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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.
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    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

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    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

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    RA Run Down

    Sunday, July 11th, 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 the Most Wanted Mashup of Bestsellers This Week

    FICTION

  • Tess Gerritsen – Ice Cold
  • James Patterson and Maxine Paetro – Private
  • Brad Thor – Foreign Influence

    • NONFICTION

  • Sean Payton and Ellis Henican – Home Team

    • 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:

  • James Lee Burke – The Glass Rainbow
  • Tana French – Faithful Place
  • Lisa Gardner – Live to Tell
  • Jennifer Weiner – Fly Away Home
  • Laura Ingraham – The Obama Diaries
  • Leigh Anne Tuohy, Sean Tuohy and Sally Jenkins – In a Heartbeat: Sharing the Power of Cheerful Giving – (true story behind The Blind Side)

    • And many 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 the very appropriate Cool Reads for Hot Days. Look in the righthand column just under the Most Wanted Mashup for this list.
    _____________________________________________
    And now on to the news of the week:

  • First there was Slow Food, Slow Travel, Slow Money, and now Slow Reading…though Nietzsche thought of it first
  • Excerpt from Mark Twain’s upcoming unexpurgated autobiography to appear in Granta
  • “For better or for worse, the greatest storytellers of our time are the nonfiction writers”
  • The tremendous power of books
  • Is South Africa the next Scandinavia of the mystery world?
  • Israeli writers ponder literature’s role in peacemaking
  • Last year e-books were 3% of the market, this year, about 10%, Random House President says in 5 years—50%
  • Comic-Con, July 22-25, San Diego – program schedule released
  • Study shows it takes longer to read books on a screen than in print
  • RA in the 2.0 Environment
  • E-Reading on the rise in libraries
  • A fresh breed of literary magazines
  • Covers in the e-book age
  • Better than a piece of bacon…forgotten bookmarks
  • Should your child be learning the art of slow reading?
  • Being a reader is like playing tricks with time
  • On plot summaries

    • _____________________________________________
    Books on Screen

  • Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid heads to screen
  • Gary Oldman to star in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
  • Robert A. Heinlein’s Have Spacesuit, Will Travel to be a film
  • Moneyball, the movie

    • _____________________________________________
    Awards

  • The Caine Prize for African Writing
  • 2010 Thriller Awards

    • _____________________________________________
    Authors

  • Martin Amis – forces cancellation of unflattering biography
  • Robert Butler – obituary
  • Bill Crider – answers 7 questions
  • Harlan Ellison – to sell birthday present from Neil Gaiman
  • Denis Johnson – his papers go to the University of Texas at Austin
  • Margaret Millar - remember her great books?
  • Karin Slaughter – recommends Denise Mina
  • Ann Waldron – obituary

    • _____________________________________________
    Lists

  • Summer’s Monster Reads: Kraken anyone?
  • Top 10 Post-Apocalyptic Books
  • To Kill a Mockingbird and other one hit wonders
  • Stephen King’s 6 Must Reads for Summer
  • Top 10 Pubs in Literature
  • August Indie Next List
  • Amazon’s Top Ten Books of 2010 So Far
  • Science Fiction and Fantasy Books Mainstream Readers Should Read, and Mainstream Books That Science Fiction and Fantasy Readers Should Read
  • Bloomberg’s Top 50 Recent Business Books
  • 12 Uniquely American Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels and Stories
  • Books You Have to Read

    • _____________________________________________
    Lighthearted Link of the Week

  • Zombies Are Going Hungry As Libraries Close
  • Library Card Art and 15 of the Coolest Bookends

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    RA Run Down

    Sunday, July 4th, 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

  • Janet Evanovich – Sizzling Sixteen
  • Karen Kingsbury – Take Four
  • Danielle Steel – Family Ties

    • Nonfiction

  • S. C. Gwynne – Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History

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

  • Allegra Goodman – The Cookbook Collector
  • Susan Isaacs – As Husbands Go
  • Bill Pronzini – Betrayers
  • Nora Roberts – The Search
  • Paco Underhill – What Women Want: The Global Marketplace Turns Female Friendly

    • And many 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 Short Story Collections 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:

  • Reading is dependent on a whole hierarchy or cascade of processes. Amazing story by Oliver Sacks: Howard Engel, author of the Benny Cooperman novels wakes up and finds that he can’t read…but he can write.
  • Audiobook sales for 2009 were 49% digital
  • Internet Archive, Boston PL, Biblioteca Ludwig von Mises at the Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala, Marine Biological Laboratory and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Wood’s Hole, MA and OverDrive Work to Create One Stop Open Library e-Book Site
  • W. S. Merwin named U. S. Poet Laureate
  • The Labyrinth revisited: Costco picks The Hunger Games for its July Pennie’s Pick
  • How an author accidentally got 700,000 Facebook fans…and how it didn’t help his book at all
  • Fiction’s global crime wave
  • 82-year-old gets 3 book deal
  • The BP Gulf disaster reminds writer of Don DeLillo’s White Noise

  • What it’s like to command a bookmobile
  • Scholastic ups print run for Mockingjay to 1.2 million
  • The apparently shared urban fantasy belt
  • Scholastic translates 80 children’s titles into Arabic
  • Try listening to your summer reading books
  • Report on the Poisoned Pen conference by Lesa Holstine
  • Is the number of Americans who read literary novels close to the number of Americans who like soccer? Does Philip Roth know?
  • Is Elena Kagan on Team Jacob or Team Edward?
  • Paperback version of Elizabeth Edwards autobiography has a new chapter
  • Audiobook sales increased in 2009
  • Sony unveils Reader library program to promote digital reading in public libraries
  • 15 great independent presses that should not be overlooked
  • Some think e-books will pave the way to more blockbuster bestsellers
  • Christian YA novels offer an empowering guide to adolescence
  • New York Times will work on developing ebook bestseller list
  • One study “found the biggest determining factor in children achieving academic success was not wealth or class, nor parents staying together, but the presence of books in the home. Since buying books is an unimaginable luxury to those struggling to buy groceries, the only viable route towards improving those children’s chances in life is the local lending library.”
  • The vampire guy talks about real life vampires
  • Wonder Woman gets a new backstory and more clothes…what woman would go 60 years with one outfit?
  • OverDrive to add hundreds of Disney titles to their library collection
  • Scientists claim to find hidden code in Plato’s works
  • Anonymous donor buys most expensive manuscript ever…Casanova’s uncensored original diaries…and presents them to the French national library

    • _____________________________________________
    Books on Screen

  • Peter Jackson seems to be back in as director of The Hobbit
  • Jude Law joins Hugo Cabret movie
  • Anne Hathaway stars in One Day by David Nicholls
  • Jessica Chastain to play Celia Foote in The Help

    • _____________________________________________
    Awards

  • The Terry Pratchett Anywhere But Here, Anywhen But Now Prize is newly established for debut authors
  • Trillium Book Awards
  • Locus Awards – best novel: Cherie Priest – Boneshaker
  • Christian Fiction Awards
  • Canadian Author Association Literary Awards
  • Orange Prize Shortlist

    • _____________________________________________
    Authors

  • Margaret Atwood – interview
  • Sen. Robert Byrd – obituary
  • Jose Luis Borges - Rivka Galchen on why we read him
  • Ray Bradbury – book store appearance at the age of 90
  • Harper Lee – grants rare interview (sorta)
  • JM Coetzee – smiles
  • Stephen Gilbert - obituary
  • Charlaine Harris - on the current vampire epidemic
  • Christopher Hitchens – to undergo chemotherapy
  • Herman Melville – has a prehistoric whale named after him
  • Andreas Okopenko – obituary
  • James Patterson – will begin partnering with writers in Germany, Italy, Australia, and England
  • William Tenn – obituary
  • Colin Ward – obituary

    • _____________________________________________
    Lists

  • 2010 Notable Books List
  • Most Downloaded Books from OverDrive – June 2010
  • The 10 Best Credit Crunch Books
  • June 2010 Christian Bestsellers
  • Top 10 African Crime Novels
  • The Lost Essential Reading List
  • ABC News Video: Janice Kaplan’s Hottest Summer Reads
  • 10 Summer YA Books You’ll Want to Read Despite Your Age
  • July Indie Notables

    • _____________________________________________
    Lighthearted Link of the Week

  • Molly Ringle wins this year’s Bulwer-Lytton contest for the worst opening sentence (the runners-up are pretty funny too)
  • Al Qaeda calls off terrorist attack in order to save the life of Stephenie Meyer

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    RA Run Down

    Sunday, June 27th, 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

  • Glenn Beck – The Overton Window
  • Catherine Coulter – Whiplash

    • Nonfiction

  • Tori Spelling – Uncharted terriTORI

    • But don’t forget Glenn Beck’s power to pull titles up to the top of the lists ala Oprah. The most recent examples: F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, and George Washington’s Sacred Fire by Peter A. Lillback, which have hit USA Today’s Top 150 Books, though they’re not reflected in the other bestseller lists.

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

    FICTION

  • Tess Gerritsen – Ice Cold: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel
  • Lisa Kleypas – Love in the Afternoon (Hathaways, Book 5) (mass market paper)
  • Linda Lael Miller – McKettricks of Texas: Austin (mass market paper)
  • James Patterson and Maxine Paetro – Private
  • Richard North Patterson – In the Name of Honor
  • Brad Thor – Foreign Influence

    • NONFICTION

  • Nadine Gordimer – Telling Times: Writing and Living, 1954–2008
  • Diana Ross – Upside Down: Wrong Turns, Right Turns, and the Road Ahead
  • Venus Williams – Come to Win: Business Leaders, Artists, Doctors and Other Visionaries on How Sports Can Help You Top Your Profession

    • And many 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 and Classic YA Books for Adult Readers. Look in the righthand column just under the Most Wanted Mashup for this list.

    _____________________________________________

    Before we begin this week’s news…is your library facing cuts, layoffs, or even closure? Report it here. This topic is not really RA-related, except that if you have to close your doors, how can you provide RA service? Take a look at Library Journal’s new project and send them your information as they build a map of the terrible news. And here’s an article on The Huffington Post by Carol Fitzgerald, the founder of TheBookReportNetwork.com on the awful situation facing libraries. It’s called “Libraries and Librarians Are Endangered Species: What You Can Do to Help.”

    And now on to the news of the week:

  • Thriller Fest next week in NY
  • No surprise… Dick Francis’s son Felix will take over his father’s book franchise. Felix and his mother had worked on the Francis books from the beginning. He says, “Dick Francis has been not an individual but a brand, and the brand will live on after him.”
  • Neil Gaiman: today’s vampire’s a bit toothless…and they’re everywhere, like cockroaches
  • The world’s largest publishers in rank order: 1. Pearson 2. Reed Elsevier 3. Thomson Reuters 4. Wolters Kluwer 5. Bertelsmann, etc.
  • Crime novel wins Australian Miles Franklin Award…could crime ever win a Booker?
  • Gay themed novels for young readers enter the mainstream
  • From Shelf-Awareness: Phil Jackson, LA Lakers coach assigned reading for his players
  • The book everyone’s buzzing about…Mr. Peanut…look here, here, here, and here.
  • Richard Curtis has a two part article on the history of the rise and fall of the mass market paperback and Part 2 here
  • Novel about Anne Frank stirs up controversy and here’s the publisher’s side of things
  • 20 writers to watch, an alternate list
  • Author House to republish Harold Robbins novels
  • People read, but now it’s social…identifying popular passages in books
  • Russian police seize 100,000 copies of book criticizing Putin
  • 50 Books/50 Covers competition
  • Why price cuts for e-readers mean that the future of ebooks is assured
  • Chicago Tribune on how to keep kids reading over the summer
  • Michael Jackson literary links on the one year anniversary of his death
  • Autobiography of a book cover

    • _____________________________________________
    Books on Screen

  • Kobo reader is compatible with OverDrive service
  • Be prepared for the Eat, Pray, Love juggernaut
  • Trailer for this year’s Narnia movie, Voyage of the Dawn Treader
  • Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2, headed to screen
  • Miley Cyrus to star in Wake by Lisa McMann
  • Daniel Radcliffe to star in All Quiet on the Western Front
  • Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, part 1 begins production, but has already shrugged off its first director
  • Matt Damon may star in adaptation of Benjamin Mee’s We Bought a Zoo
  • Twilight night coming Wednesday as Eclipse premiers at theatres
  • Warner Brothers gets rights to Ready Player One by Ernie Cline
  • Rob Reiner to do Flipped by Wendelin Van Draanen after his teenage son recommends it
  • Random House Children’s Screen Entertainment signs four titles: Fish-Head Steve by Jamie Smart; the Gargoyles series by Jan Burchett and Sara Vogler; the Charlie Small series by Nick Ward; and the Princess Poppy books by Janey Louise Jones.

  • TNT will begin a series in July called Rizzoli and Isles, based on Tess Gerritsen’s books
  • Readers’ Advisory and Reference: kissing cousins by Neal Wyatt

    • _____________________________________________
    Awards

  • Wendell Berry – pulling his papers from the University of Kentucky to protest their acceptance of Big Coal money
  • Neil Gaiman’s Graveyard Book wins Carnegie Medal
  • Christie Awards
  • Locus Award Winners

    • _____________________________________________
    Authors

  • Russell Ash – obituary
  • Rick Atkinson – wins 2010 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing
  • Clive Cussler – lost his court case, but refiles; still fighting over movie Sahara
  • Emily Dickinson – did she have a secret love?
  • Stieg Larsson – remembered by his partner
  • Patricia MacLachlan - Q & A
  • Laura Lippman on Grace Metalious (written in 1999)
  • Richelle Mead – on the Vampire Academy books
  • Stephenie Meyer - on her next book Midnight Sun, “What’s true is that I’m really burned out on vampires.”
  • Susan Orlean – from Editor A to Publisher Z…her crazy odyssey to get a book published
  • Ferdinand Oyono – obituary
  • Tine Thevenin – obituary
  • John Updike – a peek at his papers

    • _____________________________________________
    Lists

  • Top 10 Women Travellers in Fiction
  • The Hottest Graphic Novels of the Summer
  • Okra Picks: Great Southern Books Fresh Off the Vine
  • The 12 Best Books of Summer
  • The 5 Must-Read Books on Soccer

    • _____________________________________________
    Lighthearted Link of the Week

  • Embarrasing passages from celebrity autobiographies become Off Broadway hit play—Madonna read by Florence Henderson?

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    RA Run Down

    Sunday, June 20th, 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 to the Bestseller Lists This Week:

    Fiction

  • Justin Cronin – The Passage
  • Nelson DeMille – The Lion

    • Nonfiction

  • Anthony Bourdain – Medium Raw
  • Tony Hsieh – Delivering Happiness: a Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

    • To see our 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:

  • Allison Brennan – Carnal Sin
  • Linda Castillo – Pray for Silence
  • Janet Evanovich – Sizzling Sixteen
  • Diana Gabaldon – An Echo in the Bone
  • E. Lynn Harris – In My Father’s House
  • Karin Slaughter – Broken
  • Danielle Steel – Family Ties
  • Whitley Strieber – The Omega Point: Beyond 2012
  • Nancy Thayer – Beachcombers
  • David Weber – Mission of Honor
  • Karen Kingsbury – Take Four
  • Sharyn McCrumb – The Devil Amongst the Lawyers

    • And many 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 War, Behind the Scenes. Look in the righthand column just under the Most Wanted Mashup for this list.

    _____________________________________________
    And now on to the news of the week:

  • Michael Jackson’s mother self-publishes a book of photographs and reminiscenses
  • Publishers are missing a trick by not perfecting blurbs on book jackets
  • Enter the World Cup of Fiction
  • Apple backs down from censorship of Ulysses graphics
  • Free Library Journal Christian Fiction Webinar June 21
  • Sexual harrassment charges filed against head of Penguin Canada by rights director who says she was fired after complaining
  • Amazon breakthrough novel award goes to one fiction and one young adult fiction book
  • The Onion predicts the next big thing…minotaurs are the new vampires
  • Desperately seeking more Scandinavian mysteries
  • Why Boston won’t do a one book, one city program
  • 20 different authors under 40 from The Millions and why the list may not be worth much, since many great writers peaked at age 40
  • Consider joining PLA’s Readers Advisory Community of Practice
  • Another way to find a good book to read…total serendipity
  • Glenn Beck’s Overton Window a rehash of a self-published novel, only with the roles reversed…and why not? It’s by the same guy.

    • _____________________________________________
    Books on Screen

  • Agatha Christie on Masterpiece Theatre
  • Keira Knightly to star in Never Let Me Go by Ishiguro
  • Sam Raimi looks at directing a prequel to The Wizard of Oz

    • _____________________________________________
    Awards

  • 2010 IMPAC Dublin Award
  • Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance
  • The Prize Winningest Books of the Past Decade

    • _____________________________________________
    Authors

  • Glenn Beck – interview
  • Rhys Bowen – the expat is more popular in America than her home in Britain
  • Ruth Chew – obituary
  • Douglas Coupland – to design clothing
  • Frank Delaney – teaches Joyce’s Ulysses podcast by podcast
  • David Dillon – obituary
  • Neil Gaiman – in legal fight over rights to Spawn
  • John Grisham - wants to overtake J. K. Rowling and become the number one author again
  • Sebastian Horsley – obituary
  • Carlos Monsivais - obituary
  • Susan Orlean - (susanorlean) starts Twitter discussion of books that changed my world – #booksthatchangedmyworld
  • Terry Pratchett – interviewed by Nancy Pearl (video)
  • Egon Ronay
  • José Saramago – obituary
  • Gary Shteyngart - fiction about a dystopian ebook future

    • _____________________________________________
    Lists

  • National Post Summer Reading: Some Reminders That Life Is Awesome
  • Bibliomysteries
  • Travel Around the World Through the Summer’s Best Beach Books
  • NPR: Fiction Long and Short for Summertime Escape
  • Oil and Its Impact on the Environment
  • Oprah’s Summer Reading List
  • The 5 Buzziest Summer Beach Reads

    • _____________________________________________
    Lighthearted Link of the Week

  • Library Condiment Vandal Captured

    • Posted in RA Run Down | No Comments »

    RA Run Down

    Sunday, June 13th, 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 the Most Wanted Mashup of Bestsellers This Week:

    We have three novels and one nonfiction book that have hit the top of the bestseller lists in the past week for the first time—all, as usual, from familiar authors who are old hands in the bestseller sweepstakes:

    FICTION

  • Clive Cussler & Justin Scott – The Spy
  • Jeffery Deaver – The Burning Wire
  • Laurell K. Hamilton – Bullet

    • NONFICTION

  • Christopher Hitchens – Hitch-22

    • To see the entire Most Wanted Mashup of this week’s top bestselling titles, look to the righthand column.
    _____________________________________________

    Be ready for the new releases of the week. Here are just a few of the New, Noteworthy, and No-Brainer entries for the upcoming seven days:

    FICTION

  • Glenn Beck – The Overton Window
  • Catherine Coulter – Whiplash
  • Bret Easton Ellis – Imperial Bedrooms
  • Dorothea Benton Frank – Lowcountry Summer
  • Alan Furst – Spies of the Balkans
  • Neil Gaiman – Stories: All New Tales
  • Jane Green – Promises to Keep
  • Dean Koontz – Frankenstein: Lost Souls
  • Johanna Lindsey – That Perfect Someone
  • Carolyn Parkhurst – The Nobodies Album

    • NONFICTION

  • Pat Benetar – Between a Heart and a Rock Place
  • Sloane Crosley – How Did You Get This Number?
  • Sam Kashner & Nancy Schoenberger – Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century
  • Tori Spelling – uncharted terriTORI

    • There are many 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 Historical Romances for a Swoony Summer. Look in the righthand column just under the Most Wanted Mashup for this list.

    _____________________________________________
    And now on to the news of the week:

  • Salon’s new book club chooses The Passage by Justin Cronin for its first pick
  • The art of weekend reading
  • Little Brown to publish Glee books
  • The New Yorker on Biblioracle: talk to a librarian
  • McGraw-Hill pushes up the date for the late John Wooden’s book
  • Are publishers missing the boat on blurbs?
  • Underwater storytime
  • President Obama to write foreword for Mandela’s next book
  • Nominate your favorite thrillers on NPR
  • What’s behind the boom in dystopian YA fiction?
  • Amazon Encore publishing company introduces first ten titles for Fall
  • Dime novels 150 years old
  • What size library display circulates the most?
  • Christian Fiction Book Buzz Free Webinar
  • Rielle Hunter wants proceeds from Andrew Young book
  • Harlequin launches digital only publishing arm
  • Technology is rewiring our brains
  • Glenn Beck sends Friedrich Hayek’s book to the top of the Amazon bestseller list
  • Library Wars, the graphic novel series
  • Will the 20 young writers under 40 ever write anything better than they already have?
  • Recommendation engines keep us in a comfortable rut
  • ALA RUSA Program on RA Trends: Visual Storytelling, Video Games, Graphic Novels, Illuminated Manuscripts, Saturday, 4:00-5:30 – speakers include Gene Ambaum, of the library comic strip Unshelved, Daniel De Simone, curator illuminated and illustrated books at the Library of Congress, Nathan Altice, musician, digital artist, and expert in the cultural appeal of video games. Other RUSA ALA events here.
  • Another ALA RA program – Innovative Collection Centered Programs: Beyond the Book Groups

    • Watch for our special ALA program picks later this week.

    _____________________________________________
    Books on Screen

  • Jeffrey Eumenides short story to star Jennifer Aniston
  • Fangland–updated version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula
  • Breaking Dawn to be filmed in two parts: first release, Nov. 8, 2011
  • New Wind in the Willows movie planned
  • Gary Oldman to play George Smiley in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

    • _____________________________________________
    Awards

  • Macavity Award Nominees
  • Barry Award Nominees
  • Barbara Kingsolver wins the Orange Prize
  • Orange New Writers Award
  • Canada’s National Business Book Award
  • Irish Book of the Decade
  • Asturias Prize

    • _____________________________________________
    Authors

  • Eleanor Taylor Bland – obituary
  • Eoin Colfer – first adult novel to be published next year
  • Wayne Dyer - sued for copyright infringement
  • Richard ffrench – obituary
  • Joseph Finder – interviewed by the Disrespectful Interviewer
  • Gar Anthony Haywood – why, if summer reading means relaxation, aren’t there more genre books on the summer reading lists? genre snobbery again
  • Arthur Herzog – obituary
  • Stieg Larsson – two early short stories discovered
  • David Markson - obituary
  • George R. R. Martin – the 5 stages for his fans: introduction, enthrallment, disappointment, disbelief and bitterness
  • Ayn Rand – Mike Wallace interview, 1959 (video)
  • Lionel Shriver – Bret Easton Ellis is a case of skim milk rising to the top
  • Karin Slaughter – calls for authors to do fundraising for libraries
  • Wells Tower – wins the New York Public Library 2010 Young Lions Fiction Award
  • John Wooden – obituary
  • Mike Zwerin – obituary

    • ____________________________________________
    Lists

  • Summer Bookclub for Billionaires
  • LA Times Summer Reading
  • World Cup reading list
  • Top Football (Soccer) Books
  • NPR’s Summer Reading
  • Top Ten Difficult Literary Works
  • NPR’s Historical Summer Reading
  • Ten Great Books About Cycling
  • LA Times summer reading: 60 books for 92 days
  • Books on Foodies’ Beach Blankets
  • Lesbian Mystery Roundup
  • Summer 2010 Indie Next List for Reading Groups
  • 25 Iconic Book Covers

    • _____________________________________________
    Lighthearted Link of the Week

  • Frugal 98-Year-Old Learns How to Invest at the Library, Leaves Her Millions to Her Town

    • Posted in RA Run Down | No Comments »

    RA Run Down

    Sunday, June 6th, 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 the Most Wanted Mashup of Bestsellers This Week:

    Fiction

  • Lisa Kleypas – Married by Morning
  • Stieg Larsson – The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
  • Stephenie Meyer – The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner
  • Linda Lael Miller – The McKettricks of Texas: Garrett
  • Sherryl Woods – Honeysuckle Summer

    • Nonfiction

  • Tony Schwartz – The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working

    • To see the entire Most Wanted Mashup of this week’s bestselling titles, look to the righthand column.
    _____________________________________________
    The New, Noteworthy, and No-Brainer list of new titles hitting the shelves in the upcoming week includes:

  • Ann Beattie – Walks with Men
  • Meg Cabot – Insatiable
  • Justin Cronin – The Passage
  • Nelson DeMille – The Lion
  • Jennifer Egan – A Visit from the Goon Squad
  • Elizabeth Lowell – Death Echo
  • Leo Tolstoy and Ben H. Winters – Android Karenina
  • Anthony Bourdain – Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook

    • And many 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 Thrillers to Read While You Wait for the New Stieg Larsson. Look in the righthand column just under the Most Wanted Mashup for this list.

    _____________________________________________
    And now on to the news of the week:

  • Headmaster says school without books in the library is working fine, Harvard libraries worry more about access than acquisitions
  • NY Times 20 under 40 authors (who also happened to have an unpublished story they would allow to be published)
  • 10 over 80 authors (they’ve been kicking ass longer than the youngsters have been alive, plus many more suggested in the comments)
  • Sales of literary works to studios has hit a new bottom
  • St. Martin’s buys book on BP by journalist who has been researching their pollution for years
  • Great questions and answers for the authors at the Hay festival: what’s the worst review you ever had, is the end of books the end of reading, who are the three greatest living writers?
  • Eileen Dreyer on Man Romance
  • Pretty grisly display idea, but expect a minor run on the 17 books on the Natalie Holloway disappearance now that suspect Joran van der Sloot has been arrested in Chile for the murder of a woman in Peru
  • Responses to Garrison Keillor’s rant about the death of publishing
  • Authors deserve 3 year contracts
  • Publisher explains the appeal of Stieg Larrson’s books: the character of Lisbeth Salander
  • Booklist free webinar: Audiobooks A-Z
  • PBS NewsHour Panel on the impact of eBooks (video – 8 minutes)
  • How to choose what to read? Christian Science Monitor says ask a librarian.
  • Sony predicts eBooks will outsell paper books within 5 years Or if you’re a visual type
  • Is the Internet killing our ability to focus on something book length? Video interview with Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains
  • The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest: 29% of first week sales were for eBook

    • _____________________________________________
    Books on Screen

  • Guillermo Del Toro quits The Hobbit
  • Brad Pitt buys rights to The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
  • Buy a Nook, get a $50 B & N gift card for eBooks
  • Borders adds Libre eBook Reader Pro to its list for $119.99
  • Target to begin selling the Kindle, (but this eReader won’t work with your library’s eBook collection)
  • OCLC Sells NetLibrary to Ebsco, lays off 64 workers
  • Steve Jobs: media businesses need to cut their prices to survive
  • Apple to offer self-publishing option
  • Lambda Literary Awards

    • _____________________________________________
    Awards

  • PEN Translation Prizes
  • Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, others up for Trillium Award
  • Next Generation Indie Book Awards
  • Arab-American Book Awards
  • Anthony Award Nominations

    • _____________________________________________
    Authors

  • Eleanor Taylor Bland – obituary
  • Nicole Dryburgh – obituary
  • Kazio Ishiguro – defends use of cliches
  • Henning Mankel - released by Israelis
  • Rue McClanahan – obituary
  • Stephenie Meyer – answers questions about Bree Tanner
  • Peter Orlovsky – obituary
  • Andrei Voznesensky – obituary
  • Rick Warren – next book delayed indefinitely
  • Donald Windham – obituary

    • _____________________________________________
    Lists

  • NPR: 15 Soaring Summer Reads
  • Authors Choose All-Time Favorite Reads, Genre by Genre
  • Religion in Review, May 2010
  • May 2010 Catholic Bestsellers
  • Master Summer Reading List
  • Nail-Biting Summer Reads
  • Top 10 20th Century Gothic Novels
  • Sarah Weinman’s Crime and Thriller Summer Reading List
  • July Indie Next List Great Reads

    • _____________________________________________
    Lighthearted Link of the Week

  • Playing Quidditch in Central Park

    • Posted in RA Run Down | No Comments »

    RA Run Down

    Sunday, May 30th, 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 the Most Wanted Mashup of Bestsellers This Week

    We have 6 new titles on the bestseller lists for this week:

    Fiction

  • Mary Balogh – A Secret Affair
  • Lee Child – 61 Hours
  • Phillip Margolin – Supreme Justice
  • Richelle Mead – Spirit Bound
  • John Sandford – Storm Prey

    • Nonfiction

  • Jonathan Alter - The Promise

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

    FICTION

  • Ann Brashares – My Name is Memory
  • Clive Cussler & Justin Scott – The Spy
  • Jeffery Deaver – The Burning Wire
  • Laurell K. Hamilton – Bullet
  • Oscar Hijuelos – Beautiful Maria of My Soul
  • Eric van Lustbader – Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Objective
  • Steve Martini – The Rule of Nine
  • Stephenie Meyer – The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella

    • NONFICTION

  • Dan Ariely – The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefit of Defying Logic at Work and at Home
  • Samantha Bee – I Know I Am, But What Are You
  • Cat Cora – Cat Cora’s Classics with a Twist: Fresh Takes on Classic Dishes
  • Christopher Hitchens – Hitch-22: A Memoir

    • …just to name a few. Scroll down to the next entry to see the long list of noteworthy titles to be published in the next seven days, or click here.
    _____________________________________________
    Our Under the Radar list this week is Books Dads Might Like. Look in the righthand column just under the Most Wanted Mashup for this list.

    _____________________________________________
    And now on to the news of the week:

  • Author Henning Mankell aboard Gaza flotilla stormed by Israeli troops
  • It’s been 100 years, as he requested, and Mark Twain’s autobiography will finally be published this year
  • Little Women attacked by werewolves and vampires
  • To Kill a Mockingbird 50th anniversary celebrations
  • Shelf-Awareness report on BEA
  • Joe McGinniss moves next door to Sarah Palin to research his next book
  • Book sales way up for March; eBook sales continue to skyrocket
  • Scientists prove books in the house make kids smarter
  • Scientists think creative writing can reveal the author’s personality
  • The model digital library
  • Five great summer literary festivals
  • Banner books from BEA
  • Audio Publishers Association would like your help with a survey on use of audiobooks in libraries.
  • Neil Hollands: How to write book discussion questions, part 5
  • BEA buzz books for Fall and more here
  • Flarf poetry moves to mainstream
  • Jindal book delayed
  • George W. Bush book begins with decision to quit drinking
  • First Lady Lit
  • Ghost writers and political books
  • Majority of children’s picture books contribute to rain forest deforestation according to report
  • Rebecca Vnuk: Using RA reference books for displays
  • 1912: the year the Titanic sank was the best year for science fiction ever
  • 2009 Survey of Book Buying Behavior
  • Paranormal romance: what’s the attraction?
  • RUSA Literary Tastes Breakfast tickets on sale
  • 1947 anti-Nazi novel a surprise UK hit
  • More conservative textbooks curriculum passes in Texas
  • Will Manley: How patrons pick out leisure reading books
  • 250 years and still waiting for the death of the novel
  • The 11 greatest literary feuds
  • Six finalists for Amazon’s breakthrough novel award
  • Slideshow: 20th Century publishing in Britain
  • ThrillerFest coming up soon
  • How do you think he did? Writer attempts readers’ advisory suggestions
  • BEA will restore 3-day format in 2011
  • Is Braille a dying language?

    • _____________________________________________
    Books on Screen

  • Pretty Little Liars on ABC
  • Stephen King adaptation headed to SyFy Channel
  • Netflix Dramas Based on Contemporary Literature
  • Which eBook store to choose: the Wall Street Journal compares—reading devices will come and go, but you’ll want your eBooks to stick around
  • E-Book sales jumped 252% in 1st quarter
  • Death in Venice/ Don’t Look Now – how are films different from literature?

    • _____________________________________________
    Awards

  • 2010 Nebula Awards Winners – top award goes to The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
  • Audie Awards: AUDIOBOOK OF THE YEAR – Nelson Mandela’s Favorite African Folktales by Nelson Mandela, narrated by a full cast including Samuel L. Jackson, Helen Mirren, Don Cheadle, and Alan Rickman (Hachette Audio)
  • Ian Thomson wins Ondaatje Prize
  • Ian McEwan wins Wodehouse Prize
  • Arthur Ellis Awards
  • Samuel Johnson Prize Shortlist

    • _____________________________________________
    Authors

  • David Baldacci’s writing schedule and interview
  • Jennifer Belle – hires actresses to read her book in public and laugh out loud
  • Jeffery Deaver – will write the next James Bond book
  • Cory Doctorow – “I give away all of my books.” ” It doesn’t really matter how great your work is; if no one’s ever heard of it, you’ll never make any money from it.”
  • Jennifer Egan – on the art of PowerPoint fiction (video)
  • Col. Robin Evelegh – obituary
  • Sarah Ferguson - scandal boosts sales of her book
  • Neil Gaiman – writes Dr. Who episode
  • Martin Gardner – obituary
  • Parnell Hall - Signing in the WaldenBooks and nobody’s there (video)
  • Victoria Hislop – rejects lucrative American film in favor of Greek job-creating series
  • Garrison Keillor – “I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea.”
  • J. A. Konrath – calls PW article about him an “epic fail”
  • Stieg Larsson – profile
  • Art Linkletter – obituary
  • Yann Martel – favorite books
  • Robert E. Müller – obituary
  • Garth Nix – authors need to adapt or perish
  • Robert Parker – what he meant to the crime fiction scene and here
  • Kim Stanley Robinson – interview – “We live in a pocket utopia, and we need the rest of the world to be utopia, or else we seem like criminals or idiots.”
  • Henry Roth - 5th novel published 15 years after his death
  • J. K. Rowling – may reconsider the ban on eBook versions of her titles
  • Rick Warren – fall book postponed indefinitely
  • Charles Yu – author to watch

    • _____________________________________________
    Lists

  • Christian Science Monitor 8 Smart Books for the Beach
  • Christian Science Monitor Summer 2010 Reading Guide
  • Time Magazine’s Summer Entertainment Book List
  • New York Post Summer Beach Preview
  • Summer Reading: When You Don’t Have to Lie About What You’re Reading
  • Bloomberg’s Top 50 Recent Business Books
  • Books You Could Have Been Jailed for Reading
  • 21 Women Entrepreneurs’ Favorite Books
  • Top 10 Troubled Males in Fiction
  • Tina Brown’s Must Reads on Privacy
  • USA Today’s Hot Summer Books
  • Big Fall Books
  • Census by the Books

    • _____________________________________________
    Lighthearted Links of the Week

  • The 50 Best “Author vs. Author” Put-Downs of All Time
  • The Sweet Valley High Drinking Game
  • Univ of Washington library students remix Lady Gaga

    • Posted in RA Run Down | No Comments »

    RA Run Down

    Sunday, May 23rd, 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

    Titles new to the Bestseller Lists This Week

    Fiction

  • Emily Giffin – The Heart of the Matter
  • Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child – Fever Dream

    • Nonfiction

  • Sebastian Junger – War
  • Ben MacIntyre – Operation Mincemeat
  • Bill Madden – Steinbrenner
  • Geneen Roth – Women Food and God

    • To see the entire Most Wanted Mashup of this week’s bestselling titles, look to the righthand column.
    _____________________________________________
    We have a long list of New, Noteworthy, and No-Brainer titles to be published in the upcoming week. Here’s a small sampling:

  • John Grisham – Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer
  • Sherrilyn Kenyon – Infinity: Chronicles of Nick
  • Lisa Kleypas – Married By Morning
  • Stieg Larsson – The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
  • Julia Quinn – Ten Things I Love About You
  • Sidney Sheldon & Tilly Bagshawe – Sidney Sheldon’s After the Darkness
  • Sylvia Browne – Psychic: My Life in Two Worlds
  • John Waters – Role Models

    • There are many more, so 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 timely Under the Radar list this week is Graduation Gift Books. Look in the righthand column just under the Most Wanted Mashup for this list.

    _____________________________________________
    And now on to the news of the week:

  • Barbara Hoffert’s BEA scouting report (if you’re lucky enough to go)
  • Terry McMillan’s sequel to Waiting to Exhale excerpted in next four issues of Essence
  • Oprah propels Women, Food and God to the top of the bestseller lists
  • Roger Ebert is writing his memoirs
  • “By the end of 2012, digital books will be 20% to 25% of unit sales, and that’s on the conservative side,” says publishing consultant
  • Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County’s BookHive named one of ALA’s Best Free Reference Websites
  • Extra chapters of Malcolm X’s Autobiography discovered
  • Arrest ordered in Christian book copyright infringement
  • Help Will Manley choose mysteries to read
  • More Star Trek themed novels coming soon
  • Things don’t look so great for Jack Reacher in the latest book (spoiler alert)
  • Amazon publishing arm to begin translating works
  • The juiciest bits from Jonathan Alter’s book on President Obama
  • Discredited author tries another book; will it work? will you buy it?
  • Andre Norton Award goes to a book that wasn’t even published (technically)
  • Publishers use digital “appetizers” for books
  • Lauren Hillenbrand has second book
  • California gubernatorial candidate apparently tried to manipulate the bestseller list for his book
  • Otaka (manga aficionados) meet in the library and study Japanese culture
  • C-Span’s Booknotes archive of author interviews
  • Dell Map Back Mysteries

    • _____________________________________________
    Books on Screen

  • Dustin Hoffman and Anthony Hopkins sign on to film The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht
  • Benjamin Mee’s We Bought a Zoo to be directed by Cameron Crowe
  • Christopher Farnsworth sells the rights to his new vampire novel/political thriller Blood Oath

    • _____________________________________________
    Awards

  • Nebula Awards
  • Finalists for the Moby Book Trailer Awards
  • James Tait Black Prize Short List
  • Benjamin Franklin Awards Finalists
  • Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism goes to David Finkel for The Good Soldiers
  • J.G. Farrell’s Troubles wins the “lost” Booker Prize from 1970
  • 2010 Indie Book Awards
  • Desmond Elliott Prize shortlist

    • _____________________________________________
    Authors

  • Max Allan Collins - long interview about Mickey Spillane’s books and his role as co-author
  • Cory Doctorow – on how he found some of his favorite authors: “those writers you discover by a librarian giving you the book or by a friend pressing the book in your hand.”
  • Tim Donaghy – thinks get very messy between the ex-NBA referee and his publisher; lawsuits and restraining orders are involved
  • Barry Hannah - obituary
  • J. A. Konrath – makes publishing history by signing with Amazon instead of his traditional publisher
  • William Mayne – obituary
  • Anne Rice - her California house is for sale
  • Robert Serling – obituary
  • Rebecca Skloot - Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks used for Law and Order episode
  • Studs Terkel – his radio interviews will be digitized
  • Zane – on how she got started by self-publishing

    • _____________________________________________
    Lists

  • Lost reading list
  • Top Ten Welsh Underground Novels
  • IndieBound Poetry Bestsellers
  • Good books that almost nobody has read

    • _____________________________________________
    Lighthearted Link of the Week

  • The Hypothetical Library: Imaginary Book Covers Designed for Actual Authors
  • Who You Gonna Call? (video)
  • Win Money: Lisbeth Salander Look-a-Like Contest

    • Posted in RA Run Down | No Comments »

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