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
NONFICTION
GRAPHIC BOOKS
To Be Published Week of May 21, 2012:
Fiction
Nonfiction
This is just a sample from our picks of the week. Scroll down or click here for the complete list.
Summer Books of 2012
Time to start thinking summer (vacation)! We’re compiling a list of articles profiling this year’s crop of Summer Books–look to the righthand 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:
Hot Titles and Trends
The most well-read cities in America (according to Amazon)
Everyone’s fighting all the wrong people
The Los Angeles Times is ceasing publication of its Sunday magazine
Have you taken this test? Find out how fast you read!
Yet another round of truth vs. nonfiction stuff: this time starring David Sedaris
The New Yorker revamps its online book coverage
A new copyright agreement to worry about?
Audiobooks: The pleasures of being read to
An exploration of book recommendations
CBS news video: Why romances are so hot
What makes book reviewers (professional or otherwise) tick?
EBook and Publishing News
Amazon to sell new front-lit Kindle by July (to compete with the Nook)
Amazon is ramping up hiring
The Harry Potter deal: making Amazon’s anti-library stronger
Breakfast at Tiffany’s to be issued as ebook
Houghton Mifflin is headed for bankruptcy
There is no rest for the weary (author, that is) in the ebook era
Will Sony and their eReader survive?
The business of cover blurbing
Barnes and Noble #1 in online retail customer satisfaction
Simon & Schuster settles with states over ebook pricing
Liberty Magazine now a digitized collection available from Gale
US exports of books and ebooks are doing well
Professional Development Opportunities:
Contributions to ALA journal Endnotes sought
Sign up today and Library Journal’s Barbara Hoffert will send you an email listing the hottest new titles previewed at BEA 2012
Mystery Writers of America announces their signing and program lineup at BEA
Books on Screen
The Amazing Spider-Man: new images and video
True Blood season 5: Trailer
20th Century Fox options self-published sci-fi novel Wool
Aaron Sorkin to adapt Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography for the big screen
Superhero Smackdown: The Avengers’ box-office take blows past that of The Dark Knight
Who’s going to direct the adaptation Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot?
PBS documentary on romance novels to air in July
Philip Roth’s American Pastoral being made into a movie (Roth is keeping busy–he’ll also be headlining the National Book Festival in Washington DC this year)
Anthony Bourdain’s novel Bone in the Throat is set to become a movie
The CW is promoting a new series: Arrow, based on the DC Comics character Green Arrow
Awards
Carnegie Medal for Excellence: Nominees announced
Mark Twain Prize for American Humor Winner: Ellen DeGeneres
NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award Winner: Karen Russell
Independent Prize for Foreign Fiction Winner: Aharon Appelfeld
James Tait Black Prizes: Shortlists
Emily Dickinson First Book Award winner: Hailey Leithauser
Romantic Novelists’ Association (UK) Romantic Novel of the Year Award winner
The “Pinch Pulitzer” winner: David Foster Wallace
Nebula Awards: Winners
Authors
Comic artist Ernie Chan: Obituary
Carlos Fuentes: Obituary
Jean Craighead George: Obituary
Journalist and literary hoaxer Mike McGrady: Obituary
John Updike’s childhood home has been bought by the John Updike Society
D. J. MacHale makes deal to write a new YA science fiction trilogy
Are writers no longer influenced by the classics?
Sookie Stackhouse’s adventures coming to an end
Cynthia Thayer has lost her family barn to a fire
Orhan Pamuk opens his Museum of Innocence in Istanbul
E.L. James responds to the news about libraries banning her books
New book expected this fall from The Shack author
A memoir is expected from Mark Zuckerberg’s former assistant
New Mitch Albom novel in late summer
The author of Between Shades of Grey is enjoying the mix-up with E.L. James’s erotic titles
Harlan Ellison to republish his “juvenile delinquent fiction”
Alain de Botton looking for ways to “highbrow up” pornography
Weigh in on this one: Did Agatha Christie and Rudyard Kipling make Brits racist?
Lists
21 smart nonfiction titles for summer; also, 15 summer novels to enjoy
USA Today Book Roundup: New mysteries/thrillers
Ten feminist poets you should know
Ten YA Books that Scarred Us For Life
Publisher’s Weekly staffers offer their alternates to the Modern Library’s 100 Top Novels list (fourteen years after that list was released but hey, who’s counting?)
Lighthearted Links of the Week
50 Shades of Grey is even driving interest in…luxury condos?
Neil Gaiman shares “secret freelancer knowledge” (video)
Which library behavior do you think is worse?
Everyday words that were invented by famous authors
























































































