- A New Word for The Booklover's Lexicon?
Posted February 22, 2006
Participants in the "Library Underground," a longstanding Internet
discussion list, recently brainstormed a term for describing the
phenomenon of "picking up a book and unexpectedly reading the whole damn
thing from cover to cover in one sitting." Our favorite suggestion:
bibliobingeing.
We also liked LU frequent-poster Louise Alcorn's re-write, for booklovers,
of the Serenity Prayer:
God, grant me the serenity to read those things I can today. The courage
to read only that which I can safely fit into tomorrow. And the wisdom not
to call in sick to try to get more read. Amen.
- Website Features Overlooked Books
Posted March 19, 2006
It's every booklover's dream come true: a well-organized
website completely devoted to listing and describing excellent books that,
for one reason or another, went unheralded by The Great Book Publicity
Machine when they were published. The site's well-chosen name:
NeglectedBooks.com.
Critic Frank Kermonde once hinted at the need for such a list when he
wrote:
"The restoration to favour of forgotten books and authors is always a chancy business. It is a myth
that time will do the testing; it would be truer to credit chance, and, more important still, the
continuation of reasonably well-informed talk."
Every part of this carefully-developed (though - oddly - anonymously edited)
site is fascinating: the site's FAQs, its list of sources, its list of
links, a section called "Gleanings," and of course the 1,000-item booklist
itself, which includes both fiction and nonfiction titles.
Found via LISNews.
- Books That Males Claim Have "Helped" Them
Posted April 26, 2006
British males, anyway. This
list (and an analysis of the gender differences among the top-picked
titles) resulted from a survey conducted earlier this year compared to a
similar survey of female readers last year by England's Guardian.
Just as interesting is an anonymous bookloving female blogger's response to the
Guardian article - interesting partly for the graphic at the top of
her blogpost, and partly for the description of her own "most influential"
book titles.
- Novels about Books
Posted April 26, 2006
A recent Fade Theory blogpost
contains a handy list.
- Booklover's Alert: "The Pleasure and Pain of Owning Books"
Posted May 5, 2006
The anonymous writer of the excellent literary blog "Fade Theory"
posted a link yesterday to an
article by Montana writer Allen M. Jones at New West Books & Writers
("The Voice of the Rocky Mountains"). Jones begins with this rhetorical
question:
Why do I have all these goddamned books? Why does anybody? They're
expensive, they weigh you down, they're cumbersome. Writing them, reading
them, treasuring them. This day and age, it feels antiquated. Quaint.
Especially now, with all the information in the world a click and a
digital beep-boop-bop away, why all these ponderous rows of bound paper?
What's the illness, and what's the cure?
Jones answers part of that question by quoting C.S. Lewis:
"Good reading can be described either as an enlargement or as a temporary
annihilation of the self. But that is an old paradox; ‘he that loseth his
life shall save it.' We therefore delight to enter into other men's
beliefs....even though we think them untrue. And into their passions,
though we think them depraved...Literary experience heals the wound,
without undermining the privilege, of individuality...In reading great
literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself...Here, as in
worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself,
and am never more myself than when I do."
Read Jones'
entire articulate, passionate screed.
- Librarian Recommends “NonAnon” Reviews
Posted May 9, 2006
Illinois librarian blogger Rick Roche
recently brought his readers’ attention to a website that offers
plentiful reviews of new and not-so-new nonfiction titles. The recommended
site is called “Nonfiction Readers
Anonymous” and is written by an anonymous female blogger in Wisconsin.
May 15th Update: An alert reader has kindly passed
along the identity of the "anonymous" blogger who writes "Nonfiction
Readers Anonymous." According to a web page created by the publisher
Libraries Unlimited:
"Sarah Statz Cords is a librarian who works at both the reference and
circulation desks of the Alicia Ashman branch of the Madison Public Library;
and she teaches "Reading Interests of Adults" at the School of Library and
Information Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is also the
author of the forthcoming
The Real Story: A Guide to Nonfiction Reading Interests (Libraries
Unlimited, March 2006) as well as the blog
Nonfiction Readers Anonymous. She is a consulting editor for the
Reader's Advisor Online, forthcoming from Libraries Unlimited in Spring 2006."
- Children's Book Selector Alert: The Ten Best Books to Read Aloud
Posted May 12, 2006
At least, the best ten as chosen by a British author of books for children.
Does your library own
these ten titles, and have you ever read them aloud to kids at your
library?
- Turnover Rate for Bestsellers Getting Shorter and Shorter
Posted May 31, 2006
A recent study of how long bestsellers remain bestsellers shows that, if
present trends continue, the New York Times may be forced to begin
publishing a daily bestsellers list instead of a weekly one.
Read the details
as reported last month by Lulu (and linked to earlier this week at
LISNews).
We wonder what this data means in terms of libraries, including AFPL,
putting so much effort (and pumping so much money) into obtaining bestsellers
for their bestseller-reading library patrons?
Will the refusal of so many American readers to read anything except a
bestseller finally be impossible for libraries to accommodate because of
the ever-more-gnatlike attention span of those readers?
- Hennepin County Library Sponsoring "Readers Online"
Posted May 22, 2006
This well-known institution has joined the ranks of U.S. public libraries
whose websites feature public discussions of patrons' opinions of the
books they're reading, and offers to alert patrons via email of new
arrivals in Hennepin's collections.
Details.
- Playboy's 25 Sexiest Books Ever Written
Posted May 22, 2006
Some surprising titles
here.
Our thanks to the anonymous writer of
FadeTheory for this alert; she found it mentioned it in
The Literary Saloon.
- Starbucks as Cultural Trendsetter?
Posted May 22, 2006
Starbucks, whose stock value has increased over 5,775% since 1992 and which
aims to have as many outlets, worldwide, as McDonalds (i.e., more stores
than there are public libraries) intends to start selling books, now that
they’ve succeeded in selling their loyal (addicted?) customers music as
well as high-priced caffeinated beverages.
Details.
Our favorite figure from this news report: “24% of Starbucks' customers
visit 16 times per month.” Unless you're counting homeless persons, that’s
a lot more visits than one-fourth of public library patrons make to their
libraries per month.
[Our thanks to Virginia Commonwealth University librarian blogger Jill
Stover for bringing her
“Thinking Outside the Book” readers’ attention to this story.]
- Selector Alert: Two Unusual Book Lists
Posted June 3, 2006
Found via Fade Theory, whose postings
AFPLWATCH has found so consistently helpful and/or enchanting that we've
added a link to it at LibraryLand's
"blogroll".
- Web-Based Lists of Graphic Novels
Posted June 14, 2006
In the most recent edition of
Neat New Stuff I Found This Week, Marylaine Block provides a
link to this set of annotated lists for adults, teens, children, and
collection-building resources created by librarians at the Cinncinnati
Public Library.
- Award-winning Christianity Books
Posted June 14, 2006
Also from the latest edition of Marylaine Block’s
Neat New Stuff I Found This Week: a
link to the year's 22 best Christianity-related books chosen by judges
chosen by the periodical Christianity Today.
- What Kids Think of Books for Kids
Posted June 14, 2006
Well, what one six-year-old thinks of a half-dozen recently-published
children's books. His reactions are a bit different than you might expect
from, say, an adult evaluating a children's picture book.
Read the story, posted by CNN.com.
- Another Zeitgeist-Checking Resource
Posted July 12, 2006
Some avid booklovers regularly check Amazon.com’s bestsellers (either
bestselling titles overall, or bestsellers within the the subjects they do
most of their reading about. But wouldn't it also be useful to know the
titles of the most-discussed books on the most-visited site on the Internet?
And, no, you wouldn't check Amazon for that, or even Yahoo or Google, but
MySpace, whose exploding rate of expansion is nothing short of
remarkable.
Booklovers who care about keeping with who's reading what will want to
bookmark MySpace, and then, at regular intervals, check out its
books-being-discussed feature to
find out what those titles are.
- Amazon Displays Bestselling Items by City
Posted July 12, 2006
Who knew?
Here, for example, are the current bestsellers of Amazon.com products
in Atlanta. (Amazingly, you can get separate tallies for College Park,
East Point, and other metro-Atlanta cities.)
The search screen for searching Georgia city bestsellers in Amazon.com’s
“Purchase Circles” feature is
here.
- Reader's Advisory Websites
Posted July 19, 2006
Although still in its infancy (mostly a bunch of booklists, and not very
interesting visually), this
Iowa-based reader's advisory website is an example of something that
other state library offices
could be providing to public libraries. State library offices that did a
good job of this could invite their state's public libraries to include a
link on each of their own websites to the state site, and save a lot of
people a lot of local wheel-reinventing.
Meanwhile, many public libraries haven't been waiting around for state
government bureaucrats to help their libraries' patrons quickly identify
that Next Great Read.
A tiny, random sample of public library systems elsewhere that include
readers advisory features on their websites:
- Books That Provide Background on the Wars in the Middle East
Posted August 2, 2006
Over at AlterNet, Deborah Campbell recently posted an annotated list
of books under the headline "What to Read While the Cradle of Civilization
Burns: Books That Will Give You the History and Context of the Middle East
That the Media Refuses to Provide."
Really intrepid booklovers will want to sift through the comments of over
a hundred readers of
Campbell's post who suggest additional titles (or who vividly object
to those suggestions, or who vividly object to those objections).
(Note: You'll need to scroll down past the adverts to get to the text
of Campbell's list.)
- Help with Some Hard-to-Pronounce Authors' Names
Posted August 24, 2006
One thing oddly missing from the Internet is a web site exclusively devoted
to showing the pronunciation of easily-garbled authors' names. In the
meantime, Maryland-based blogger Max Magee, via
The Millions (A Blog About Books), provides us with the pronunciations
of the following handful of often-mispronounced names:
- Donald Barthelme
- Michael Chabon
- J.M. Coetzee
- John Le Carre
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Seamus Heaney
- Thomas Pynchon
- Rainer Maria Rilke
- Paul Theroux
- Henry David Thoreau
Magee also sets us straight with how to correctly pronounce the name of
the literary prize named after journalist Joseph Pulitzer.
- New Coffee-Table Book Showcases Gorgeous Libraries
Posted August 28, 2006
A new book of photographs of (alas, mostly non-modern) libraries has been
published:
Libraries by Candida Hofer. The blog
Fade Theory recently alerted its readers that there's
a website that's posted 16 of the photos in this drool-worthy tome.
- A Gateway to Blogged Book Reviews for Younger Booklovers
Posted August 29, 2006
Apparently, the biblioblogosphere is as replete with reviews of books
written for kids as it is of reviews of books written for adults.
Pop Goes the Library
recently posted a link to
Children's Book Reviews, a wiki that gathers together links to all these
review sites, grouped by the different age-levels the reviewed books are
targeted for. How handy is that?
- Website for Locating Used Books Sales
Posted August 30, 2006
Although it's by no means a new website,
Book Sale Finder is the kind of website that The Perfect Public Library would include a link
to in the reader-support section of its own website. Book Sale Finder's
Georgia page, in addition to the well-known biggie annual events, also includes upcoming sales sponsored by
Friends Groups at several AFPL libraries.
Sadly, AFPL's website doesn't contain a "reader-support" section. Will
it ever, we wonder?
- Multiple Library Websites to Feature "Pearl's Picks" for Readers
Posted August 31, 2006
Beginning tomorrow, the website of the Seattle-area
Kings County Public Library will include a link to Nancy Pearl's latest
book recommendations. Pearl, the author of
Book Lust and
More Book Lust, is a much-sought-after speaker at literary
events.
According this
press release, eight other library systems have also agreed to include
the "Pearl's Picks" link on their websites.
- New Website for Book Reviews and Book Recommendations
Posted September 8, 2006
Rabid book-readers have five more days to subscribe to a site that will
feature, among other things, Nancy Pearl's latest book reviews.
Details.
- Another Internet Source for Title Recommendations
Posted September 13, 2006
Suggestica posts "the best suggestions (books, audio,
video) from Trusted Authorities in various disciplines." Avid nonfiction
booklovers might give the website a look-see so they can decide whether or
not to bookmark it for future reference.
Found at Sarah Houghton-Jan's
Librarian-in-Black blog; Sarah found it via Library Stuff.
- The California Literary Review
Posted September 14, 2006
Review-reading booklovers who realize it's probably unwise to confine their
review sources to outfits headquartered in New York City but who never got
around to habitually monitoring the
Los Angeles Times Times Book Review might want to consider
bookmarking The California Literary
Review, established in 2004 with the goal of becoming "the #1 source on the web for insightful,
irreverent book reviews, thought provoking essays, and interviews with talented authors."
- Another Public Library Launches a Reader Services Blog
Posted September 27, 2006
Steven Cohen at "Library Stuff"
reports that staff at the Huntington Public Library on Long Island,
New York, have created a blog to encourage and support (adult) readers who
patronize the HPL.
Called "HPL Book Hunt," the handsomely-formatted blog currently includes
a quiz publicizing Banned Books Week, a themed booklist, titles of
newly-acquired books, this year's nominees for major literary prizes, and
a healthy set of links to reader advisory websites. And, of course, the
blog includes a prominent link to the library's homepage.
Take a look.
Found via Dave Lee at Georgia Perimeter College, whose
David's Random Stuff blog hosted the most recent installment of the
Carnival of the InfoSciences,
a weekly roundup of library-related blogposts.)
- Movie Version of Atlas Shrugged in the Works
Posted September 29, 2006
The announcement that Angeline Jolie has been cast for the role of Dagney
Taggart may send a few people into libraries and bookstores looking for
the novel before the movie debuts.
More...
- Website Devoted to Bookplates
Posted October 5, 2006
We've probably all met people (or are people) who collected thimbles or
matchbook covers, but who knew there are folks out there who collect
bookplates? There must be legions of them, as there's now at least one
blog devoted exclusively
to this hobby.
- Beautimous Library Calendars Now Available
Posted October 6, 2006
No AFPL library will ever be featured in the annually-produced
Renaissance Library Company's calendar of gorgeous libraries, but you
might consider splurging for one anyway - either for yourself or some
library-loving friend. The calendar is produced in Sweden, and cost $12.95
plus a hefty shipping charge.
If you'd rather spend (more) money on a fund-raising calendar, the latest
on on offer that's come to our attention is an 18-monther featuring
assorted barely-clad male
librarians who work in Texas. This one's $20 plus shipping.
- How to Find Out about Book Authors' Local Appearances
Posted October 30, 2006
The Georgia Center
for the Book, headquartered at DeKalb County's main public library, keeps
tabs on local appearances of book authors.
As AFPL's website, inexplicably, doesn't provide a link to it, you might
want to bookmark the Center's
calendar, and/or tell your bookloving friends about the calendar.
- "The Best Science Book Ever Written"
Posted November 3, 2006
Last month, the British newspaper The Guardian announced the nominees and
the winner for "The Best Science Book Ever Written" contest. Although one
of the nominees was a Tom Stoppard play rather than a book, nonfiction
booklovers may want to peruse the nominated titles, and certainly take a
look at the title of the winner.
Read the Guardian article.
Found via Conversational
Reading.
- Free Bookplate Designs
Posted November 8, 2006
Librarians and library patrons - especially kid-age patrons - who want to
put bookplates in their personal books don't need to settle for some
home-made, boring design.
As long as you don't plan to sell the things,
you can copy and print out any of the
dozens (hundreds?) of bookplate designs available at "My Home Library".
These bookplates would be useful, too, for pasting inside any gift books
given out as an award for a library contest or as a personal gift to a
youngish recipient.
Via Fade Theory, who found
this source via
LifeHacker.
- Literary Postage Stamps on the Internet
Posted December 7, 2006
Bibliophile Bullpen blogger J. Godsey recently began building
another blog she calls Literary Stamps,
and it's already worth a look-see.
Interesting, though, how so many of these public tributes to treasured
authors and books are issued by governments other than the one that
operates the United States.
- Another Holiday Gift for Your Favorite Booklover
Posted December 8, 2006
We say "favorite booklover" because a pair of these - the bookends, not the
dictionaries - will set you back 80 bucks. They cost that much because
they're being sold by Restoration Hardware.
Details.
- "100 Notable Books of 2006"
Posted December 15, 2006
Posted on the Internet by the New York Times Book Review.
- "Fiction Finder" Upgraded
Posted December 17, 2006
You may never need to find a list of "mystery novels set
in Charleston," but if you did need such a thing, it's nice to know you have recourse to
various web-based booklists for all kinds of reading tastes, including obscure
ones.
Blogger Lorcan Dempsey
notes that a similar tool similar to NoveList (a commerically-sold
database available to individuals via many library websites) is OCLC's
recently-improved "Fiction Finder."
Found via
Bibliophile Bullpen.
- Outstanding Cover Art
Posted December 20, 2006
Is there anyone among us who hasn't bought a book - or plucked one from a
library shelf - solely because we were intrigued by its cover?
Enjoying unusual - and especially unusually apt - cover art is one
of the many harmless pleasures of book-browsing, and it's gratifying to
learn that there's a website devoted entirely to cover art appreciation.
Take a look.
Found via Fade Theory.
- Website Promotes "Bookstore Tourism"
Posted December 21, 2006
Who knew there was such a thing as the "National Council on Bookstore
Tourism"? And that it has a website?
What next? Organized tours of trip-worthy public libraries? And would
AFPL ever be a destination for such a bus-load of book enthusiasts?
Found at
Bibliophile Bullpen.
Booklover Alerts Posted in 2005
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