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RA Run Down

Monday, December 26th, 2011

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. TRY THE FREE RA DATABASE based on Libraries Unlimited’s print Genreflecting Advisory series. Give it a whirl and let us know how you like it. We’d love to hear from you. Feel free to comment on any of our posts, or contact us at raoblog@lu.com. Also check out our free newsletter with more in-depth articles at Reader’s Advisor News.

By Cindy Orr and Sarah Statz Cords

New To the Bestseller Lists This Week:

FICTION

  • Cornwell, Patricia – Red Mist
  • James, P. D. – Death Comes to Pemberley
  • Leigh, Lora – Lawe’s Justice

    • To Be Published Week of Dec. 26, 2011, to Jan. 1, 2012:

    Fiction


  • Cook, Robin – Death Benefit
  • Gorman, Ed – Blindside
  • Hoag, Tami – Down the Darkest Road
  • Iggulden, Conn – Conqueror
  • Koontz, Dean R. – 77 Shadow Street
  • Patterson, James, Maxine Paetro – Private: #1 Suspect

    • Nonfiction

  • Immaculee Ilibagiza, Steve Erwin – The Boy Who Met Jesus: Segatashya of Kibeho
  • Rule, Ann – Don’t Look Behind You: Ann Rule’s Crime Files #15 (mass market)
  • Zaslow, Jeffrey – The Magic Room

    • This is just a sample from our picks of the week. Scroll down or click here for the complete list, including ISBNs.


    Best Books of 2011



    It’s Best Books of the Year season! Look to the right hand column for our collection of links, or click here. As we find new lists, we’ll add them at the top of the column.


    News of the Week:


    Don’t scoff at SF

    Occupy Wall Street: The book

    New York Times to sell 16 regional newspapers

    eBook News:
    Yet another thing librarians are good at: helping people use eReaders

    Read Google eBooks offline

    Will rising eBook prices send readers back to paperbacks?

    In the publishing world:
    The Borders liquidation plan is approved

    ALA Publishing acquires Neal-Schuman

    Ten Predictions for Publishing in 2012

    Who’s the celebrity behind indie publisher Perceval Press?

    The obligatory weekly post on the state of publishing (from Robert McCrum)

    Social Media tidbits:
    Are you Pinning (on Pinterest) yet?

    What IS social reading?

    Books and friendship: What a study of Facebook users reveals


    Professional Development Opportunities:


    Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults seeking papers on “21st Century Literacies”

    New ALA webinar: “Organizational Storytelling for Librarians (Jan. 10, 2012)

    Books on Screen

    New season of Downton Abbey to start Jan. 8!

    Harrison Ford, Abigail Breslin on board for Ender’s Game

    Bored to Death (based on a book by Jonathan Ames) canceled by HBO

    The first Hobbit trailer is out!

    Daughter of Smoke and Bone movie adaptation planned

    Director David Fincher talks Girl with the Dragon Tattoo sequels (oh, and this link includes some Ghostbusters sequel news too! Bonus!)

    Is Nicholas Sparks’s The Notebook headed to Broadway?


    Awards


    The London Film Critics Circle has nominated a lot of movies adapted from books

    Storyville to offer reward for short fiction


    Authors


    Lev Grossman announces the working title of his new novel in the Magicians series

    The top religion author of 2011? Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow

    Ron Paul in comic book format

    Wimpy Kid author vs. Zombie Kid publisher

    Walter Isaacson (author of the latest Steve Jobs bio) now planning book on Ada Lovelace

    Sherlock Holmes: Perennially popular


    Lists

    Nielsen Bookscan’s Top DVDs, books

    10 Best Movies of 2011 (Christian Science Monitor)

    Most Overlooked Books of 2011 (GalleyCat)

    Seven free eBooks everyone should read

    Best Book Adaptations of 2011 (Flavorwire)

    Ten legendary haunts of artists and writers


    Lighthearted Links of the Week

    Genre writes to literature: “Please, please, darling let us stop this. This artificial separation between us is painful…”

    Disney characters: Steampunked!

    Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

    RA Run Down

    Sunday, December 18th, 2011

    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. TRY THE FREE RA DATABASE based on Libraries Unlimited’s print Genreflecting Advisory series. Give it a whirl and let us know how you like it. We’d love to hear from you. Feel free to comment on any of our posts, or contact us at raoblog@lu.com. Also check out our free newsletter with more in-depth articles at Reader’s Advisor News.

    By Cindy Orr and Sarah Statz Cords

    New To the Bestseller Lists This Week:

    FICTION

  • Cornwall, Patricia – Red Mist
  • James, P. D. – Death Comes to Pemberley
  • Leigh, Lora – Lawe’s Justice

    • To Be Published Week of Dec. 19-25, 2011:

    Fiction


  • Griffin, W. E. B. – Covert Warriors – 300,000
  • Transtromer, Tomas – The Deleted World
  • Woods, Stuart – D. C. Dead – 300,000

    • Nonfiction

  • Bertsche, Rachel – MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search for a New Best Friend
  • Kiyosaki, Robert T. – Rich Dad’s Prophecy: Why the Biggest Stock Market Crash in History Is Still Coming
  • Solin, Daniel R. – The Smartest Money Book You’ll Ever Read

    • This is just a sample from our picks of the week. Scroll down or click here for the complete list, including ISBNs.


    Best Books of 2011



    It’s Best Books of the Year season! Look to the right hand column for our collection of links, or click here. As we find new lists, we’ll add them at the top of the column.


    News of the Week:


    Another busy week for Amazon news:
    Fallout from their price-comparison app continues to make the Internet rounds
    Even Senator Olivia Snowe takes the company to task for the app
    Now they’re revealing numbers: Amazon claims to be selling a million Kindles a week

    Tired of Best Book lists? How about top book headlines of 2011?

    Free Books! to celebrate World Book Night

    Seattle Reads 2012 picks its book

    HuffPost announces new book club

    IndieNext list for January 2012

    APA 2011 Sales Survey highlights

    Is there a market for long-form journalism in short e-book form?

    Overdrive article on e-book lending

    New books blog at New York Daily News!


    Professional Development Opportunities:


    Sale on PLA digital training kits, through December 31.

    Free Booklist webinar on Young Adults Romances, January 10

    Discussion on 21st Century Reader’s Advisory in your library

    Books on Screen

    Hunger Games cookbook to be published

    Sequel in the works for the movie Drive (from a book written by James Sallis)

    Breaking Dawn and Harry Potter were the year’s big movies

    What to Expect when You’re Expecting trailer


    Awards


    For all you anglophiles: Downton Abbey star is Booker judge


    Authors


    It was a rough week for the literary world.
    Obituaries:
    Christopher Hitchens
    Russell Hoban
    Playwright, essayist, and former Czech president Vaclav Havel
    Needleworking guru and author Erica Wilson
    Joe Simon, a creator of Captain America
    George Whitman, a founder of Paris’s Shakespeare and Company bookstore
    Children’s publisher Ned Waldman

    Charlotte Bronte probably could have used cash like this when she was alive

    Sale of Naguib Mahfouz archive causing controversy

    Denise Mina to adapt Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series into graphic novels

    Larry McMurtry is the new book critic at Harper’s Magazine

    Actor Tom Sizemore to write memoir

    Rob Lowe to publish new book

    Posthumous collection of essays by John Updike to be published

    Author Simon Winchester publishes app–on skulls, of all things


    Lists

    The Year in Film: Best Performances

    25 most beautiful college libraries

    Neil Hollands is once again doing the Best Books of 2011 Compilation at Williamsburg Regional Library


    Lighthearted Links of the Week

    What your Favorite Book of 2011 Says About You

    Alexander McCall Smith on How to Arrange Your Bookshelf

    Holiday decorating with books!

    Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

    RA Run Down

    Sunday, December 11th, 2011

    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. TRY THE FREE RA DATABASE based on Libraries Unlimited’s print Genreflecting Advisory series. Give it a whirl and let us know how you like it. We’d love to hear from you. Feel free to comment on any of our posts, or contact us at raoblog@lu.com. Also check out our free newsletter with more in-depth articles at Reader’s Advisor News.

    By Cindy Orr and Sarah Statz Cords

    New To the Bestseller Lists This Week:

    FICTION

  • Connelly, Michael – The Drop
  • Gabaldon, Diana – The Scottish Prisoner

    • NONFICTION

  • Burpo, Todd – Heaven Is for Real (Deluxe Edition)

    • GRAPHIC BOOKS

  • Herge – The Adventures of Tintin, vol. 2
  • Snyder, Scott – Batman: The Black Mirror
  • Valve Presents: The Sacrifice

    • To Be Published Week of Dec 12-18, 2011:

    Fiction

  • Clancy, Tom – Locked On – 9780399157318
  • McInerny, Ralph M. – The Compassion of Father Dowling – 9781432825102
  • Nesbø, Jo – The Leopard – 9780307595874

    • Nonfiction

  • Buffett, Mary – The Warren Buffett Stock Portfolio – 9781451606485
  • Edited by Blumenkranz, Carla – Occupy! Scenes from Occupied America – 9781844679409

    • This is just a sample from our picks of the week. Scroll down or click here for the complete list, including ISBNs.


    Best Books of 2011



    It’s Best Books of the Year season! Look to the right hand column for our collection of links, or click here. As we find new lists, we’ll add them at the top of the column.


    News of the Week:


    Amazon has had a busy week:

    Controversial app will allow shoppers to price-check, AND they’ll blatantly pay shoppers not to shop in bookstores. The ABA isn’t happy about it either.

    Amazon also continues its forays into publishing by buying Marshall Cavendish titles

    The company has also reached out to self-published authors to expand its Lending Library

    Is the fix in on e-book prices? The Justice Department is investigating.

    They’re not letting Amazon get them down: Indie bookstores report holiday sales up

    Are microfictions the new, new thing?

    Chicago Sun-Times joins New York Times behind a paywall

    Warner Brothers to delay new video releases to libraries

    Celeb memoir sales way down in the UK

    Another way of looking at “best books”

    Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobsis Amazon’s bestselling book of 2011

    The obligatory weekly piece on the future of publishing; and here’s another one, just because I love him, by John Green


    Professional Development Opportunities:


    The PLA wants to know: How is your library doing on e-books?

    Don’t forget! Nominations for the Margaret E. Monroe Award and the Louis Shores award for book reviewing are due by Thursday, December 15.

    Books on Screen

    Universal Studios Hollywood is getting its own Harry Potter theme park

    Anne Rice’s novel Christ the Lord being adapted into a film: Can’t wait to see if casting is as controversial as it was when they chose Tom Cruise as Lestat

    Does the world need a remake of Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho?


    Awards


    This year’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award Winner: David Guterson!

    Judges named for next year’s Booker Prize panel

    Catherine Hall wins Green Carnation Prize


    Authors


    Elisabeth Young-Bruehl: obituary

    British poet Christopher Logue: obituary

    Novelist Gilbert Adair: obituary

    Jerry Robinson, illustrator of Batman’s Joker, dies

    Ann Patchett to sell, as well as write, books

    Kurt Vonnegut’s son not happy about Charles Shields’s new biography of his father

    Wells Tower just says no to Internet interviews

    Alan Moore joins Occupy Comics

    What keeps journalists going?

    50 Cent gets a workout book deal


    Lists

    Critically acclaimed authors who never win prizes

    Dec. 7 was the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor: Books about it


    Lighthearted Links of the Week

    Other things to do with books

    Is this what Jane Austen looked like?

    Make a secret door in your bookcase!

    Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

    Most Wanted: Bestseller Links

    Sunday, September 11th, 2011

    Posted in Most Wanted, Uncategorized | No Comments »

    Under the Radar: Best History of 2010

    Sunday, January 2nd, 2011

    Posted in Uncategorized, Under the Radar | No Comments »

    RA Run Down

    Saturday, January 1st, 2011

    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. TRY THE FREE RA DATABASE based on Libraries Unlimited’s print Genreflecting Advisory series. Give it a whirl and let us know how you like it. We’d love to hear from you. Feel free to comment on any of our posts, or contact us at raoblog@lu.com. Also check out our free newsletter with more in-depth articles at Reader’s Advisor News.

    By Cindy Orr and Sarah Statz Cords

    HAPPY 2012!

    New To the Bestseller Lists This Week:

    Slow week, what with the holiday and all. The New York Times bestseller lists didn’t include any NEW fiction or nonfiction titles.


    To Be Published Week of Jan. 2-8, 2012:

    Fiction


  • Bear, Greg – Halo: Primordium
  • Evanovich, Janet, Kelly, Dorien – Love in a Nutshell
  • Grippando, James – Need You Now
  • Higgins, Jack – A Devil Is Waitin
  • Kellerman, Faye – Gun Games
  • Lescroart, John – The Hunter

  • Lively, Penelope – How It All Began

  • McDermid, Val – The Retribution
  • Paretsky, Sara – Breakdown: A V. I. Warshawski Novel

    • Nonfiction

  • Barry, John M. – Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Path to Liberty
  • Fitzpatrick, Robert / Land, Jon – Betrayal: Whitey Bulger and the FBI Agent Who Fought to Bring Him Down
  • Frank, Thomas – Pity the Billionaire: The Hard Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right
  • Gibson, William – Distrust That Particular Flavor
  • Iyer, Pico – The Man Within My Head
  • Laqueur, Walter – After the Fall: The End of the European Dream and the Decline of a Continent
  • Marr, Andrew – The Real Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait of Queen Elizabeth II
  • Rosenblatt, Roger – Kayak Morning: Reflections on Love, Grief, and Small Boats

    • This is just a sample from our picks of the week. (Did you see the list of titles being published this week? Holy Cow!) Scroll down or click here for the complete list, including ISBNs.


    Best Books of 2011


    It’s Best Books of the Year season! Look to the right hand column for our collection of links, or click here. As we find new lists, we’ll add them at the top of the column.


    News of the Week:


    E-Readers and eBooks made most of the headlines this week:

  • Christmas Day the biggest ever for Kindle
  • eBook sales surge at the end of the year
  • Did you get an e-reader for the holidays? Check out Penguin’s free holiday e-sampler!
  • How about 10 free Kindle downloads?
  • Or try the e-reader cheat sheet from The Millions

    • Some social media news:

  • Can you guess where people spend their time online? See if you’re right: 2011’s Most-visited websites
  • Is GooglePlus growing by leaps and bounds?

    • Investor buys into Books-a-Million

    Amazon acquisitions continue: now they’ve got the team behind Quorus social shopping service

    Publishers vs. Libraries?

    Edward Champion looks at gender imbalance in reviewing

    Top 10 book stories of 2011 (at The Guardian

    20 Trends for Book Groups

    GalleyCat lists the book stories of the year, by month


    Professional Development Opportunities:


    New Booklist Webinars on offer: “New Year, New Reference” (Jan. 17) and “Connecting with Struggling Readers” (Jan. 31)

    Summer seem a long way off? It’s not, really. Get ready with YALSA’s webinar on summer reading (Jan. 19)

    Books on Screen

    Latest Sherlock Holmes doing well at the box office

    Hunger Games soundtrack coming together

    Adaptations of fairy tales and Dickens in the works

    Hobbit videos keep on coming


    Awards


    USA Today Author of the Year: George R. R. Martin!


    Authors


    The Guardian is posting free short stories for your reading pleasure

    Sara Paretsky’s new V.I. Warshawski book published during 30th anniversary year

    Can’t wait for the next George R. R. Martin book? Read a free excerpt from his next title!



    Lists

    2011 is SO two days ago:
    Here’s the books The Atlantic is looking forward to in 2012

    And the movies we’re looking forward to in 2012

    20 Nonfiction books to look forward to in 2012

    Flavorwire’s Most Anticipated books of 2012

    Also, for some lists a bit different from the Best Books lists currently making the rounds:
    10 Books for Your Man Cave

    10 YA books that make up for Twilight


    Lighthearted Links of the Week

    Kid literary characters and their grown-up counterparts

    Memoir quiz!

    Fiction opening lines quiz

    British book overdue for 123 years

    Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

    Most Wanted Mashup: Hottest Books of the Week

    Sunday, October 17th, 2010
    FICTION

    NONFICTION
    • Bill Bryson – At Home
    • Dinesh D’Souza – The Roots of Obama’s Rage
    • Sam Harris – The Moral Landscape
    • Tucker Max – Assholes Finish First
    • Bill O’Reilly – Pinheads and Patriots
    • Michael Savage – Trickle Up Poverty
    • Zhi Gang Sha – Divine Transformation
    • Charles Stanley – Surviving in an Angry World
    • Jon Stewart – Earth (The Book)
    • Bob Woodward – Obama’s Wars


    MASS MARKET PAPERBACK ORIGINALS:
    • Lara Adrian – Taken by Midnight
    • Ilona Andrews – Bayou Moon
    • Patricia Briggs – Masques
    • Larry Correia – Monster Hunter Vendetta
    • Janet Dailey – Santa in Montana
    • Madeline Hunter – Sinful in Satin
    • Sabrina Jeffries – A Hellion in Her Bed
    • Brenda Joyce – The Promise
    • Susan Mallery - Finding Perfect
    • Kerrelyn Sparks – Eat Prey Love
      •

    Posted in Most Wanted, Uncategorized | No Comments »

    Under the Radar: War, Behind the Scenes

    Sunday, June 20th, 2010

    Posted in Uncategorized, Under the Radar | No Comments »

    Most Wanted Mashup: Hottest Books of the Week

    Sunday, June 13th, 2010
    Fiction

    Nonfiction

    Posted in Most Wanted, Uncategorized | No Comments »

    Top 12 Novels of June by Print Run

    Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

    Summer has begun! Which new books will be the hottest? We can guess, based on publishers’ expectations. Here are the new novels (no reprints here) coming out in June, with at least a 450,000 copy print run.

    FICTION

  • 1. Janet Evanovich – Sizzling Sixteen (St. Martin’s, $27.99. 9780312383305). 2,500,000 copies. June 22.
    Stephanie Plum, her grandmother, and her other companions struggle to outmaneuver a killer who is targeting Vinnie, a case that is further complicated by Lula’s involvement in a fraudulent investment scheme.
  • 2. James Patterson and Maxine Paetro – Private (Little, Brown, $27.99; 9780316096157). 1,100,000 copies. June 28.
    In a thriller already in development as a major television series, former CIA agent Jack Morgan inherits his father’s elite LA detective agency and along with it such cases as an NFL gambling scandal, 18 unsolved schoolgirl slayings and the murder of his best-friend’s wife.
  • 3. Nelson DeMille – The Lion (Grand Central, $27.99. 9780446580830). 1,000,000 copies. One-day laydown. June 8.
    In a sequel to the best-selling thriller The Lion’s Game, Libyan terrorist Asad Khalil, known as “The Lion,” returns to the U.S. to take care of unfinished business, and the only man who can stop him is John Corey, a special agent for the NYPD’s Anti-Terrorist Task Force.
  • 4. Stephanie Laurens – The Brazen Bride (Avon, $7.99 pap. 9780061795176). 800,000 copies. June 29.
    Shipwrecked and wounded, an ex-officer of the Crown, on a mission to bring down a traitor known only as the Black Cobra, is rescued by a brazen beauty who is as daring as he.
  • 5. Glenn Beck – The Overton Window (Threshold Editions, $26; 9781439184301). 750,000 copies. One-day laydown. June 15.
    After a terrorist attack shakes the country to its core, public relations executive Noah Gardner and mailroom worker Molly Ross must expose a conspiracy by the powers that be to radically transform America.
  • 6. Clive Cussler and Justin Scott – The Spy: An Isaac Bell Novel (Putnam, $27.95. 9780399156434). 700,000 copies. June 1.
    Investigating a disputed ruling that a brilliant pre-World War I battleship gun designer committed suicide, chief investigator Isaac Bell discovers that an elusive spy with ties to a top-secret project has been staging the killings of America’s leading technological minds.
  • 7. Catherine Coulter – Whiplash: An FBI Thriller by (Putnam, $26.95; 9780399156533). 650,000 copies. June 15.
    Hired by a Yale professor to investigate the suspicious unavailability of a critical chemotherapy drug, Erin Pulaski discovers that its manufacturer is imposing a shortage to enable billions in windfall profits, a finding that is complicated by the brutal murder of a top employee.
  • 8. Dean Koontz – Frankenstein: Lost Souls (Bantam, $27; 9780553808018). 600,000 copies. June 15.
    As Victor Leben, formerly Frankenstein, begins his work to create a race of superhumans, five people, including Victor’s original creation, Deucalion, gather in a small Montana town to face dangers they have never known before in order to oppose Victor.
  • 9. Danielle Steel – Family Ties (Delacorte, $28; 9780385343169). 600,000 copies. June 22.
    Years after gaining unexpected custody of her sister’s three small children, a woman experiences emotional division when the grown children choose very different paths in life, in a tale set in Manhattan, Paris, and Tehran.
  • 10. Brad Thor – Foreign Influence (Atria, $26.99; 9781416586593). 550,000 copies. June 29.
    Recruited as a field operative for a new Department of Defense spy agency that reports only to a secret panel of military insiders, former Navy SEAL Scot Harvath investigates the bombing death of a group of American students in Rome, an act with possible ties to a past colleague.
  • 11. Allison Brennan – Carnal Sin (Ballantine, $7.99. original pap. 9780345511683). 500,000 copies. June 22.
    When yet another one of the Seven Deadly Sins is released from Hell by black magic, demon hunter Moira O’Donnel tracks Lust to Los Angeles where she becomes trapped in a supernatural war waged by her diabolical mother, the powerful witch Fiona.
  • 12. Eric Van Lustbader – Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Objective(Grand Central, $27.99; 9780446539814). 450,000 copies. One-day laydown. June 1.
    After Bourne is ambushed and nearly killed while in Indonesia, he fakes his death to take on a new identity and mission- to find out who is trying to assassinate him. In the process, Bourne begins to question who he really is and what he would become if he no longer carried the Bourne identity.

    • Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

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