Archive for July, 2010

« Older Entries

Display Brainstorming: August Edition

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

by Sarah Statz Cords

August is:
American Artist Appreciation Month
American Indian Heritage Month
Audio Book Appreciation Month
Elvis Week: August 10-16
Happiness Happens Month
National Aviation Week: August 15-21
National Black Business Month
National Golf Month
National Inventors Month
Psychic Week: August 2-6
Simplify Your Life Week: August 1-7

Holidays in August Include:
August 1: Friendship Day
August 1: Girlfriend’s Day
August 1: Sisters’ Day
August 11-Sep. 9: Ramadan
August 12: International Youth Day
August 21: Senior Citizens’ Day
August 26: Women’s Equality Day

August Famous Birthdays
Martha Stewart: August 3, 1941
Louis Armstrong: August 4, 1900
Barack Obama (44th president of the U.S.): August 4, 1961
Lucille Ball: August 6, 1911
Garrison Keillor: August 7, 1942
Herbert Hoover (31st president of the U.S.): August 10, 1874
Alfred Hitchcock: August 13, 1899
Danielle Steel: August 14, 1947
Napoleon Bonaparte: August 15, 1769
Julia Child: August 15, 1912
Benjamin Harrison (23rd president of the U.S.): August 20, 1833
Lyndon B. Johnson (36th president of the U.S.): August 27, 1908
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: August 30, 1797

August Historical Events:
August 1, 1990: World Wide Web creation by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau
August 6, 1945: Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima
August 9, 1945: Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki
August 14, 1945: V-J Day
August 15, 1969: Woodstock concerts begin
August 18, 1920: 19th Amendment ratified (giving women the right to vote)

Other August Display Ideas:
Back to School!

Sources include: Chase’s 2010 Calendar of Events; About.com August Holidays page; Brownielocks and the 3 Bears August Holidays List; Seasonal Arts and Crafts for August; Book Group Themes for August.

Posted in Display Brainstorming | 2 Comments »

RA Run Down

Sunday, July 25th, 2010

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 raoblog@lu.com.

By Cindy Orr

This Week In Books

New Titles on This Week’s Most Wanted Mashup of Bestsellers

It’s a big week for new bestsellers, with 6 new titles making it onto the lists:

Fiction

  • James Lee Burke – The Glass Rainbow
  • Tana French – Faithful Place
  • Lisa Gardner – Live to Tell
  • Jennifer Weiner – Fly Away Home

    • Nonfiction

  • Laura Ingraham – The Obama Diaries
  • Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy, with Sally Jenkins – In a Heartbeat: Sharing the Power of Cheerful Giving

    • To see the entire Most Wanted Mashup of this week’s top 10 bestselling titles in fiction and nonfiction, look to the righthand column.
    _______________________________________________________
    The New, Noteworthy, and No-Brainer entries for the upcoming week include:

  • Carl Hiaasen – Star Island
  • J. A. Jance – Queen of the Night: A Novel of Suspense
  • Ashley JaQuavis – Cartel 3: the Last Chapter
  • Todd J. McCaffrey – Dragongirl
  • Mary B. Morrison – Darius Jones
  • James Patterson and Adam Sadler – Daniel X: Demons and Druids
  • Tim Pratt, ed. – Sympathy for the Devil (short stories by Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Kage Baker, Charles Stross, Kelly Link and many more)
  • Gary Shteyngart – Super Sad True Love Story

    • And a whole lot more. It’s a big week for summer reading, as many new original mass market paperbacks will be released this week along with the hardcover titles. Scroll down to the next entry to see the whole list of noteworthy titles to be published in the next seven days, or click here.
    _______________________________________________________
    Our Under the Radar list this week is National Golf Month. Look in the righthand column just under the Most Wanted Mashup for this list of fiction and nonfiction about golf.

    _______________________________________________________
    And now on to the news of the week:

  • Agent makes exclusive e-book publishing deal with Amazon for backlist titles of his clients; Random House contends it is illegal and may take legal action and also says it will sign no new agreements with clients of the agency until this issue is resolved; and here are some other shocked reactions
  • The Christian Science Monitor discusses people who are good at recommending books. The good news—they include Nancy Pearl; the bad news—they forgot to mention libraries.
  • Why the next big pop-culture wave after cupcakes might be libraries
  • E-Book sales topped hardcovers at Amazon for the last 3 months and publishers report similar experiences
  • Early Word: So what’s wrong with plot?
  • The usual on getting reluctant boys to read
  • Evolution of a reader
  • Celebrity biographies: successes and failures
  • Behind the I Write Site
  • BookSwim statistics on readers
  • Point of view: the struggle for omniscience in novels—there from the very beginning, never fully achieved
  • 5 literary trends that have made the leap to subgenre status
  • “Dem Black Books” – very good, thoughtful, blog post on street lit
  • Elizabeth Gilbert’s ex-husband will not publish his side of the story with Hyperion, who he says tried to push him to make the book more racy
  • The Cold War years: the greatest era of political fiction ever
  • Time to pull out your old copy of Jaws?
  • Future libraries: electronic outposts?
  • Bowker getting into pay-to-publish market?
  • Medieval Multitasking: Did We Ever Focus?
  • Will fee-based book clubs work?
  • The brouhaha at the Paris Review: the great poetry purge
  • Why the Vook will never work – on the other hand, Penguin releases enhanced version of Pillars of the Earth
  • Los Angeles Review of Books to launch this fall
  • New blog for true crime lovers
  • Borders will launch e-reader sections in its stores by September
  • Freedom to Read Foundation competition for Banned Books Week grant
  • Lawyers demand records from prison library on defendant’s reading habits and the local library’s struggle when citizens demand removal of a book on the case
  • LJ/SLJ E-Book Summit Program
  • The fine art of recommending books—from the perspective of a book reviewer
  • Books for non-readers

    • _______________________________________________________
    Books on Screen

  • N.D. Wilson’s 100 Cupboards fantasy trilogy–100 Cupboards, Dandelion Fire and The Chestnut King will be a movie
  • Biopic on Jerry Garcia’s life based on Robert Greenfield’s Dark Star

    • _______________________________________________________
    Authors

  • Martin Beales – obituary
  • Franz Kafka – unseen writings inch toward revelation
  • G. K. Chesterton – Adam Langer remembers his Chesterton summer
  • Asne Seierstad – must pay damages to Bookseller of Kabul’s wife
  • Stephen H. Schneider – obituary

    • _______________________________________________________
    Lists

  • 50 Novels to Read When You Need a Good Laugh (neatly categorized)
  • Top Film Criticism Sites
  • Gusher of oil spill books
  • 8 Literary Works That Deserve a Graphic Novel Treatment
  • Laugh Out Loud Summer Reading

    • _______________________________________________________
    Lighthearted Links of the Week

  • The Great Gatsby Video Game
  • The Dallas Morning News book room after they neglected to shelve for a week
  • An exploration of literary tattoos
  • The Little Librarian Play Library Kit

    • Posted in RA Run Down | No Comments »

    Most Wanted Mashup: Hottest Books of the Week

    Sunday, July 25th, 2010
    Fiction

    Nonfiction

    Posted in Most Wanted | No Comments »

    Under the Radar: National Golf Month (F and NF)

    Sunday, July 25th, 2010

    Posted in Under the Radar | No Comments »

    New, Noteworthy, and No-Brainer

    Sunday, July 25th, 2010

    MONDAY FICTION

  • James Patterson and Adam Sadler – Daniel X: Demons and Druids – 9780316036986

    • MONDAY NONFICTION

  • Allen Barra – Rickwood Field: A Century in America’s Oldest Ballpark – 9780393069334

    • TUESDAY FICTION

  • Carmine Abate – The Homecoming Party – 9781933372839
  • Kelley Armstrong – Walking the Witch – 9780525951780
  • Phyllis Bourne – Operation Prince Charming – 9780843963908 (mass market)
  • Suzanne Brockmann – Infamous – 9780345521200 (mass market)
  • Loretta Lynda Chase – Last Night’s Scandal – 9780061632679 (mass market)
  • Kent Cornwell – Showdown At Juniper Pass – 9780843963595 (mass market)
  • Tessa Dare – Three Nights with a Scoundrel – 9780345518897 (mass market)
  • Jocelyn Drake – Wait for Dusk – 9780061851810 (mass market)
  • John Everson – Siren - 9780843963540
  • Christine Feehan – Water Bound – 9780515148244
  • Jeaniene Frost – Eternal Kiss of Darkness – 9780061783166 (mass market)
  • Caroline Fyffe – Montana Dawn – 9780843964271 (mass market)
  • Nancy Gideon – Captured by Moonlight – 9781439149652 (mass market)
  • Brett Halliday – Murder Is My Business – 9780843963281 (mass market reprint)
  • Carl Hiaasen – Star Island – 9780307272584
  • Eloisa James – A Kiss At Midnight – 9780061626845 (mass market)
  • J. A. Jance – Queen of the Night: A Novel of Suspense – 9780061239243
  • Ashley JaQuavis – Cartel 3: the Last Chapter – 9781601622570
  • Stacia Kane – City of Ghosts – 9780345515599 (mass market)
  • Drew Karpyshyn – Mass Effect: Retribution – 9780345520722 (mass market)
  • Brian Keene – A Gathering of Crows – 9780843960921 (mass market)
  • Erin Kellison – Shadow Fall – 9780505528308 (mass market)
  • Charles M. Martin – Law for Tombstone – 9780843964189 (mass market)
  • Todd J. McCaffrey – Dragongirl – 9780345491169
  • Alexis Morgan – Dark Warrior Untamed – 9781439175927 (mass market)
  • Mary B. Morrison – Darius Jones – 9780758222619
  • Hana Samek Norton - The Sixth Surrender – 9780452296237
  • Brenda Novak – White Heat – 9780778327950 (mass market)
  • Constance O’Banyon – Wolf Runner – 9780843964394 (mass market)
  • Robert J. Randisi – Broadway Bounty – 9780843964325 (mass market)
  • Karen Ranney – A Highland Duchess – 9780061771842 (mass market)
  • Jack Rogan – The Ocean Dark – 9780553385182 (mass market)
  • Gary Shteyngart – Super Sad True Love Story – 9781400066407
  • James L. Thane – No Place to Die – 9780843964226 (mass market)
  • James Twining – The Geneva Deception – 9780061671876 (mass market)
  • Martin Walker – The Dark Vineyard – 9780307270184

    • WEDNESDAY FICTION

  • Rick Moody – The Four Fingers of Death – 9780316118910

    • THURSDAY FICTION

  • Roberto Bolaño – The Return – 9780811217156
  • Tess Gerritsen – Ice Cold – 9780345515483

    • FRIDAY NONFICTION

  • Jerry Hall – Self-Portrait – 9780061583605

    • SUNDAY FICTION

  • Colin Cotterill – Love Songs from a Shallow Grave – 9781569476277
  • Karen Fossum and Charlotte Barslund – Broken – 9780151013661
  • Lynn Kostoff – Late Rain – 9781935562139
  • Zygmunt Miloszewski – Entanglement – 9781904738442
  • Dennis Palumbo – Mirror Image – 9781590587508
  • Tim Pratt, ed. – Sympathy for the Devil – 9781597801898 (short stories by Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Kage Baker, Charles Stross, Kelly Link and many more)
  • Betty Webb – The Koala of Death – 9781590587560

    • SUNDAY NONFICTION

  • Addie Johnson – A Little Book of Thank Yous: Letters, Notes & Quotes – 9781573243742

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

    Would we ever call it “readable” fiction?

    Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

    by Sarah Statz Cords

    Recently a discussion on Fiction-L centered on a poster’s desire to create a display of “readable nonfiction” titles. It made my heart glad to see that numerous people responded to the question with a number of great nonfiction title suggestions. But I’d be lying if the chosen title of the display didn’t rankle me just a bit.

    Now, it is no secret to anyone who knows me that I am a diehard nonfiction reader. I read novels too, but they’re a much tougher sell; if, on the other hand, you start a sentence with something like “Hey, I read a great biography the other day…” or “Have you seen this new science book…” you can be sure I’m listening and will most likely add that book to my TBR pile, regardless of subject.

    So every time I see the words “readable” or “narrative” in discussions of nonfiction, I feel a bit sad about all of the nuances of nonfiction types and genres that are being missed. To some extent I understand the use of the terms; when dealing with nonfiction, library staff often feel compelled to make distinctions between NF titles that are used almost exclusively for informational purposes and those that can be read more recreationally or, arguably, more as a “story.” But I would submit that most of the “informational” types of NF have their own names: cookbooks. Baby name books. Car repair manuals. Decorating books. Self-Help.

    The problem I have with “readable” and “narrative” is not that they are inaccurate labels. Rather, it is that they are so broad as to be useless, and they obscure the glory and variety of nonfiction titles. The Fiction-L list of readable nonfiction titles will be an interesting one–but it may not be a very unified list (I don’t know, for example, that I would suggest Erik Larson’s true-crime history Devil in the White City to the same reader who might enjoy Elizabeth Gilbert’s self-discovery memoir Eat, Pray, Love–and they were both on the list).

    As previously noted: I’m completely biased (as only a person who has written two nonfiction reader’s guides can be). I also take my nonfiction way too seriously. As Albert Brooks once said in the wonderful movie Broadcast News, “I grant you everything.” But these are my questions: How can we become more comfortable thinking about NF in terms of both subject areas AND genres (or interest categories, which is what bookstores use)? How can we learn about and promote more specific types of nonfiction? What tools do you currently use to learn about nonfiction titles and their peculiarities? These are the things I want to know–because I think there’s a world of biographies, memoirs, women’s nonfiction, true crime, adventure, science, “big think” (like Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point), “year in the life,” and foodie titles out there–they’re all readable, and they all deserve displays of their own.

    Posted in A Closer Look | 11 Comments »

    RA Run Down

    Sunday, July 18th, 2010

    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 raoblog@lu.com.

    By Cindy Orr

    This Week In Books

    New Titles on This Week’s Most Wanted Mashup of Bestsellers

    Fiction

  • Christina Dodd – Chains of Ice: The Chosen Ones (mass market)
  • Nora Roberts – The Search

    • Nonfiction

  • Drew Brees – Coming Back Stronger
  • Kendra Wilkinson – Sliding Into Home

    • To see the entire Most Wanted Mashup of this week’s bestselling titles, look to the righthand column.
    _____________________________________________
    The New, Noteworthy, and No-Brainer entries for the upcoming week include:

  • Cherry Adair – Black Magic (mass market)
  • Janet and Alex Evanovich – Troublemaker
  • Daniel Silva – The Rembrandt Affair

    • And just a few more. Scroll down to the next entry to see the whole list of noteworthy titles to be published in the next seven days, or click here.
    _____________________________________________
    Our Under the Radar list this week is New Fantasy Books You May Have Missed. Look in the righthand column just under the Most Wanted Mashup for this list.

    _____________________________________________
    And now on to the news of the week:

  • Setting of fourth Stieg Larsson book revealed
  • St. Martin’s reportedly losing Janet Evanovich over demand for $50 million for the next four books
  • Comic book publishers need to support libraries
  • How The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo got its cover…after 50 tries
  • Zondervan delays Palin biography for tweens indefinitely
  • Luxury Lit: $75,000 a title anyone? Oh yeah, and the ink contains real blood from the author. Oops. Sorry. Sold out.
  • Farrar, Straus and Giroux launches new newsletter with Susan Sontag archives, Jeffrey Eugenides interviewed by Jonathan Galassi, and much more
  • $1 Million in grant money available for Big Read projects
  • The Nanny Novel lives on
  • Beware: PublishAmerica changes its name
  • The Midlist: located between the “Brobdingnagian head (an increasing number of purchasers buying the same few lead titles)” and the “enormously attenuated tail (a tiny number of customers buying from a huge range of titles)”
  • Leading British historian admits faking reviews on Amazon, settles out of court
  • Another lawsuit claiming Harry Potter plagiarized another’s novel
  • See who you write like—for Margaret Atwood it was Stephen King; for me? Either H. P. Lovecraft (an article) or Vladimir Nabokov (a blog post). Okaaay. . .
  • The Picture Book Report has illustrations for artists’ favorite books including The Giver, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and others
  • BBC sells majority stake in BBC Audiobooks to AudioGo
  • New daily site: writers’ houses
  • Adult hardcover sales up 43.2% in May compared to last year
  • Vote for the best thrillers ever
  • Warren Buffett sends 1975 book up the charts
  • Deadline July 30 for Louisa May Alcott grant application
  • Billy Collins – “The critical difference between prose and poetry is that prose is kind of like water and will become the shape of any vessel you pour it into to. Poetry is like a piece of sculpture and can easily break.”
  • Lawsuits tie up royalties for The Shack
  • One-Upsmanship at the Patent Office: Microsoft filed secret patent that might affect Apple’s iPad and the Amazon Kindle, Amazon has one aimed at Barnes & Noble’s Nook
  • Library school student gets funding for video book reviews

    • _____________________________________________
    Books on Screen

  • Creator of TV version of True Blood to do HBO series based on Charlie Huston’s The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death.
  • Starz Network’s 8-part miniseries of Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth begins July 23
  • Kitty Kelley sells the rights to her Oprah biography to TV
  • Jack Black to turn My Life As an Experiment into sitcom
  • West Wing creator to turn Andrew Young’s The Politician into a John Edwards biopick
  • Ben Affleck to direct and star in The Town by Chuck Hogan
  • Elmore Leonard’s Freaky Deaky to finally be a movie
  • Trying to read on the iPad at the beach

    • _____________________________________________
    Awards

  • Mythopoeic Awards
  • Shirley Jackson Awards
  • Japanese Akutagawa Award and Naoki Prize

    • _____________________________________________
    Authors

  • Samuel R. Delany – a preview of his next book
  • William Faulkner - his lectures at the University of Virginia are now online
  • Tess Gerritsen – blogs about libraries for Lesa’s Book Critiques
  • James P. Hogan – obituary
  • Shirley Jackson – why she was great
  • P. D. James – on the enduring appeal of detective fiction
  • Franz Kafka – lawyers open safety deposit boxes…hoping to find manuscripts
  • Juan Hernandez Luna – obituary
  • Iris Murdoch - her works released in e-book format
  • Harvey Pekar – obituary

    • _____________________________________________
    Lists

  • 5 Best Summer Science Books
  • 6 Great Novels on Work
  • Mismatched Duos for Summer Reading

    • _____________________________________________
    Lighthearted Links of the Week

  • The Old Spice Guy Talks About Libraries How it got started and The New Spice Guy library video
  • Flash Mob at the Seattle Public Library (video)
  • The Beverly Cleary Quiz

    • Posted in RA Run Down | No Comments »

    Most Wanted: Hottest Books of the Week

    Sunday, July 18th, 2010
    Fiction

    Nonfiction

    Posted in Most Wanted | No Comments »

    Under the Radar: New Fantasy Books You May Have Missed

    Sunday, July 18th, 2010
    • Harper Alexander–Mind Games
    • Karen Chance–Inked
    • Blake Charlton–Spellwright
    • Neil Gaiman–Stories
    • Tracy Hickman–Song of the Dragon
    • Robin Hobb–Dragon Keeper: Volume One of the Rain Wilds Chronicles
    • Paul Hoffman–The Left Hand of God
    • Guy Gavriel Kay–Under Heaven
    • Mercedes Lackey–Legacies
    • George Mann–Ghosts of Manhattan
    • China Miéville–Kraken
    • Carrie Vaughn–Discord’s Apple

    Posted in Under the Radar | 2 Comments »

    New, Noteworthy, and No-Brainer

    Sunday, July 18th, 2010

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

    TUESDAY FICTION:

  • Cherry Adair – Black Magic – 9781439153819 (mass market pb)
  • Michael Atkinson – Hemingway Cutthroat – 9780312379728
  • Rajorshi Chakraborti – Shadow Play – 9780312642341
  • Janet and Alex Evanovich – Troublemaker – 9781595824882 (graphic novel, 1st in a series)
  • Brian Lee O’Malley – Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour – 978-1934964385 (graphic novel)
  • Lynn Shepherd – Murder at Mansfield Park – 9780312638344
  • Daniel Silva – The Rembrandt Affair – 9780399156588
  • Sean Williams – Star Wars: Old Republic: Fatal Alliance – 9780345511324

    • TUESDAY NONFICTION

  • Geoffrey O’Brien – The Fall of the House of Walworth: A Tale of Murder and Madness in Saratoga’s Gilded Age – 9780805081152

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

    « Older Entries