. Great news for readers advisors! It’s always wonderful to have great older titles in new attractive editions. How can you sell a shabby old book, no matter how great the work? Woohoo!

Borders Lays Off More Employees
Yes, the book business is still spiraling downward. Borders is laying off 136 more employees, mostly in its Ann Arbor location. In fact, 12% of the Ann Arbor workforce will be gone.

Patterson’s Factory Employs 28 New Workers
James Patterson, who has become famous for overseeing a stable of writers who write to his specifications and outlines, has taken it to the next level. Next month, his book Airborne will be published serially, with the first and last chapters written by Patterson, and each of the other 28 chapters written by authors chosen in a contest. The work will eventually be published, but it will be released online beginning in March, one chapter at a time. Read all about it here.

Authors
Leila Hadley – obituary
Alfred A. Knopf, Jr. – obituary…not an author, but…
Christopher Nolan
Tayeb Salih

Lists
NAACP Image Award Winners
Best Translation
Young Lions Award Winners
Diagram Prize for the Year’s Oddest Title

Lighthearted Link of the Week
One Night of Unbridled Passion

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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.

This Week In Books
Hi there. We have several new books on the bestseller lists this week. I’m always happy when there are new titles to talk about! In fiction, we have four new bestsellers: Bone Crossed by Patricia Briggs, True Colors by Kristin Hannah, Adriana Trigiani’s Very Valentine, and Run for Your Life by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge. There’s only one new nonfiction title on the lists: The Yankee Years by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci. Look to the righthand column to see the complete Most Wanted Mashup for this week.

Sarah Statz Cords has a new list for our Under the Radar column this week: Here Come the Brits! Literary Fiction from British Authors. Check right below Most Wanted for that one.

The upcoming week has plenty of new titles by well known authors. Check New, Noteworthy, and No-Brainer in the next entry below this one to see the complete list, but here’s a preview: Nancy Atherton, Dana Stabenow, Elie Wiesel, Jacqueline Winspear, Barbara Delinsky, Michael Palmer, Maeve Binchy…and that’s not even all of the fiction. In nonfiction, I’ll just name a couple: Obama: The Historic Journey by The New York Times and Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans by Dan Baum. there are more, though…a book on Ted Kennedy, one by Tavis Smiley. Have fun!

Dan Brown Finishes Next Book?
According to Ron Howard, he has. Doubleday won’t comment.

Krakauer Book Rescheduled
On the other hand, Doubleday has succeeded in rescheduling Jon Krakauer’s book on Pat Tillman (complete with a new title)for September. The book was orginally titled The Hero when it was to be published in October of 2008, but its new title is Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman.

Of Course There Will Be a Book
Rod Blagojevich, the impeached former governor of Illinois was sighted at the Macmillan offices. Figures. And if that’s not enough to pique your interest, how about Mike Tyson? He apparently worked on his book to his cellmate.

Nora Roberts Opens Inn for Literary Lovers
Nora Roberts has bought and restored an 18th Century building near her home in Maryland. Aiming for a combination of glamor and comfort, Roberts has named various rooms after famous literary couples. It was a difficult task, according to Roberts. “Romeo and Juliet? Dead. Tristan and Isolde? Dead. Not happy. Dead, dead, dead. Rhett Butler and Scarlett? He didn’t give a damn. You try finding seven of them.” She finally managed, and you can stay in the Elizabeth and Darcy room, or Buttercup and Westley’s suite, or Eve Dallas and Rourke, or Jane and Rochester for $250-$300 a night. Each suite is decorated to suit the couple it honors.

There’s Audio Rights and Then There’s Audio Rights
Amazon’s Kindle 2, released last week, has a feature that will read your book aloud using a computer generated voice. The Authors Guild calls foul, saying that Amazon should pay for audio rights. Wow, things are getting crazy complicated out there!

The War Between Print and Screen
The New York Times postulates that “a tipping point has been passed in the competition between print and screen that has been under way since the beginnings of broadcast TV and now continues with video and other media.” The results so far? Newspapers, magazines, and books are in trouble, but TV is holding its own as viewers are now typically in “three screen” mode. 31% of Internet use takes place in front of the television, and mobile screens are becoming ubiquitous. The results? According to the author of the article, print is losing, since reading text “can feel like a burden.” What do people want? A fully formed immersive video experience.

We used to talk about books being an immersive experience. This all reminds me of Marge Piercy’s He, She, and It, where “stimmies” are such a total immersion into virtual reality that some users starve to death because they forget to experience real reality. Depressing. On the other hand, for people who prefer not to be passive, reading and listening to books can result in a “simulation” in the mind.

25 Years of the Adult Reading Round Table
Don’t miss the column by Joyce Saricks in Booklist as she reminisces about the ARRT, a group of Chicago area readers advisors who have been meeting since the early 1980s.

Authors
Sarah Gruen – Ape House delayed
Walter Mosley – interview and profile
Azar Nafisi – podcast interview
Adriana Trigiani – on the Today show

Lists
Booklist’s Top Ten Books on the Environment 2009
1000 Novels Everyone Must Read – seriously

Lighthearted Links of the Week

Don’t Be Koumpounophobic (Scared of Buttons) by Neil Gaiman

Pride and Prejudice and …Zombies?

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