We have a great contest coming up on the Blog in April — there will be a weekly drawing for a $50 gift certificate! Visit the Blog on April 1 for details and to enter the contest!

Our reading list for April, sent to subscribers and trial accounts, will cover Arthur C. Clarke, including his fiction and nonfiction. You won’t want to miss it.

We are adding more GLBTQ content, and will start adding Teen nonfiction next week! We are starting with Teen True Adventure.

We are adding all kinds of Author Read-Alikes. We have added new lists in fantasy covering more than 40 authors:

• Peter S. Beagle
• Lois McMaster Bujold
• Jacqueline Carey
• Susanna Clarke
• Susan Cooper
• Neil Gaiman
• Mercedes Lackey
• Gregory Maguire

Coming up in April, we will be adding more Author Read-Alikes in fantasy, teen authors (such as Scott Westerfeld), and romance/women’s fiction. The Author Read-Alikes are linked to the author’s works (as a list in the QuickList on right; the narrative text as at the bottom of the page). Also, you can find the author-readliakes by selecting Browse from the main menu, choosing Author Read-Alikes from the submenu, then using A-Z list.

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We’ll be at PLA in Minneapolis, MN, March 27-28, 2008. Please stop by the booth #922. Sarah Statz Cords will be demonstrating Reader’s Advisor Online at 10:30 AM Thursday March 27 and at 2:30 PM Friday March 28.

Editor Cindy Orr has people lined up to cover the various RA programs at PLA, so if you can’t attend, be sure to check the Blog.

And, we’ll have details on a contest that we will be running on the Blog starting in April. A $50 prize will be awarded weekly for 4 weeks! So stop by the booth!

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Sarah Statz Cords, from Madison Public Library, Wisconsin, author of The Real Story, and associate editor for the Reader’s Advisor Online, will be offering web-based training Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 1PM EDT / 10 AM PDT. Attendees will view the training via the web and will call a conference number to enable full participation in the training. Spaces are limited — please register ASAP! You may reserve a seat by emailing laura.calderone@lu.com. Confirmation of registration and access instructions will be sent by email. Future dates include Thursday Apr. 10 and Tuesday Apr. 29.

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Sarah Statz Cords, from Madison Public Library, Wisconsin, author of The Real Story, and associate editor for the Reader’s Advisor Online, will be offering web-based training Thursday, February 21, 2008 at 1PM EDT / 10 AM PDT. Attendees will view the training via the web and will call a conference number to enable full participation in the training. Spaces are limited — please register ASAP! You may reserve a seat by emailing laura.calderone@lu.com. Confirmation of registration and access instructions will be sent by email. Future dates include Thursday Feb. 21, Tuesday Mar. 18, Thursday Apr. 10 and Tuesday Apr. 29.

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Sarah Statz Cords, from Madison Public Library, Wisconsin, author of The Real Story, and associate editor for the Reader’s Advisor Online, will be offering web-based training Tuesday, January 29, 2008 at 1PM EDT / 10 AM PDT. Attendees will view the training via the web and will call a conference number to enable full participation in the training. Spaces are limited — please register ASAP! You may reserve a seat by emailing laura.calderone@lu.com. Confirmation of registration and access instructions will be sent by email. Future dates include Thursday February 21, 2008.

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Drum roll — It’s the time of year when we ask our authors, both for RAO and of titles in the Genreflecting series, to pick the best of the year – and it’s not limited to 5 or 10 titles! Yes, it’s an eclectic list; you will see a few titles that are on other best of lists, but doubtless there will be some new gems for you to discover. An annotated list in PDF format is available here.

Fiction

Mystery & Detective (selected by Diana Tixier Herald)

• Albert, Susan Wittig, The Tale of Cuckoo Brow Wood, The Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter series #3
• Fate, Robert, Baby Shark’s Beaumont Blues, Baby Shark series #2

Historical Fiction (selected by Sarah Johnson)

• Agee, Jonis, The River Wife
• Bennett, Vanora, Portrait of an Unknown Woman
• Raybourn, Deanna, Silent in the Grave

Mainstream Fiction (selected by Sara Martinez)

• Castillo, Ana, The Guardians
• Díaz, Junot, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Romance (selected by Stacey Hayman)

• Goodman, Jo, If His Kiss is Wicked
• Mullany, Janet, The Rules of Gentility
• Phillips, Susan Elizabeth, Natural Born Charmer

Speculative Fiction/Fantasy (selected by Diana Tixier Herald)

• Del Franco, Mark, Unshapely Things
• Howell, Morgan, King’s Property Queen of the Orcs
• Moore, John, A Fate Worse than Dragons

Speculative Fiction/Science Fiction (selected by Diana Tixier Herald)

• Cooper, Brenda, The Silver Ship and the Sea

Thriller/Legal Thriller (selected by Diana Tixier Herald)

• Scottoline, Lisa, Daddy’s Girl
• Wilhelm, Kate, A Wrongful Death, Barbara Holloway series #9

Teen Contemporary Life (selected by Diana Tixier Herald)

• Alexie, Sherman, Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Teen Historical Fiction (selected by Diana Tixier Herald)

• Sharenow, Robert, My Mother the Cheerleader

Teen Issues (selected by Diana Tixier Herald)

• Alegria, Malin, Sofi Mendoza’s Guide to Getting Lost in Mexico
• Crutcher, Chris, Deadline
• Jones, Patrick, Chasing Tail Lights
• Resau, Laura, Red Glass
• Zarr, Sara, Story of a Girl

Teen Speculative/Teen Science Fiction (selected by Diana Tixier Herald)

• Kostick, Conor, Epic
• Shusterman, Neal, Unwind

Teen Speculative/Teen Fantasy (selected by Diana Tixier Herald)

• Duey, Kathleen Skin Hunger, A Resurrection of Magic series #1
• Flinn, Alex, Beastly

Teen Speculative/Teen Paranormal (selected by Diana Tixier Herald)

• Vrettos, Adrienne Maria, Sight

Nonfiction

Investigative Writing (selected by Sarah Staz Cords)

• Bageant, Joe. Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War.

Life Stories/Relationships (selected by Sarah Staz Cords)

• Bissell, Tom. The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam.

Life Stories/Biographies (selected by Sarah Statz Cords and Rick Roche)

• Bernstein, Carl. A Woman In Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
• Isaacson, Walter. Einstein.
• McNamee, Thomas. Alice Waters & Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution.
• Lambert, Angela. The Lost Life of Eva Braun.
• Talty, Stephan. Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan’s Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe That Ended the Outlaws’ Bloody Reign.

Women’s Nonfiction (selected by Jessica Zellers)

• Seligson, Susan. 2007. Stacked: a 32DDD reports from the front.

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The next training session for the Reader’s Advisor Online is scheduled for Tuesday December 4 2007 at 1PM ET (12PM CT, 11AM MT, 10 AM PT, for the mathematically challenged!) I will be driving, and the presenter will be Sarah Statz Cords, from Madison (WI) Public Library, author of The Real Story, associate editor for the Reader’s Advisor Online, and blogger extraordinaire. Attendees will view the product via the web (using Microsoft’s LiveMeeting) and will call a conference number. We enjoy the discussions with you! Spaces are limited — please register ASAP! We always have fun! You reserve a seat by emailing laura.calderone@lu.com. Confirmation of registration and access instructions will be sent by email.

The January training session will be Tuesday, January 8, 2008 at 1PM ET.

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By Sarah Statz Cords

Just in time for Halloween, I thought it might be a good time to a) look at some mysteries, and b) look really closely at those mysteries which offer paranormal detectives. These books can offer a fantastic and otherworldly read, particularly around that time of year when hauntings and dark and stormy nights and all things unsettling are popping up in the cultural zeitgeist.

As defined in the Reader’s Advisor Online, these mysteries (a subgenre under Crime/Mystery and Detective Stories) “blend the detective story with elements of speculative fiction; particularly science fiction or horror. The detectives often have supernatural powers, or may be witches or vampires.”

A lot of titles in this subgenre also come as part of a series, so if you find patrons who like one of these titles, you might actually be helping them to a whole new (spooky) series! For example:

1. The Good Die Twice, by Lee Driver;
2. Bloodlist, by P.N. Elrod;
3. Dead Until Dark, by Charlaine Harris;
4. Sleeping with Fear, by Kay Hooper; and
5. Shadows in the Darkness, by Elaine Cunningham.

Witches and vampires and changelings (and mystery plots), oh my!

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By Sarah Statz Cords

Is this a reader’s advisory formulation with which you’re familiar? If you like Janet Evanovich, try…Linda Barnes. Or Donald Westlake.

The “if you like, try” comparison is often at the heart of what we do as reader’s advisors. And, because it is so ubiquitous, there tend to be a lot of resources out there for such author read-alike lists: the Fiction-L archives. Library homepages. A quick Google search.

But for nonfiction authors? Specifically, nonfiction authors that aren’t as ubiquitous as the “big dogs” (e.g., David Sedaris, John Grogan, Malcolm Gladwell, etc.) What if you’ve got a reader who really enjoyed The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan? Or The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman’s huge bestseller*? Keep an eye out when you search the Reader’s Advisor Online for nonfiction (and fiction) authors; a lot of times “Author Read-Alikes” are provided in the Read-Alike Quick Lists on the right side of your search results screen. Because a nonfiction reader’s got just as much right to learn about similar authors they might like.

*Incidentally, if you like Michael Pollan, try Diane Ackerman, Richard Schweid, Amy Stewart, or Robert Sullivan. Thomas Friedman fans, you might like Malcolm Gladwell, Robert Kagan, Bernard Lewis, or even fiction by Daniel Silva.

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The next training sessions are Tuesday Oct 2 and Thursday Nov 1 2007 at 1PM ET (12PM CT, 11AM MT, 10 AM PT, for the mathematically challenged!) I will be driving, and the presenter will be Sarah Statz Cords, from Madison (WI) Public Library, author of The Real Story, associate editor for the Reader’s Advisor Online, and blogger extraordinaire. Attendees will view the product via the web and will call a conference number to enable full participation in the training. Spaces are limited — please register ASAP! Plus, we always have fun! You reserve a seat by emailing laura.calderone@lu.com. Confirmation of registration and access instructions will be sent by email.

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