By Cindy Orr

James Fallows of The Atlantic says that he feels vaguely cheesy because he likes to read mysteries and thrillers, but he also says that “crime fiction is classy now, and has taken over part of the describing-modern-life job that high-toned novelists abdicated when they moved into the universities.”

His test for whether a book is one he can feel good about reading over one he should wean himself from? Can he remember anything about it a month, six months or a year after reading it. Some of his genre candidates for this list include Scott Smith’s A Simple Plan, Charles McCarry’s The Tears of Autumn, and Peter Robinson’s In a Dry Season.

The distinction between highbrow and lowbrow is a recent phenomenon according to Charles McGrath in the New York Times. Charles Dickens wrote ghost stories and mysteries. The good book, bad book argument began in earnest at the end of the 19th Century with the rise of the penny dreadful. What we look for in genre writing, according to John Updike, is “the predictableness of a formula successfully executed. We know exactly what we’re going to get, and that’s a seductive part of the appeal.”

But nevertheless, some genre authors have been promoted to the mainstream—Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, for instance. The question is, why not more? And the answer is likely that there is still a stigma attached to genre writing. Many critics were upset, for example, when the thriller Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith was nominated for the Man Booker Prize.

Ursula K. Le Guin has long spoken on the use of the label “genre” as an evaluative term (read unworthy). But here is Jeffery Deaver on how Raymond Chandler’s The Long Good-Bye transcends its genre.

Sarah Weinman, in her blog Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, has a thoughtful take on the subject: does a book really transcend genre, or is it just a matter of writers with bigger or smaller imaginations, and greater and lesser talent?

On the other hand, why is it that Cormac McCarthy’s The Road was not ghettoized as science fiction even though it resembles many other postapocalyptic works relegated to those shelves? And will Michael Chabon be successful in pulling genre out of the muck and into the mainstream?

What do you think?

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By Cindy Orr

Do you like reading historical fiction? Or, perhaps I should say, do you have readers in your library who like this genre? If so, try these blogs and links for a look at what’s available online. Prepare to be amazed.

If you’re really an addict, or let’s face it, if you’re a compulsive librarian-type, you can click on the blogroll of each of the blogs to see what other blogs they each recommend. It can go on forever. Enjoy!

Ancient Egypt in Fiction
Crime Through Time
Fiction for Students of History
Historical Fiction.com
Historical Fiction Stars
Historical Mystery Fiction
Historical Novels.info
Historical Novels Review
Historical Tapestry
Historical Women in Fiction
Medieval Mysteries
Literary Liaisons, Ltd
Novels Set During the Wars of the Roses
Prehistoric Fiction
Reading the Past
Scandalous Women
Tanzanite’s Shelf and Stuff
Yesterday Revisited

Do you have other favorites? Let us know.

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by Diana Tixier Herald

Rosenberg’s First Law “Never apologize for your reading tastes.”

When I read that for the first time back in library school it made a huge impact. Here was somebody who knew enough about books and reading that we were using her book in graduate school, and she said that it was okay to read genre fiction. It was a valid type of reading and no excuses or apologies need be made.

When I booktalk to the teens who write reviews for Teens Talk About Books on my Genrefluent web site, I always tell them that “No two people ever read the same book� to give them permission to like or dislike books based on their experiences with them, not on some else’s opinion. And it is true that no two people ever read the same book.

Two incidents, separated by years, have pounded the truth of this into my brain. It essential for readers’ advisors to be aware and keep it in mind. In the first case an elderly, very refined woman asked me for the title of a book I had recommended to her, that she loved and wanted to buy for friends. When she describe the book as “the one where the woman gets her teeth stuck in the man’s zipper,â€? I was beyond mortified. What on earth had I given her? It was surely something I hadn’t read myself. Surprise! It was one of my favorite books at the time, Handling Sin by Michael Malone, and that particular scene had not resonated with me at all.

The next time the truth of “no two readers ever read the same bookâ€? was hammered home to me was when I was booktalking Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson, another long time favorite, and my son who also loved the book heard me. He was shocked—here I was extolling the characters, the commercialized dystopian future, and the action. When my son had read it, it had been all about neuro-linguistics and how language shapes thought!

Reading is a creative endeavor. It takes a writer to put the words on the page and a reader to interpret them through the filters of his or her experiences and perceptions. This is why some authors who are highly regarded leave me cold and why favorite books are very individual. Readers’ advisors can see this as bad news (meaning that RA can never be scientifically codified) or as good news (an opportunity to learn the craft and artistry of good RA). It is up to us as reader’s advisors to try to discern what it is the reader likes and how books can be interpreted in different ways with all their different appeals.

So – if I am to be remembered for one phrase please let it be Herald’s First Law “No two people ever read the same book.� By the way, I may have read that somewhere, sometime and if I did I apologize for stealing it, but it is so true I’ve made it my mantra.

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By Diana Tixier Herald

Paranormal books have been dominated by sexy vampires for the last few years, but now it seems that werewolves are coming into their own. They have been around for quite a while and have played prominent roles in paranormal literature, but this year they really seem to be gaining ground. I first noticed this at the ALA Midwinter conference when a publisher was giving out T-shirts that said either “Team Edwardâ€? or “Team Jacob.â€? Wow! The Stephenie Meyer fans were taking sides — vampire fans vs. werewolf fans (Mine is Team Jacob).

One of the forthcoming books that looks like it will be big (even though when he “borrowed” it while we were on vacation I growled at my reluctant reader husband in an effort to wrestle it away from him, he managed to read all 558 pages) is Lonely Werewolf Girl by Martin Millar currently one of my favorite books. Kelley Armstrong’s latest Women of the Underworld book, Personal Demon, features a romantic interest of the werewolf variety. The Accidental Werewolf by Dakota Cassidy is a romp ala MaryJanice Davidson’s Undead series but with a cosmetics saleswoman who is transformed into a werewolf. Those are just the 2008 werewolf novels. One that is coming out this week is Sharp Teeth, a verse novel by Toby Barlow.

Here are a few more popular werewolf novels:

*Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty series that features a young woman talk radio host who is a werewolf.

*Werewolves also figure in Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson series as a love interest, but the half Native-American heroine is, herself, a shape shifting coyote.

*Werewolves play roles in both the Thrall series and the Tales of the Sazi series by C. T. Adams, and Cathy Clamp. The lycanthropic firefighter love interest is especially appealing.

*Benighted by Kit Whitfield is set in a world where those who are not werewolves are an anomaly.

*Rebecca York’s long running Moon series features romances with werewolves.

*Laurell K. Hamilton bestselling Anita Blake series does include some werewolves along with lots of other lycanthropes and other paranormal beings including vampires.

*Another bestselling series that includes werewolves along with vampires is the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris.

*Carole Nelson Douglas’ new Delilah Street series is set in 2013 Las Vegas which is run by the werewolf mob.

*An older werewolf title that many adults remember from their teen days is Blood and Chocolate (I’ve been told that the movie bears little resemblance to the book) by Annette Curtis Klause, a book that always seems to come up in any conversation about werewolves in literature.

What are your favorite werewolf titles?

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By Sarah Statz Cords

Seeing Elizabeth Gilbert on the Oprah Show made me think about a category of Memoirs that doesn’t often get so large a share of the spotlight. Memoirs that feature “coming of age” themes are fairly well-known and popular (think Haven Kimmel’s A Girl Named Zippy), but “Self-Discovery” memoirs? Not so much.

Defined as “similar in tone and appeal to coming of age memoirs, self discovery memoirs often take a step away from chronological retellings of the author’s passage from childhood into adulthood, and instead take as their subject their authors’ explorations of their own personal characteristics and identity. They often focus on interpersonal, sexual, gender, or racial identity issues, and their authors typically adopt a reflective tone…,” self-discovery memoirs are often complex and nuanced (and even sometimes, as in the case of Gilbert’s book, humorous!) and well worth a look.

Examples of such books include:
Necessary Sins, by Lynn Darling;
Having our Say, by Elizabeth and Sarah Delany;
Colored People, by Henry Louis Gates Jr.;
Being Perfect, by Anna Quindlen; and
In Pharaoh’s Army, by Tobias Wolff.

Self-Discovery Memoirs: a subgenre that itself is finally coming of age.

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By Sarah Statz Cords

Don’t be afraid: I’m not thinking about committing it. I’m thinking about True Crime, the nonfiction genre.

I was recently at a family party, where I found, through pretty innocent conversation, that a cousin of mine reads a ton of True Crime nonfiction (Ann Rule being one of her favorite authors). This year’s been a superlative one for True Crime narratives, so I found myself enthusiastically talking about various titles with her. Soon (although not soon enough?) we noticed that other relatives were listening to our conversation and looking a bit concerned. Who could blame them? The casual eavesdropper would have caught many concerning words and phrases in our animated talk: Ted Bundy, multiple victims, a doctor who killed his patients, Charles Manson, BTK, the Green River Killer stalking Ann Rule, etc.

We moved on to talking mysteries (fiction ones, that is) to try and deflect attention. But my wondering about True Crime narratives, and their appeal, has stayed with me. What is it about these narratives that readers find so compelling? Many of the true crime readers I’ve known have been among my gentlest and kindest acquaintances; they are by and large people to whom the idea of violence is completely repellent. So what is it about these books? And do readers of them steer clear of asking for RA help for fear of how they will be judged?

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By Sarah Statz Cords

For years now one of the most reliably popular nonfiction genres has been the “Micro-history,” variously defined by Nancy Pearl as “one-word wonders” and in the Reader’s Advisor Online as “stories in which authors examine very specific people, places, or things, and relate their stories as a new way in which to view the grand sweep of history.” Such titles have even been big and word-of-mouth bestsellers: Salt, by Mark Kurlansky. Rats, by Robert Sullivan. The Pencil, by Henry Petroski.

And speaking of Petroski, he’s got a new title out called Toothpick: Technology and Culture. And although it’s probably going to be another popular library title, Joe Queenan tore into it in the New York Times Sunday Book Review, speaking directly (and saucily) to the author: “This thing about things has gone far enough, Mr. Petroski. Knock it off.”

Queenan then elevates his general dislike of the book into speculation on the readers’ culpability for books of this sort, saying the book might be “inspired satire, a deliciously subtle send-up of a genre Petroski helped to popularize. A more plausible explanation is that the author was so emboldened by the public’s giddy response to his earlier work that he decided to go for broke. If this is the case, then we, the reading public, bear the greatest responsibility for this misfortune.”

So what do you say? Do you think this book will be popular with your library’s readers? And if it is, is that a bad thing? In short, is Queenan himself making a mountain out of a molehill, or, more appropriately, a macro-problem out of a micro-history?

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By Cindy Orr

James Frey has sold another book. Called Bright Shiny Morning, this one is clearly going to be marked fiction, unlike A Million Little Pieces, the “memoir” which led to his dressing down on the Oprah show and villification pretty much everywhere for writing fiction and selling it as the truth. A HarperCollins representative called Frey “an immensely talented writer,â€? and championed the new book as “truly extraordinary and original.â€?

Some people may think that Frey took a bad rap, especially considering that other memoirists have admitted that not everything they wrote was exactly true, and some people believe that the emotional truths of memoirs are often better served by how they are remembered than by how they happened. Here’s an interesting take on how Frey is using the media to rebuild his career.

Another interesting connection is this interview, in which Augusten Burroughs belittles Frey, saying he is like Milli Vanilli, the singing duo who turned out to be lip synching instead of singing. But now, as reported earlier here, Burroughs himself has settled a lawsuit with the family portrayed in his memoir Running With Scissors. Hmm.

Burroughs and his publisher have agreed to call Running With Scissors a “book” rather than a “memoir” from now on. The Turcotte family, which filed the lawsuit issued a statement: “With this settlement, together with our settlement with Sony last year, we have achieved everything we set out to accomplish when we filed suit two years ago. We have always maintained that the book is fictionalized and defamatory. This settlement is the most powerful vindication of those sentiments that we can imagine.”

Pat Holt has written an interesting column on Creative Nonfiction and the author’s duty to tell the truth.

And then there’s “autofiction.” This is a term coined by Serge Doubrovsky in the 70s to describe his combination of fiction and autobiography.

To make it even more complicated, J. G. Ballard’s next book will apparently be his memoir. Ballard, the author of Empire of the Sun, and The Kindness of Women , which are “autobiographical novels,” is one of the most respected contemporary British authors. His “memoir” will cover the same periods as his “autobiographical novels.”

And Philip Roth’s new novel Exit Ghost tackles the fiction writer’s use of his own life in his books.

My head is spinning.

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By Sarah Statz Cords

One of my very best friends keeps trying to get me to read Diana Gabaldon’s novel Outlander. She’s convinced I’m going to love it and we’ll be able to talk about it for hours.

What I don’t have the heart to tell her is that I have started it, and I didn’t enjoy it. Doesn’t mean it was a bad book, it just wasn’t for me. So I went looking for other books like it to suggest to my friend when she’s looking for new novels to read, and was surprised to find there’s a whole subgenre of Romance called “Time Travel Romance.”

These titles are defined as romances which “feature protagonists who are transported from one time period to another. The exchange is usually between the present and some time in the past, but other options are acceptable. Conflicts usually follow because of time-based cultural differences, or the fact that the hero and the heroine are from different time periods and must make sacrifices to stay together.”

Do you know someone who loves Diana Gabaldon? Consider these other representative “Time Travel Romance” titles:

Across Forever, by Janice Bennett;
Nick of Time, by Casey Claybourne;
When Lightning Strikes, by Kristin Hannah;
Summer’s Secret, by Sandra Heath; or
The Mirror, by Marlys Millhiser.

Happy time traveling!

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