RA Run Down

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

There are three fiction titles that made it to the top of the bestseller lists this week for the first time…big names all, so that’s no surprise. Patrons may be surprised though to find that John Grisham’s new book is a collection of short stories rather than a novel.

Pat Conroy, in a review of Grisham’s Ford County, says “The modern world punishes the short story writer with inattention. The literary reviews keep the short story alive and finger-popping in America today, while the New Yorker tries to strangle the form with its bare hands.” Conroy goes on to say that Grisham’s stories are good enough to be considered for inclusion in the best short stories of the year anthologies. Quite the praise!

New to the bestseller lists this week:

Fiction:

  • John Grisham – Ford County
  • Barbara Kingsolver – The Lacuna
  • J.D. Robb – Kindred in Death
  • Nonfiction:

  • Larry Bird & Magic Johnson – When the Game Was Ours
  • Sarah Palin – Going Rogue
  • David Plouffe – The Audacity to Win
  • To see the entire Most Wanted Mashup of the most popular books this week, look to the righthand column.
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    Our New, Noteworthy, and No-Brainer entries this week include a new Alex Cross book by James Patterson (with no co-author), and new books by Barbara Kingsolver and Alic Munro among others. There’s the original version of Laura by Vladimir Nabokov, and, of course, the huge news is the Sarah Palin book Going Rogue. Coverage should continue on that one for awhile as fact checkers from the media—whom Palin accuses of getting it all wrong—work to prove that they were right. Will this translate into patron demand? We’ll have to see, I guess.

    Scroll down to the next entry to see our list of books hitting the shelves this week, or click here.
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    Our Under the Radar list this week is Books to Howl About, a few good werewolf books in honor of the movie release of New Moon. Look in the righthand column just under the Most Wanted Mashup for this list.
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    And now on to the news:

  • What’s In Sarah Palin’s Book?
  • Library Tries Fee-Based, But No-Fine Netflix Model of Service
  • Is Amazon’s Vine Viewer Program Legit?—Turns Out Publishers Pay for the Privilege of Reviews
  • The State of the Crime Novel
  • Lemony Snicket Signs Up To Do a New Series
  • Court Denies Valerie Plame and S & S Request to “Un-Redact” the Dates She Worked for the CIA
  • Be Ready for 2012 Book Requests: New Movie Causes NASA to Explain Why the World Won’t End Two Years from Now
  • Why Do Vampires Attract So Many Readers?
  • Juan Williams Find Precious Little Value in “Ghetto Lit”
  • It’s Not Readers’ Or Writers’ Fault That Publishers Have Blown It
  • Harlequin Has Successful Year Despite Economic Downturn and Strength of the Canadian Dollar
  • So Where Are We On the Google Book Deal With the Authors Guild?
  • Worst Library Books Blog Gets National Attention—Pretty Embarrassing for Libraries
  • Don’t Patronize: Fed Up With Seeing Some of Our Best Authors Written Off As Chick Lit
  • James Jones: Daughter Says From Here to Eternity Had Gay Scenes Cut
  • Aussie Writer Hailed As the Next J. K. Rowling
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    Books on Screen

  • Stephenie Meyer’s New Moon Movie Opens Friday
  • How to Train Your Dragon Animated Feature Coming in March
  • Emily Giffin’s Something Borrowed Headed for Spring Release
  • Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man Opens December 1 (Movie Tie-In Edition Available)
  • Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Now With 30% More Zombies (Quirk Opens New Website)
  • Aussies Reject Changes in Book Import Laws: Bookstores Enraged At High Prices
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    Authors

  • Chinua Achebe – rejects endorsement as father of African literature, says there are others who deserve recognition
  • Ray Bradbury – signs on to do miniseries of six of his short stories
  • Donald Harington – obituary
  • Edward P. Jones – his known world
  • Tim LaHaye – sells new apocalyptic series concentrating on political events called The End
  • Edgar Allan Poe – 200 years after his birth, his influence is still strong
  • Robert Louis Stevenson – his amazing archive goes digital
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    Lists

  • NY Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2009
  • 100 Books That Defined the Naughties
  • The Atlantic’s Best Books of the Year
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    Lighthearted Link of the Week

  • Classic Titles Made Sarcastic With Quotation Marks
  • and

  • Job Opening of the Week: Archivist for The Grateful Dead Collection
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