An early look at 'Water for Elephants'

An early look at 'Water for Elephants'

Water for Elephants coming to a screen near you in mid-April! Here's the trailer for it.

Top Audiobooks for 2010

Yup, even audio books get a best of 2010 list, but this seems to be just a tease. It does confirm my love for Simon Vance as a narrator. I'd happily listen to him read a phone book!

Kirkus Reviews Best of 2010

Sick of lists of Best Books yet?? Just in case you're not, here's Kirkus's version. Enjoy!

More Best Books of 2010!

Here is a blogger who is keeping track of EVERY list of Best Books for 2010. So, list lovers---enjoy!

The Year in Reading: Malcolm Gladwell

The Year in Reading: Malcolm Gladwell

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Best Adult Books 4 Teens 2010

Good books not only for teens, but the couple of these I've read have been excellent!

Calibre eBook Manager

This might be a good tool for those really tech-y people to use to translate eBooks into a format they could use on their eReaders.

Caution: Only for those who are proficient with computers and patient about self-teaching.

Google Set to Launch E-Book Venture

This is probably the most mind-blowing change in book selling and marketing I've ever seen. This is a must-read article!

"Google Editions hopes to upend the existing e-book market by offering an open, "read anywhere" model that is different from many competitors. Users will be able to buy books directly from Google or from multiple online retailers—including independent bookstores—and add them to an online library tied to a Google account. They will be able to access their Google accounts on most devices with a Web browser, including personal computers, smartphones and tablets."






Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704369304575632602305759466.html#ixzz16sX4IURo

Technology Petting Zoo

Not sure if this is might ever happen at Cook, but I love the idea of a Technology Petting Zoo!

The Fairfield, Conn., Public Library offers a "Technology Petting Zoo" where patrons "can now try out new e-book readers and other emerging technologies... Currently the library has an Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, Barnes & Noble Nook, and an Apple iPad for patrons to demo," the Sun reported.

National Book Award Nominees

Now Hear This: National Book Award nominees 2010 via NPR.

Kids Would Read More If They Had E-Readers

Great NYT article which articulates what seems to me to be an obvious observation......if we put e-readers in kids' hands, they would read more!
What an exciting time to be in the library/book business!

A Judge Writes about Ellen Hopkins YA series on Meth

One of the more frequently challenged YA series is written by Ellen Hopkins who personalizes the meth crisis. The books are brutally honest and frankly describe the many horrors of addiction to meth. This is an incredibly thoughtful and informative essay by a judge about his experiences in his courtroom with meth addicts and how Hopkins's books have helped him gain insight into the addicts' psyche.

Celebrate Banned Books Week by reading a banned book---the list is long and filled with some really good books.

Ten Best e-Readers

One techy site I frequent suggests that these are the ten best e-readers with a couple of honorable mentions. There are a couple here I'd never heard of, but leave it to the geeks to seek them out and evaluate them. 
Christmas is coming.......

October Is National Reading Group Month

October Is National Reading Group Month

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First Look at New Sony eBook Readers

These look to be the most promising for those looking to check out eBooks from the library!! Unfortunately, they aren't as affordable as the Kindles.

Hunger Games & Yom Kippur

Fascinating take on the moral aspects of Hunger Games as they relate to Yom Kippur (and Eat, Pray, Love).

Size of Books & E-Readers Determined by Medieval Sheep

After lists of books, I love learning bits of historical trivia reminding me that "the past isn't dead, it isn't even past." (apologies to Wm Faulkner) 

How cool is this?!?

Sony Releases Redesigned, Upgraded Suite of Digital Readers

Sony Releases Redesigned, Upgraded Suite of Digital Readers

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Upgraded their readers AND raised their prices. The eReader price wars might be coming to an end. Just sayin'.

Hugo Awards 2010 Announced

The Hugo Awards for 2010 have been announced. These are the best new science fiction stories, books and authors for the year.

Man Booker Prize Shortlist Announced

Judges decide on six shortlisted titles
7 September 2010
Peter Carey, Emma Donoghue, Damon Galgut, Howard Jacobson, Andrea Levy and Tom McCarthy are today, Tuesday 7 September, announced as the six shortlisted authors for the 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. For over four decades the prize - the leading literary award in the English speaking world - has brought recognition, reward and readership to the outstanding new novels of the year. The shortlist was announced by Chair of judges, Sir Andrew Motion, at a press conference held at Man's London headquarters.

The six books, selected from the Man Booker Prize longlist of 13, are:

Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)

Emma Donoghue Room (Picador - Pan Macmillan)

Damon Galgut In a Strange Room (Atlantic Books - Grove Atlantic)

Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)

Andrea Levy The Long Song (Headline Review -
Headline Publishing Group)

Tom McCarthy C (Jonathan Cape - Random House)

Chair of judges Andrew Motion, comments:

"It's been a great privilege and an exciting challenge for us to reduce our longlist of thirteen to this shortlist of six outstandingly good novels. In doing so, we feel sure we've chosen books which demonstrate a rich variety of styles and themes - while in every case providing deep individual pleasures."

Australian author Peter Carey is one of only two authors to have won the prize twice, in 1988 for Oscar and Lucinda and in 2001 for True History of the Kelly Gang. Should he win this year, he would become the only author to have won three times. He was also shortlisted in 1985 for Illywhacker. South African author Damon Galgut has previously been shortlisted for his book The Good Doctor in 2003 and Howard Jacobson has been longlisted twice before for his novels Kalooki Nights in 2006 and Who's Sorry Now? in 2002. Irish author Emma Donoghue is, at 40, the youngest author on the shortlist.

The winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction will be announced on Tuesday 12 October at a dinner at London's Guildhall. The announcement will be broadcast on BBC News across television, radio and online.

The winner will receive a cheque for £50,000 and worldwide recognition. Last year's winning novel, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, has now sold over half a million copies in the UK alone. Each of the six shortlisted authors, including the winner, receives £2,500 and a designer bound edition of their shortlisted book.

Chaired by Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate, the 2010 judges are Rosie Blau, Literary Editor of the Financial Times; Deborah Bull, formerly a dancer, now Creative Director of the Royal Opera House as well as a writer and broadcaster; Tom Sutcliffe, journalist, broadcaster and author and Frances Wilson, biographer and critic.

On Sunday 10 October, two days before the winner is announced, the shortlisted authors will appear at Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall. It is the only public opportunity to join the 2010 shortlisted authors for readings from their books, discussion and an audience Q&A.

In addition, the Man Booker Prize has teamed up with the Victoria and Albert Museum and the London based private members' club The Groucho Club, who will both host events with some of the shortlisted authors for their members.

Last month the prize announced exciting new digital plans for 2010. The Man Booker Prize App is now free to download from the App Store to an Apple iPhone or iPod Touch and is the UK's first app for a literary prize. The prize has also partnered with T-Mobile via the digital book retailer GoSpoken. T-Mobile users can access content on their mobile phones and GoSpoken has provided free audio extracts from all the 13 longlisted titles which can be downloaded to subscribers' mobiles.

Read the full press release here.

Q&A interviews with each of the shortlisted authors can be found in Perspective.

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Oprah's Book Club Is Back in Session

The book world is all abuzz about Oprah's surprise announcement that is going to re-activate her book club. Everyone's speculating about what the title might be----here's some feasible guesses from a reliable source.

E-Readers Compared

After bumbling through a question from a patron today about e-readers, I thought I should educate myself about the choices out there and their quality.

There's also C-Net which does great reviews of all things tech-y.

I suspect that this Christmas season e-readers will be a hot gift!

Why Kindles Can't Use eBooks from the Library---easy to understand

Here's a good article which explains quite simply why those patrons with Kindles cannot use books from anyone else except Amazon.

It seems digital music went through this sort of growing pains for several years early on before sorting out a common format.

The article suggests that this confusion and lack of cooperation between companies might last for a while.

Man Booker Dozen announced

The judges for the 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction today, Tuesday 27 July, announce the longlist for the prize, the leading literary award in the English speaking world.

A total of 138 books, 14 of which were called in by the judges, were considered for the ‘Man Booker Dozen' longlist of 13 books.

The longlist includes:

Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)

Emma Donoghue Room (Pan MacMillan - Picador)

Helen Dunmore The Betrayal (Penguin - Fig Tree)

Damon Galgut In a Strange Room (Grove Atlantic - Atlantic Books)

Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)

Andrea Levy The Long Song
(Headline Publishing Group - Headline Review)

Tom McCarthy C (Random House - Jonathan Cape)

David Mitchell The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Hodder & Stoughton - Sceptre)

Lisa Moore February (Random House - Chatto & Windus)

Paul Murray Skippy Dies (Penguin - Hamish Hamilton)

Rose Tremain Trespass (Random House - Chatto & Windus)

Christos Tsiolkas The Slap (Grove Atlantic - Tuskar Rock)

Alan Warner The Stars in the Bright Sky
(Random House - Jonathan Cape)

The chair of judges, Andrew Motion, comments:

"Here are thirteen exceptional novels - books we have chosen for their intrinsic quality, without reference to the past work of their authors. Wide-ranging in their geography and their concern, they tell powerful stories which make the familiar strange and cover an enormous range of history and feeling. We feel confident that they will provoke and entertain."

Peter Carey is one of only two authors to have won the prize twice, in 1988 for Oscar and Lucinda and 2001 for True History of the Kelly Gang. In 1985 his book Illywhacker was shortlisted for the prize and Theft: A Love Story was longlisted in 2006.

Three authors have been shortlisted before: David Mitchell (twice shortlisted in 2001 for number9dream and in 2004 for Cloud Atlas), Damon Galgut (in 2003 for The Good Doctor) and Rose Tremain (shortlisted in 1989 for Restoration). She was also a judge for the Booker Prize in 1988 and 2000.

Howard Jacobson has been longlisted twice for his book Kalooki Nights in 2006 and for Who's Sorry Now? in 2002.

The 2010 shortlist will be announced on Tuesday 7 September at a press conference at Man Group's London headquarters. The winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2010 will be revealed on Tuesday 12 October at a dinner at London's Guildhall and will be broadcast on the BBC Ten O'Clock News.

The winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction will receive £50,000 and can look forward to greatly increased sales and worldwide recognition. Each of the six shortlisted authors, including the winner, will receive £2,500 and a designer bound edition of their shortlisted book.

Chaired by Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate, the 2010 judges are Rosie Blau, Literary Editor of the Financial Times; Deborah Bull, formerly a dancer, now Creative Director of the Royal Opera House as well as a writer and broadcaster; Tom Sutcliffe, journalist, broadcaster and author and Frances Wilson, biographer and critic.



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Alison Weir

This is part of a site called Five Books in which well-known authors reveal their five favorite books ever. Quite interesting!

Alison Weir

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The Kids Books Are Alright

Adult fans of Harry Potter, Twilight and the Hunger Games series are speaking out about why they love these books, ostensibly written for young adults! (We're in good company!)

Duncan Smith podcast.

Short (five minutes about) podcast by Duncan Smith talking about changes at NoveList this summer!

NPR's Top 100 Thrillers

NPR listeners voted for their top 100 thrillers. Interesting list....

Countdown to Mockingjay Release

Allison Janney Joins Cast of The Help!

Signed to play Skeeter's mom in the film version of The Help, award winning Allison Janney joins the star-studded cast of The Help which will start filming this summer!!

Suzanne Collins’s “The Hunger Games,” review: newyorker.com

Suzanne Collins’s “The Hunger Games,” review: newyorker.com

The Trouble With Recommending Books

We've got an app for that----it's called a Readers' Advisor!!



The Trouble With Recommending Books

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How the Public Library Became Heartbreak Hotel

What They Didn't Teach Us in Library School
The Public Library as an Asylum for the Homeless

Reports say that Emelio Estevez is making a movie based on this article about the homeless characters in the Salt Lake City Public Library!!

If You Liked My Book, You’ll Love These

Best-selling authors recommend their favorite books.

Insiders' View of Format Wars in eBook Publishing Industry

“Our fondest wish is that all the devices become agnostic
so that there isn’t proprietary formats and you can read
wherever you want to read,” Shanks told Reuters. “First
we have to get a standard that everybody embraces.”

E-Reader Applications for Today, and Beyond [The New York Times]

Here's the NYT's explanation of the ever-changing field of e-reader (not to be confused with eAudio Book) apps.

The Lowdown on Audio Downloads

Pretty good and easy-to-understand overview of down-loadable audio books in the library---and all the confusion with DRM, AAC, mp3.

The Art of the Review by John Bloom

Hilarious and snarky complaints about book reviews and best-selling books he doesn't like. Well worth reading!

May 21, 2002, 8:45 a.m.
The “Art” of the Review
Brilliant Sri Lankan novelists, go home.

By John Bloom



id you ever notice that the books in the airport reading rack — the books that everyone actually reads — are never the books that are reviewed in the big Sunday book sections?

If they're even mentioned, like the occasional piece on Danielle Steele or Stephen King, it's always with a little bit of a sneer, with words like "potboiler," "formula fiction," "genre fiction" or, the ultimate insult, "best-seller."

They don't do this in any other section of the paper. The movie critic seems perfectly capable of praising Spiderman without thinking that it somehow demeans his critical reputation and makes him unfit for reviewing the next Merchant-Ivory saga about old ladies in India. In fact, when a Spiderman or a Bruce Willis thriller or a George Lucas popular epic arrives, the critics celebrate it, hype it, promote it, interview all the principals, treat it like a huge national event.

Compare that with the release of a John Grisham or a Tom Clancy book. "Here's the latest Grisham." "Here's the latest Clancy." That's about all you're going to get. And you can forget entirely the guys at the next level, the mid-list mystery and thriller authors who sometimes have one book out of ten reviewed by a major newspaper.

Instead, what have we got in the book-review sections? Sri Lankan coming-of-age novels. Slice-of-life multi-generational family sagas about the Idaho back country. Painfully personal memoirs about single motherhood. Last week I read a review of a book called Notes from the Hyena's Belly: An Ethiopian Boyhood by Nega Mezlekia. It had everything a book-review editor wants — exotic to the point of obscurity, internationalist, multicultural (by virtue of the translation), with the promise of making us all Better People by condescending to understand the agonies of a Third World situation that we don't really know diddly squat about.

But is it a good story? You'll never find out by reading The New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post Book World, or any of the other Sunday supplements. Some of the reviews don't even bother to Describe the book, much less tell us why we would want to read it in the first place. Instead they go on about "new voices in East African fiction." My question is, "I don't really care that much about East African fiction. It's not high on my list of priorities. Will I like this book in spite of that?"

Over time I've learned the secret code words of book reviewers who don't really want you to know what they're talking about. "Coming of age," for example, means "self-involved young person agonizes over sophomoric minutiae." "Internal odyssey" means nothing happens. "Introspective" means psychobabble.

"Delicate" means you're going to have entire paragraphs describing the dew in the rose garden. The dread "Austenesque" means blabbermouth women are going to sit around the kitchen playing matchmaker. "Echoes of history" means you should run screaming out of Starbucks because somebody's going to tell you about his ancestors.

The strangest term the reviewers use is "unassuming prose." They say it in a goodway, as though the best prose is unassuming. So how come they never review a book with assuming prose? I don't like my books unassuming. I want them to assume something. I want the prose standing on its head like a Chinese acrobat and doing back flips.

But there's a very special place in the Ninth Circle of Hell for one kind of book in particular, the book I'll call "My 16th Century Farmhouse in Provence." This is a genre that flourished in the 90s — I think the first one was called Under the Tuscan Sun — and it's universally praised by book reviewers everywhere. It's usually a first-person narrative of going to Europe and finding (a) an old house on the Scottish moors, (b) a rundown apartment in the Marais neighborhood of Paris, (c) an Alpine villa in shambles, and then fixing it up. End of story.

That's it. The rest of the book is just sappy musings about "the clash of the modern and the traditional," "the rhythm of provincial life," the color of the native vegetables, and the local peasant legends that no one quite remembers anymore because there are no longer any peasants.

Here's my question about these books. Why is it always Americans going to Europe? Why couldn't you write the same book about going to, say, the Catskills and remodeling a summer camp for Jewish teenagers? Why does a Frenchman never move to West Texas and fix up a pig ranch? And all of those picturesquely colorful local guys who hang around the public market in Grasse?

We have those in Salina, Kansas, too. They're called Old Farts.

Of course, sometimes my code system fails me entirely, as in a recent New York Times review of a Portuguese novel called The Return of the Caravels by Antonio Lobo Antunes. Describing the author, the reviewer said, "He is profoundly Portuguese." I was online with Barnes & Noble within the hour, grateful to have finally found a writer who wasn't lying about his birthplace.

At other times, the reviewer seems to be daring you to endure as much psychic pain as possible, as in the review from Newsday that said, "This first novel treats family ties, erotic longing, small children and prolonged deaths from AIDS and cancer with a subtlety that grows from scrupulous unsentimentality."

Well, doesn't that sound like something to take to the beach this summer.

Did you know that there's a whole genre now called "pregnancy narratives"? (Just go ahead and ram bamboo sticks under my fingernails. I'll enjoy it more.) Did you know, in fact, that there are entire libraries of titles that should be subtitled "Males Go Away"?

Take this blurb from Crow Lake by Mary Lawson: "Set against the wild terrain of northern Ontario, Crow Lake is a triumphant story of a young woman coming to terms with her past, and the strength of family love." Can I just wait for the Lifetime movie? At least we'll have a scene with Treat Williams as the creepy boyfriend who beats her up.

But why punish yourself? Just keep the following definitions in mind, and you too will be able to avoid long hours of mind-numbing, brain-deadening torpor: A book of "literary snapshots" means nothing happens.

"A lyrical small-town reminiscence" means nothing happens.

"Full of wry insight" means nothing happens.

A "rumination," a "pastiche," a "twinkling little jewel of a novel," "a quiet catharsis," "a journey through memory" or a "poetic elegy" all mean nothing ever happens.

Beware of the "auspicious debut," the "promising first novel" and the "dazzling maiden performance." This means we're waiting for the second novel to see if this turkey can write. Has there ever been a book reviewer in history who has said: "Let's hope this person doesn't ever write again — once was enough"?

What's the deal with the "freebie" first-novel review? We don't cut any slack for filmmakers when they bomb right out of the box.

And what's with all the verbiage from India? The next time I see a work of fiction described as "an inquiry into the consequences of colonialism" invoking the "rich spiritual traditions of a mysterious sub-continent" with a "postmodern sensibility" I'm going to personally seek out the Berkeley apartment building where all these writers-in-residence sponge off the Rockefeller Foundation and assault it with a sound truck blaring Nine Inch Nails at 3 a.m. Please make a pilgrimage to New Delhi in search of a plot, people.

Anything called a "three-generation family saga" will have a scene in which the bastard child of a ruthless entrepreneur is delivered by a midwife in a slave cabin.

Anything that "deftly evokes" — take your pick: turn-of-the-century Scotland, medieval Bavaria, Paris in the 20s — means the author read a book on period costumes and invented some adorably quirky dialects.

Anything involving "a woman's search" — take your pick: for the love she never had, for the source of her emotional identity, for the ghosts that lurk in her past, for the meaning behind her grandmother's poems found in a dusty attic — is going to include a lot of spontaneous weeping.

Beware of the word "anomie." The book will undoubtedly "resonate" with it. Even more ominous, it will probably be "Chekhovian."

Anything a professor does — returning to his rural home, facing his mortality, suffering from "ennui," enduring a middle-age crisis — should be banned by constitutional amendment.

Images will always "leap off the page" (usually in an attempt to escape). Families will always be "unconventional."

Expatriates will always be "disillusioned with their homeland."

Tenderness will always be found amid the devastation of war.

"Emotional transactions" will always be "genuine." And the "strange internal logic" of a narrative will always "take on a life of its own."

Collections of short stories, which nobody reads, will always display "a remarkable range." (News alert! All the stories are about different things.) Poetry collections, which have press runs of a thousand copies, will always be "evocative" of something or other. (Yep, they don't call it poetry for nothing, do they?) And collections of correspondence will always reveal "a remarkable mind, grappling with everything from the ephemera of day-to-day life to the mysteries of the universe." (Come on, it's a bunch of letters.)

Where is the book-reviewing school where they learn all this stuff? Wherever it is, I'm sure it's a poignant and wise place, blending fact, memory, and imagination in highly literary ways, so that the intensity of emotion can be revealed in finely crafted prose that resounds with a welter of imagery, affirming that our only true subject — yes! — is the earth itself.

Then again, some books are just bad.

—John Bloom is a columnist for United Press International, for which he wrote this piece; it is reprinted with permission.

Ebsco Buys Netlibrary

What will this mean for libraries?? Inquiring minds want to know!

Ultimate Best of the Best List for 2009

Neil Hollands, RA God at the Williamsburg Public Library in VA, has tweaked and 'completed' his best of the best list for fiction and non-fiction published in 2009.

Pretty amazing, really!!

Enjoy!!

The ECLIPSE Movie Trailer

The ECLIPSE Movie Trailer…

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Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Movie!!

Although I don't know when, this movie is going to be shown at the Renaissance Theatre in Highland Park and the Century Theatre in Chicago.

I read one review (on a genealogy blog) and the reviewer gave it RAVE reviews!!

Field trip, anyone?

Katie Couric Interviews Kathryn Stockett

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So I cleaned my desk while I listened to this interview---and if you think my desk at work is bad.....

Anyway, excellent interview. Kathryn Stockett is so gracious and wonderful. Also there are some book clubs chiming in AND if you watch the second half, Katie interviews some women who grew up in Jackson MS about their thoughts regarding race and The Help.

Four stars!!

DreamWorks Hires Taylor For 'The Help'

DreamWorks Hires Taylor For 'The Help'


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ALA | Outstanding genre literature selected for 2010 Reading List awards

ALA | Outstanding genre literature selected for 2010 Reading List awards


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Judy Blume: Too hot for sixth grade

Judy Blume: Too hot for sixth grade

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Book, Movie & Gaming Reviews for Teens

If you ever have parents who are concerned about the "appropriate" content for their teens, this might be a good site toward which to point them. It looks like a voice of reason when it comes to alerting concerned parents about touchy topics and might help them guide their teens more comfortably.

Any feedback would be appreciated----I looked at it briefly and may have missed something.

Thanks.

Eulogy for Robert B. Parker by his Son David Parker

Poignant and enlightening. Worth reading even if you weren't a Parker fan!

Books to movies!!

Edgar Sawtelle, Guernsey Literary Society... and The Help are all projected to become movies in the next couple of years, plus there's lots more on this list!

The Audie Nominations are out!

The names of the audiobooks and narrators nominated for the prestigious Audie Award have been released!

From what I've heard, The Help by Kathryn Stockett ought to win hands down in the adult fiction category!

The YA Bloody Jack series by L. A. Meyer is nominated again. (They are awesome!! IMHO)

101 Great Reads for the College Bound Student

Occasionally a student has come to the desk looking for good classics to read. This is a good list to consult and was compiled by the College Board, the good folks who bring us the AP, SAT, CLEP and PSAT testst.

E-Readers Reviews

Brief yet even-handed reviews of the latest e-readers from the NYT.

My Mind Is the La Brea Tar Pit for Books

Wonderful essay at Salon on the impact of reading upon one's life.

Kirkus Might Still Continue

There's hope for Kirkus, apparently.

Most Anticipated Books for 2010

Yes, another list....

This one showcases books to be published in 2010 by Max Magee of The Millions. A very literary list, indeed.