The American Booksellers Association gave a selection of books to President Obama last month, as part of a gift of books for the White House Library. This gave me an idea for a little RA game. Here’s the gist of it:

Choose a famous person and use your expertise to suggest books that they really should read. Here are a couple of examples to get you started:

President Obama – Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth by Mark Hertsgaard

Glenn Beck – One of Us Must Be Crazy. . .and I’m Pretty Sure It’s You: Making Sense of the Differences That Divide Us by Tim Downs

Any suggestions?

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What’s going on in the RA World in other libraries? Here are some random links from this week to give you an idea.

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by Sarah Statz Cords

A while back a fascinating discussion was had on Fiction-L about Personalized Reading List services, what libraries are offering them, and how this online form of RA is working out. Do read the discussion; but don’t forget to check out some of the actual services to see how different libraries are implementing them. We’ve compiled the list below (largely from the Fiction-L responses) but please do let us know if we’re missing some–we’ll happily update this list as a resource for library staff to have access to all the links at once.

Carmel Clay Public Library (Indiana), Personalized Reading Lists:
http://www.carmel.lib.in.us/ref/prl.cfm

Edmonton Public Library–”Personalized Book Lists”:
http://www.epl.ca/EPLReadersAdvisoryOnline.cfm

Multnomah County Library–”Good Reads”:
http://multcolib.altarama.com/reft100.aspx?mi=dcE8CQRX_keyMu7fZRMwmA

North Kingstown Free Library:
http://www.nklibrary.org/readersadvisory.html

Salt Lake County Library Services–”Read-a-Like Booklist Request”:
http://www.slcolibrary.org/rc/rcwr/forms/readALikeBooklistForm.htm

Skokie Public Library–”BookMatch”:
http://www.skokie.lib.il.us/s_read/rd_bookmatch/index.asp

South Central Library System (Wisconsin)–”Book-Alikes”:
http://www.scls.info/reference/reads/

Williamsburg Regional Library (Virginia)–”Looking for a Good Book?”
http://www.wrl.org/bookweb/RA/index.html

Rocky River Public Library (Ohio)–”Reader’s Request”:
http://www.rrpl.org/adult/readers_request.html

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by Sarah Statz Cords

Or, as in my case, are we ready for some advertisements between the football playing? I must admit that I almost always watch the Super Bowl, although my team (Go Pack!) hasn’t made an appearance there for a while. My interest in this Sunday’s Super Bowl XLIV will be primarily to see how the ads are, and to eat as much junk food as possible during the broadcast.

This got me thinking. Of course, we won’t be seeing any, but wouldn’t it be awesome to see some ads for books during the Super Bowl? (There’s no event I don’t want to see books involved in, really.) So that’s the question as this week winds down: If you could advertise any book or author during the Super Bowl broadcast, what or who would it be, and why?

My personal vote would be to advertise the books of biographer Mark Kriegel, who is the author of the nonfiction titles Namath: A Biography, and Pistol: The Life of Pete Maravich. I very rarely read sports biographies, but Kriegel’s books are masterpieces of both sports reporting and good solid storytelling. I very much hope to see more titles from him in the future, and I’ve always thought he doesn’t get enough attention as a writer. And, of course, I think his work might strongly appeal to football fans (whether they love or hate Joe Namath)!

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