The readers’s 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
Before I say anything else, I’d like to announce that the newest issue of The Readers Advisor News, The First and Best RA Newsletter, published quarterly by the Reader’s Advisor Online/Libraries Unlimited, will be out today. If you’ve subscribed, you’ll get it via email. If not, you can find it here. To sign up so that the newsletter comes to your mailbox, just send us an email at: ranews@lu.com. This issue has some great articles on the involvement of the catalog and catalogers on your RA team by Lauren Tarulli of The Cataloguing Librarian blog, the attraction of vampires by author Julie Kenner, how teaching makes you a better readers’ advisor by Jane Jorgensen, and readers advisory for children and tweens by Penny Peck. Be sure to take a look. There’s nothing quite like this in all the RA world. Now, on to the news of the week. Shaq’s coming to Cleveland! Shaq’s coming to Cleveland! Oh…not that news huh. Sorry.
This Week In Books
New to the bestseller lists this week:
Fiction: Catherine Coulter – Knockout, Lisa Gardner – The Neighbor, Carlos Ruiz Zafon – The Angel’s Game
Non-Fiction: Matthew B. Crawford – Shop Class as Soulcraft, Christopher McDougall – Born to Run, Norman Ollestad – Crazy for the Storm, Larry Tye – Satchel. Check the Most Wanted Mashup to the right for the complete list.
Under the Radar this week is Nonfiction Beach Reads by Sarah Statz Cords, author of The Real Story. Look to the right, just below the Most Wanted Mashup for this list.
Directly below this post you’ll find New, Noteworthy, and No-Brainer, our list of selected new titles hitting the shelves in the next week. Here are just a couple: Dorothea Benton Frank – Return to Sullivan’s Island, John Lescroart – A Plague of Secrets, Swimsuit byJames Patterson & Maxine Paetro, Ridley Pearson’s – Killer Summer, The Penny Pinchers Club by Sarah Strohmeyer, and Brad Thor’s The Apostle. On the nonfiction side, there’s The Wild Marsh: Four Seasons at Home in Montana by Rick Bass and Michael Lang’s The Road to Woodstock, just to name two. As always, scroll down to the next post for the complete list.
Small Publisher Hits Jackpot on Timing of Michael Jackson Bio
Transit Media, a small publisher in Montreal couldn’t have timed it better…their new hardcover 300 plus page bio of Michael Jackson will begin rolling off the presses on Tuesday. It had been prepared in anticipation of the European concert tour that Jackson was preparing to launch. The author, Ian Halperin, is madly scribbling 50 more pages to deal with Jackson’s death. Ironically, the book had already been titled Michael Jackson: the Last Days. Preview an excerpt from the book here.
Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol Gets Extra Hype from Puzzles on Web Site
As if Dan Brown’s upcoming novel needs more hype, Random House has plans for “codes, cryptic trivia, puzzles, secret history, biblical references, maps, ambigrams, aphorisms, ciphers, arcane knowledge, and more” between now and the September 15 release.
Chris Anderson Apologizes for Plagiarism
Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, apologized for copying parts of his forthcoming book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, from Wikipedia without attribution. Another view here.
Stephenie Meyer New Moon: Best. Cover. Ever.
At least according to E!Online.
Governor Mark Sanford’s Book Already At the Printer
Mark Sanford, the Governor of South Carolina who was recently caught in an affair with a woman in Argentina, had already completed a book called Within Our Means before all the hoo ha. Now Sentinel has to decide what to do because the book is already at the printer. Decision to be made within the week.
You Knew It Had to Happen
An aide to John Edwards has sold a tell-all book to St. Martin’s. Andrew Young, the man who was such a true believer that he claimed to have fathered the child of Rielle Hunter, now says it’s not true, and he has an Edwards-Hunter sex tape. Yuck. It gets worse. Read the article for more.
Ben Mezrich Book on FaceBook Set to Launch
Ben Mezrich, bestselling author of Bringing Down the House, has a new book coming out on July 14. His proposal to Doubleday, which was leaked, supposedly began with the words “Sex! Money! Genius! Betrayal!” The writer of West Wing is already working on the screen version. Mezrich, who says he writes true stories, has admitted to taking some liberties with his stories. His new book, though, is going to be readily fact checkable and is about a big company—FaceBook—rather than some MIT undergraduates. We’ll see what the lawyers think.
Dick Cheney Sells Book for $2 Million
According to Cheney, “I want my grandkids, 20 or 30 years from now, to be able to read it and understand what I did, and why I did it.”
James Frey Shopping YA Book
According to the New York Times, James Frey is anonymously shopping a YA series of six books. He is working with another writer who will produce the actual text. Guess it’s not anonymous anymore. The story is about a group of nine children from a planet called Lorien who have been attacked by a hostile race from another planet. More detail here.
Urban Fantasy Writers for Buffy Fans
“Urban fantasy — a cross of fairy tale, noir and classic coming-of-age narrative — is peculiarly suited to wrestling with the quandaries of early 21st-century womanhood, which is itself a hybrid of age-old preconceptions and fledgling, undreamed-of promise. Buffy, I think, would be proud,” says Laura Miller in Salon.
Vote for the Best Beach Books Ever
At NPR.
The Big Read Schedule 2009-2010
Audio Book Sales 2008
Digital downloads up. Library share 32%. More here.
Slinging Stones at the Genre Goliath: plus “Goliath” Strikes Back
Sonya Chung started off the fight in The Millions with her article called “Slinging Stones at the Genre Goliath,” where she says that when her fiction students tell her they’re reading Dean Koontz or Dan Brown or Nora Roberts or Stephenie Meyer, “something goes thud in my stomach and a low-grade dread begins to buzz in my head.” She goes on to say that she is possibly an insufferable snob, and “if you think so, feel free to stop reading now; we may be at an impasse.”
Bethanne, the Bookmaven has an answer called “Fable of My Deconstruction: A Response (of a sort) to Sonya Chung at The Millions.” “I know that others are able to do what I could not: Continue to love reading while plowing through volumes and manuscripts of academic writing. I needed to return to enjoying books and not deconstructing them.”
Chung ends her article with a list of “bait and switch books to convert the unbelieving to the (crucial, soul-shaping) fact that you needn’t ingest bad or ‘not that bad’ writing in order to be entertained and/or absorbed by a book.” Bookmaven answers by focusing on her students: “The books my students read, while not as nutritious as more serious fiction, were just as vital in their human experience. When you don’t know that blueberries are full of antioxidants or hell, you just loathe their taste because you didn’t eat them while you were growing up, you may turn to junk food for your fruit. If you grow up in a home where there are no books, where no one reads anything deeper than the phone book, well, then, your “way in” to literature may be James Patterson. Or Jeffrey Deaver. Or Nora Roberts. And so on.” Read them both and tell us what you think.
Then there’s The Independent, which asked if genre fiction is raising its game.
Harlequin Enters YA Market
Harlequin has announced that it will enter the teen market with a line called Harlequin Teen. It will publish novels in several genres, including science fiction, fantasy, and mystery.
The Importance of Comfort Reads
The digital world gives an added bonus: “I can have all my comfort reads with me all the time.”
Books on Screen
First Peek at Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland
Grisham Agrees to Testament Film Option
Authors
Ray Bradbury – on libraries; he wrote Fahrenheit 451 on a library typewriter
Janet Evanovich – her new website shows you the Burg, including peeks inside of some of the buildings
Linda Fairstein – interview
Sebastian Faulks – won’t write another Bond sequel: “once funny, twice silly”
H. B. Gilmour – obituary
Treva Harte – trademark lawyer, author and publisher of some of the most successful erotic romance novels; started company Loose Id 5 years ago; has sold more than a million books
Joe McGinniss - needs ideas for his next book
Paul Muldoon - Pulitzer Prize-winning poet on Stephen Colbert Show
Haruki Murakami – talks about his new novel
Andrzej Sapkowski – bestselling Polish author wins Gemmell Prize for Fantasy for Blood of Elves
Michael Thomas – interview
Tasha Tudor – ugly family fight over not only her estate, but what to do with her ashes
Gerhard Weinberg – wins 2009 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement
Edith Wharton – lost letters to be auctioned at Christie’s
Lists
ABE Books Summer Reading Recommendations
Christian Marketplace Bestsellers June 2009
Neal Wyatt in LJ Summer Reading – Food Books
NPR Summer Reading for Kids Featuring Sari Feldman, PLA President
Large Hearted Boy’s Summer Reading Compilation
<strong>The Globe and Mail - It’s Summer, Not Dumber
Lighthearted Link of the Week
Surprising Facts About 15 Bestselling Authors
