Archive for November, 2009

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RA Run Down

Sunday, November 29th, 2009

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

This Week In Books
New Titles on the Most Wanted Mashup This Week
No new nonfiction titles on the bestsellers lists this week.
In fiction, two new titles debuted this week:

  • Clive Cussler & Justin Scott – The Wrecker
  • James Patterson – I, Alex Cross

    • To see the entire Most Wanted Mashup look to the righthand column.
    _____________________________________________
    Lots of New, Noteworthy, and No-Brainer entries again this week including:

    Fiction:

  • Steve Berry – The Paris Vendetta
  • Sue Grafton – U is for Undertow
  • J.A. Jance – Trial By Fire
  • Colleen McCullough – Too Many Murders
  • Harry Turtledove - Liberating Atlantis

    • Nonfiction:

  • Lance Armstrong – Comeback 2.0: Up Close and Personal
  • Greg Mortenson – Stones Into Schools
  • Julie Powell – Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession

    • And many more. Scroll down to the next entry to see the whole list of noteworthy titles to be published this week, or click here.
    _____________________________________________
    Our Under the Radar list this week is the first of our best of the year lists, Best Short Stories of 2009. Look in the righthand column just under the Most Wanted Mashup for this list.

    _____________________________________________
    And now on to the news of the week:

  • A Guide to the Revised Google Books Settlement
  • National Book Award Winner Paperback to Be Released December 4
  • Some Readers Mix Up Palin Books Going Rogue and Going Rouge, As Intended By Authors of the Latter
  • Next David Sedaris Audio Release Will Be on Vinyl with No Corresponding Print Book
  • More Genre Wars: When Mystery Becomes Literary Fiction and Vice Versa
  • Al Roker Launches Mystery Series with Dick Lochte
  • Our Hunger for Cookbooks
  • Bathroom Book Sells for $171,000
  • The Tournament of Cookbooks
  • How Our Brains Learned to Read
  • How to Run a Short Story Book Club
  • Checking Out Graphic Novel Circulation
  • Borders UK On the Verge of Bankruptcy
  • Publishers Fight the Web With Behemoth Cookbooks
  • Entrepreneur Ushered in Renaissance of Pop-Up Books in the 1960s
  • Author Suggests We Boycott Books Until Publishers Stop With the Celebrity “Authors” Already, or, in the alternative, MediaBistro Offers Its Celebrity Book Toolkit
  • President Obama’s Mother’s Dissertation To Be Published
  • Bloomberg Press Closes
  • Will Oprah’s Hiatus Be a Huge Blow for Publishing?
  • Rupert Murdoch Will Likely Block Google’s Spiders from Indexing His News Sites
  • Forge Still Has Elmer Kelton Titles to Publish
  • It’s Not the End of the World: The Similarity Between E-Books and Mass Market Paperbacks As Emerging Formats
  • Roz Reisner’s Read On: Life Stories

    • _____________________________________________
    Books on Screen

  • FX Captures Cable Rights to Twilight Series
  • Tommy Lee Jones Leaves Lincoln Lawyer Team
  • New Moon Sets All-Time Record for Opening Day Sales
  • Kindle vs. Sony Reader: Do Library Checkouts Give Sony an Edge?

    • _____________________________________________
    Awards

  • Costa Book Awards
  • Booktrust Teenage Prize Goes to Gaiman’s Graveyard Book
  • While Fantasy Is Popular with Teens, Many Read Much Stronger Stuff

    • _____________________________________________
    Authors

  • Raymond Carver – reviewed by Stephen King; you’ll never think of Carver the same way again
  • Bernice McFadden – talks about “seg-book-gation” in publishing
  • Bill Moyers – will leave his weekly show
  • Alice Munro – podcast interview
  • Jim Sutton – obituary
  • Jeffrey Zaslow – writes books about humble heroes

    • _____________________________________________
    Lists

  • Janet Maslin’s Top Ten Books of 2009
  • Globe & Mail – Margaret Cannon’s Top 11 Crime Books
  • Greatest Swashbuckling Heroes From 100+ Years Of SF Books
  • NPR’s 11 Best Cookbooks of 2009
  • Blackwell’s Top Ten Books of the Decade
  • IndieNext December Notables
  • Indie Comics & Graphic Works Bestseller List
  • New York Times Gift Book Suggestions
  • New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2009
  • Michiko Kakutani’s Top 10 Books of 2009
  • Dwight Garner’s Top 10 Books of 2009
  • Cuyahoga County Public Library Great Books for Kids
  • New York Times Best 2009 Graphic Novels

    • Telegraph Books of the Year

  • New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2009
  • Hudson Booksellers 2009 Best Airport Books
  • Horn Book Best New Holiday Books

    • _________________________________________________
    Lighthearted Link of the Week

  • Best You Tube Librarian Videos

    • Posted in RA Run Down | No Comments »

    Most Wanted Mashup: Hottest Books of the Week

    Sunday, November 29th, 2009
    Fiction

    Nonfiction

    Posted in Most Wanted | No Comments »

    New, Noteworthy, and No-Brainer

    Sunday, November 29th, 2009

    Readers will see these titles in bookstores for the first time this week.

    Fiction

  • Steve Berry – The Paris Vendetta – 12/1/09
  • Sue Grafton – U is for Undertow – 12/1/09
  • J.A. Jance – Trial By Fire – 12/1/09
  • Stan Jones – Village of the Ghost Bears – 12/1/09
  • M.R. Hall – The Disappeared – 12/1/09
  • Jim Harrison – The Farmer’s Daughter – 12/1/09
  • Kathryne Kennedy – My Unfair Lady – 12/1/09
  • Caitlin Kittredge – Demon Bound – 12/1/09
  • Colleen McCullough – Too Many Murders – 12/1/09
  • Jason Pinter – The Darkness – 12/1/09
  • Harry Turtledove – Liberating Atlantis – 12/1/09
  • Betty Webb – Desert Lost – 12/1/09

    • Non-Fiction

  • Lance Armstrong – Comeback 2.0: Up Close and Personal
  • Greg Mortenson – Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan – 12/1/09
  • Julie Powell – Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession – 12/1/09
  • Michael F. Roizen & Mehmet C. Oz – You: Having a Baby – 12/1/09
  • Eric Siblin – The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece – 12/1/09
  • Terry Teachout – Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong – 12/1/09

    • Posted in New, Noteworthy, and No-Brainer | No Comments »

    Under the Radar: Best Christian Novels of 2009

    Saturday, November 28th, 2009
    • Jamie Carie–Wind Dancer
    • Chris Fabry–Dogwood
    • Neta Jackson–Who Do I Talk To? A Yada Yada House of Hope Novel
    • Joy Jordan-Lake–Blue Hole Back Home
    • Beverly Lewis–The Missing
    • John Lynch–Bo’s Cafe
    • Joyce Magnin–The Prayers of Agnes Sparrow
    • Susan Meissner–The Shape of Mercy
    • Christa Parrish–Home Another Way
    • Tom Pawlick–Vanish
    • Marlo Schalesky–Beyond the Night

    Posted in Under the Radar | No Comments »

    Under the Radar: Best Short Stories of 2009

    Saturday, November 28th, 2009
    • Bonnie Jo Campbell – American Salvage
    • Lydia Davis – The Collected Stories
    • Mary Gaitskill – Don’t Cry
    • Aleksandar Hemon – Love and Obstacles
    • Kazuo Ishiguro – Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall
    • Penelope Lively – Family Album
    • Jay McInerney – How It Ended
    • Maile Meloy – Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It
    • Daniyal Mueenuddin – In Other Rooms, Other Wonders
    • Alice Munro – Too Much Happiness
    • Antonya Nelson – Nothing Right
    • Jean Thompson – Do Not Deny Me
    • Wells Tower – Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned
    • John Updike – My Father’s Tears
    • Paul Yoon – Once the Shore

    Posted in Under the Radar | No Comments »

    Nonfiction Books for Pleasure and Nonfiction Books for Information: Should We Shelve Them Separately?

    Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

    By Cindy Orr

    Francine Fialkoff, Editor-in-Chief of Library Journal wrote an editorial recently about the trend in a few libraries to try shelving nonfiction using bookstore BISAC subject headings rather than the Dewey Decimal System. I agree with her assertion that the question isn’t so much Dewey or don’t we, but what makes sense for our patrons.

    Patrons looking for particular subjects need to be able to find materials. Dewey does a good job with that…BISAC not so much.

    But what about the browsers who are just looking for something good to read? Many nonfiction books are just as pleasurable as those in the fiction section. But how can readers find them?

    I’d like to throw out another possibility for shelving nonfiction—whether you use Dewey or BISAC. It seems to me that a case could be made for separating books that are meant to be read cover-to-cover, from books that are meant to be used for reference or studied for class or in preparation for a test. It doesn’t make sense for browsers that James Herriot’s books are buried in the stacks next to The Encyclopedia of Veterinary Medicine.

    What if we had three sets of shelves in libraries? In one set you’d have The Perfect Storm, The Devil in the White City, The Stranger Beside Me, and biographies and all the other great reads that are at the moment classified and shelved next to the test prep books and science texts. These could be called True Stories.

    True stories would be shelved near the second section—Fiction—in an area for pleasure reading. Maybe we could rename fiction Novels and Short Stories, since many readers mix up fiction with nonfiction and can’t remember which one is true and which one is not.

    The third section would be Information, and would include the rest of the nonfiction—textbooks, medical books, resume preparation, home repair books—the kinds of materials that answer specific questions or are meant for students.

    Of course there are problems with this concept. . . what do you do with history books, for example? But I think that framing our approach to the nonfiction collection as a question of pleasure reading versus information gathering could make a huge difference to the browsing public—and those looking for information by subject could find their books in any of the sections, so it shouldn’t matter to them.

    So what do you think…am I crazy?

    Posted in A Closer Look | No Comments »

    RA Run Down

    Sunday, November 22nd, 2009

    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

    This Week In Books
    New Titles on the Most Wanted Mashup This Week

    New to the List, Fiction:

  • Linda Howard - Ice
  • Stephen King - Under the Dome

    • New to the List, Nonfiction:

  • Andre Agassi - Open
  • George Carlin - Last Words

    • To see the entire Most Wanted Mashup of this week’s bestselling books, look to the righthand column.
    _____________________________________________
    Only a handful of New, Noteworthy, and No-Brainer entries this week including new titles by Michael Crichton, Ha Jin, and Dean R. Koontz.

    Scroll down to the next entry to see the whole list, or click here.
    _____________________________________________
    Our Under the Radar list this week is Six Great Books That Didn’t Make the Bestseller Lists. Look in the righthand column just under the Most Wanted Mashup for this list.

    _____________________________________________
    And now on to the news of the week:

  • Big News of the Week: Harlequin Joins Thomas Nelson in Offering a Self-Publishing Division; then Romance Writers of America, and the Science Fiction Writers of America, plus the Mystery Writers of America All Object and Issue Statements; Nora Roberts Says No—They’re Supposed to Pay YOU; The Results: Harlequin Backs Down, Changes Name of New Division; See More Detail Here

  • James Patterson Threatens Death If You Don’t Buy His New Book
  • Nabokov’s Original Laura Excerpted in Playboy
  • Readers Have the Right to Expect That a Newspaper Will Make Some Attempt to Reflect Their Cultural Tastes, and Book Pages Simply Don’t
  • Raise Your Hand If You Can’t Face Weeding
  • Biblioburro: the Donkey Library
  • NEA Big Read Grants Available
  • How Teen Librarians Prepared for the New Moon Movie Release
  • National Book Awards Attendees Weigh In on Stephenie Meyer: You May Be Surprised At What They Said
  • Who Needs Libraries?
  • The Unexpected Art of Science Fiction Book Covers
  • Reading Comics Can Help With Early Literacy
  • Gift Guide for Book Lovers
  • Christian Vampire Books?

    • _____________________________________________
    Books on Screen

  • The Blind Side: Book by Michael Lewis; Film Starring Sandra Bullock
  • HBO Feature on Temple Grandin, Author of Thinking in Pictures
  • New Disney Studios Chief Pulls the Plug on Captain Nemo: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Script by Michael Chabon
  • The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel Sells to Movies
  • The Box, Based on Richard Matheson Short Story
  • The Men Who Stare At Goats
  • Tess Gerritsen’s Rizzoli Headed to TV
  • My Name Is Memory by Ann Brashares to Be a Movie
  • Fourth Librarian Movie Will Go to the Big Screen
  • Gwyneth Paltrow and Nicole Kidman in The Danish Girl
  • Cell Phone Apps Challenge E-Readers

    • _____________________________________________
    Awards

  • Roald Dahl Funny Prize Winners
  • Giller Prize
  • Man Asian Literary Prize
  • Governor’s General Literary Awards
  • National Outdoor Book Awards
  • National Book Awards First Novel Award

    • _____________________________________________
    Authors

  • Michael Hart – interview with founder of Project Gutenberg
  • Vladimir Nabokov – covers redesigned
  • Susan Orlean’s Bookshelf – video
  • James Patterson - says librarians need to make more noise
  • Karl Rove – new book coming in spring

    • _____________________________________________
    Lists

  • 2009 Bad Sex in Fiction Award Short List
  • Library Journal Best Books of 2009
  • LJ Best YA Books for Adults 2009
  • 2010 Book-Based Movies
  • November Catholic Bestsellers
  • Vote on the Best Book Covers of 2009
  • World War I Books
  • Best Food Books of 2009

    • _____________________________________________
    Lighthearted Links of the Week

  • New Moon, New Edition
  • The Best Twilight Tattoos

    • Posted in RA Run Down | No Comments »

    New, Noteworthy, and No-Brainer

    Sunday, November 22nd, 2009

    Readers will see these titles in bookstores for the first time this week.

    Fiction

  • Cassandra Clark – The Red Velvet Turnshoe – 11/24/09
  • Michael Crichton – Pirate Latitudes – 11/24/09
  • Ha Jin – A Good Fall: Stories – 11/24/09
  • Dean Koontz – Breathless – 11/24/09
  • Al Roker & Dick Lochte – The Morning Show Murders – 11/24/09
  • Joseph Wambaugh – Hollywood Moon – 11/24/09

    • Non-Fiction

  • James Bradley – The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War – 11/24/09

    • Posted in New, Noteworthy, and No-Brainer | No Comments »

    Most Wanted Mashup: Hottest Books of the Week

    Sunday, November 22nd, 2009
    Fiction

    Nonfiction

    Posted in Most Wanted | No Comments »

    Under the Radar: Six Great 2009 Titles NOT on the Bestseller Lists

    Sunday, November 22nd, 2009
    • Pete Dexter – Spooner
    • Jane Gardam – The Man in the Wooden Hat
    • George Dawes Green – Ravens
    • Colum McCann – Let the Great World Spin
    • Norman Ollestad – Crazy for the Storm
    • Jonathan Tropper – This Is Where I Leave You

    Posted in Under the Radar | No Comments »

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