- U.S. Authors In Memoriam, 2007
Posted January 9, 2008
The AFPLS Blog has a
nice, informative posting about some famous American authors who died last year.
- "A Hunger for Books"
Posted January 10, 2008
Last December, the Guardian published a transcript of Doris Lessing's
acceptance speech for receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature. If you
haven't yet read the speech, you can
read it now.
Found via Fade Theory.
- Book Glut, Circa 2008: A Bookman's Rant
Posted January 14, 2008
Although the following remarks from
Bibliophile Bullpen are embedded in a longer rant about a completely
different subject, we thought they were worth posting here as confirmation
of what a lot of book-loving librarians have been thinking or some years now:
Newsflash: Booksales are down because most books suck. Even ignoring the
great philosopher Sturgeon's Law that "Ninety percent of everything is crap"
- modern publishing is producing more books then ever, therefore they are
producing more crap then ever. Even though it is now easier for everyone
and their Aunt Helen to write a book and get it published, no one is taking
into account whether it SHOULD be published, and the market is flooded. The
market is so pumped full that right out of the box a book can be sold for
50% off the cover price in great honking warehouses. [why are books the
only thing with prices printed on them?] and don't get me started on the
secondary market, as soon as a book leaves the TRADE food chain its value
drops like a bowling ball off a dorm roof. You can literally buy a modern
first edition for less than an airport fiction paperback. WHY? because the
market is flooded and we are up to our ass in books.
And they aren't very good ones either. Is it me? or does it seem that in
the last 10 years every editor in America was fired? either that or they
all just suck at their jobs. They certainly aren't correcting grammar or
coherency. Hell, they aren't even checking to see if what is written in
the book didn't come from someone ELSE'S book. These days if I find a
mistake that could have been corrected by an editor, I fling the book
across the room with great force.
- Book Cover Commentary
Posted January 15, 2008
We've alerted WATCH readers before about the hilarious, librarian-authored
blog Judge a Book by Its Cover; our excuse for this repeat
alert is the fact that LISNews includes JaBBiC among its
Top Blogs to Watch in 2008.
- Price Comparison Site for Book-Buyers
Posted January 25, 2008
People who love books periodically find themselves with fantasies of buying
multiple copies of Some Wonderful Book They've Just Read and merrily
mailing them off to a few Very Special Friends. Those fantasies are more
likely to be realized for booklovers who know about
AddAll.com, which the
Librarian in Black recently dubbed her favorite Internet site for book
price comparisons.
- Another Book about Books
Posted February 12, 2008
Another academic has weighed in with recommedations about the "essential"
books for, well, the well-read booklover. Book Smart: Your Essential
Reading List for Becoming a Literary Genius in 365 Days by Jane Mallison
(McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0071482717) is the unfortunate title of the new book,
and Chicago-based Jessa Crispin's Bookslut has posted Elizabeth Bachner's helpful (and hilarious) review.
Found via LISNews, which included Bookslut among its recent list of
non-library-related blogs readers nominated as their faves.
- Dewey? Schmewey! Different Ways to Arrange - or At Least Display - Books
Posted February 14, 2008
While a few libraries may be experimenting with non-Dewey-based shelving of
their stock (or parts of it), individual booklovers have been experimenting
for years with various methods of arranging/storing/displaying their
own book collections.
Besides the popular just-stick-it-anywhere-you-can-wedge-the-next-one-in
approach, some people put a lot of thought into it.
For example,
Freshome re-posted from Flikr a color-coding scheme:
One of the dozens of people who commented on this arrangement posted a link to an
interesting 2001
PublishingTrends.com article that describes other creative (and not-so-creative) ways of taming the
wild beast of a runaway personal book collection.
Found via LISNews,
where an alert reader links to this other book-storage idea previously
posted at Freshome:
- Library Thing (Again) Upstages Most Web-Based Reader-Support Services
Provided by Most U.S. Public Libraries...including AFPL
Posted March 7, 2008
Well, the time seems fast approaching where most public libraries are just
going to be forced to post a link on their websites to
Library Thing, and hang their heads in shame and envy.
Library Thing, the brainchild of Maine-based Tim Spalding (not a librarian,
by the way), does a lot of different
things for book lovers, but its newest feature takes the proverbial
cake - i.e., takes it away from what any self-respecting public library
should have already done long since. LibraryThing Local aims to
provide
"a gateway to thousands of local bookstores, libraries and book
festivals-and to all the author readings, signings, discussions and other
events they host."
Yes, LibraryThing Local is in its infancy, but, like they've quickly
grown other features of Library Thing, the Thing's enthusiastic members
will continue to (quickly) create increasingly more useful content. That
said, Library Thing is light-years ahead of what AFPL has done since the
advent of the Internet Age for its most reliable - if currently most
glaringly underserved - constituency: adult book readers who also
happen to have Internet access and use that access to support and enhance
their book-reading habits.
We guess the question for AFPL is now who will be assigned to post
to LibraryThing Local AFPL's library facility locations and AFPL-sponsored book events (vs. the
yoga classes, health fairs, etc.)? Or will AFPL administrators leave it to
library users to do this for them? Given said administrators'
persistent lack of attention throughout the past decade for supporting
Atlanta's adult readers via interactive features on its website, maybe the
latter course would make more sense?
Alas, alack, the number of missed opportunites for AFPL to support its
adult book-loving users continues to mount with every year that passes....
Found via the
Librarian in Black.
- 80 Online Resources for Booklovers
Posted March 24, 2008
Last week, Lithuanian blogger Zigmas Bigelis posted links to 80 online
resources useful to booklovers, providing a brief comment about each one,
and arranging them into the following categories:
- Social Networking for Book Lovers
- E-books
- Online Bookstores
- Find the Best Prices for Books
- Audiobooks
- Study Guides and Summaries
- Library Resources
- Bibliography and Research
- Book Exchanges/Swapping
- Online Documents
- What to Read
- Miscellaneous
Take a look. We
bet there are several you hadn't yet heard about.
Found via
iLibrarian.
- Rules for (Home) Bookshelves - Should There Be Any?
Posted March 24, 2008
It'll take you at least an hour to read them all, but many of the hundreds
of passionate, hilarious, and indignant - and contradictory - comments to
several recent blogposts on this question make for absorbing reading:
We note with interest that quite a few of the commenters rely on the
local public library to keep their domestic book-storage problems semi-manageable.
Found via LISNews.
- NPR Reports on Book-Centered Social Websites
Posted March 26, 2008
LibraryThing, Goodreads, Shelfari, aNobii, BookJetty, et al. continue to
garner attention in the mass media. Read (or listen to) National Public
Radio's story
here.
Found via LISNews.
- Authors! Authors!
Posted April 1, 2008
Because (tacky! tacky!) AFPL doesn’t include on its website a
hyperlink to the Dekalb County-based Georgia Center for the Book, AFPL
patrons using AFPL’s website are not being conveniently alerted to the
Center’s impressive monthly lineups of author appearances, such as the one
for April.
Until AFPL’s phantom webmaster DOES bother to put up a link to the GCB,
we’ve added it to LibraryLand’s list of
frequently-used sources, so that at least AFPLWATCH readers can be
prompted to check it out from time to time.
- Project Gutenberg's Top 100 Downloaded Books
Posted April 2, 2008
Most AFPLWATCH readers have surely heard about
Project Gutenberg, the mother of all online collections of copyright-free
book texts - going strong since Michael Hart started the project in 1971.
If you've ever wondered what sorts of PG books the computer owners of the
world have found the most useful, you might want to take a gander at PG's
listing of its Top 100 Downloaded Books. You'll probably
be surprised at the mix of fiction vs. nonfiction, and at the names of
the most-frequently-downloaded authors.
We hope these online book downloading frequencies have nothing to do
with any pattern of the absence of in public libraries of multiple print
copies of various literary classics.
Found via LISNews.
- Award Announcement: Oddest Book Title of the Year
Posted April 4, 2008
The UK's Guardian has the hilarious
details.
Found by a friend of an AFPLWATCH reader.
- Another "Best Books of All Time" List
Posted April 8, 2008
AFPL selectors might want to take a break from their guesswork about the
potential durability (or at least temporary popularity) of the various
titles currently on offer to see if their library owns at least one decent-condition
copy of these
110 Best Books as decreed by the UK's Telegraph. As usual with
these lists of classics, the Telegraph's readers chime in with their
own nominations, which AFPL selectors - and classic-broaching booklovers -
should pay equal attention to.
Found via LISNews.
- A Booklover’s Lament
Posted June 2, 2008
One writer’s
musings about how books can devour one’s home if one isn’t eternally vigilant.
Found via
Librarian.net.
- Alberto Manguel's The Library at Night
Posted June 2, 2008
Alberto Manguel, author of (among other things) A History of Reading is decidedly not complaining about
his own house-full (actually barn-full) of books. If you haven't already purchased a copy of The Library at Night for
your collection, you might want to after reading this review from the UK's Guardian.
Found via an alert AFPLWATCH reader.
- Handy Things People Use for Bookmarks
Posted June 11, 2008
Service-minded librarians everywhere like to keep their public service desks well-stocked with bookmarks, and library users
seem to appreciate that. If you've ever wondered what some people use as bookmarks when they don't get them from their
friendly neighborhood branch library, there are some great (and some rather alarming) ideas chronicled
in a discussion (ongoing since October 2006!) at Library Thing.
Elsewhere on the endlessly fascinating Library
Thing is a discussion of unusual bookmarks people have found in library books or in books they've browsed or bought in second-hand bookstores.
Found via BoingBoing.
- Homage to the Reader Posted June 12, 2008
Junot Diaz, teacher of creative writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao,
from a speech he made this month at a writers' festival in Australia:
Writers might be word magicians but we readers are the new alchemists. Without a reader a book
is simply a stack of papers dense with type and edged in glue. But when a reader grabs hold of
a book, when a reader introduces her mind and heart and body to a book, that book is transformed,
becomes something extraordinary.
Readers supply the galvanic human spark that bring these Frankenstein creations we call books to life.
Readers transmute cold paper and stale ink into vibrant human gold. Readers are the nervous system of
literature and readers alone can reach through time and space and connect one imperfect human soul with
another they have never met. They can bridge the spaces between us, all through the simple act of reading.
We readers, I suspect, will be remembered more than any individual writer for safeguarding that delicate
web of human interconnectivity that so many forces wish to buy, capture, enslave and mine.
Readers will be remembered long after we are all gone for holding the line against the dehumanising forces
of our civilisation. Even if tomorrow all the books of the world disappeared in a flash of woodpulp and
binding it would be you, you readers, who would keep the dream of that human alchemy alive.
For it is in the simple act of reading where the living and the dead, the real and the imagined, meet. It is
in the simple act of reading where we exercise those two most sacred of human vocations: compassion and
creativity. For as we know, without either of these primes there is no possibility for a humanity present or
past worth talking about.
Australia's Sydney Herald published a
transcript of Diaz's brief but moving speech.
Found via Sites and Soundbytes",
which posted from Diaz's speech not his comments on readers, but his definition of literature,
along with this timely commentary from blogger Tasha Saecker:
Read [Diaz's speech] when you have helped the 100th person log onto Yahoo! Mail, when you have separated your tenth
set of teens locked in either battle or lust, when you have reached your breaking point, read this. And remember what
we do as librarians and why.
- Book Jetty Joins the Share-One's-Reading-List Sites
POsted June 16, 2008
You've at least heard about Library Thing. Now find out about
Book Jetty.
Found via the Lo-Fi Librarian.
- More "Books That Changed My Life" Lists
Posted June 24, 2008
Of the creating of Best Books Lists on the Internet, there is no end - and that's a Good Thing.
Why? Because Best Book Lists help readers cope with the bibliosphere's crushing, frustrating law of Too Many Books,
So Little Time.
Library book selectors, constantly constrained by the law of Too Many Books, Never Enough Book-Buying Dollars (and
by the equally daunting law of So Many Selectors, None of Them Omniscient, could do worse than using Best Books Lists
as handy spot-checks of that Perfect Library Collection they are always aiming for. And doing this via the Internet is soooo
much quicker than it was in the pre-Internet era.
In any case, Kevin Kelly, of World Earth Catalog fame, recently posted his annotated, short list of
Books That Changed My Life to his Cool Tools blog; even better, Kelly includes links to similar lists compiled by a
dozen other individuals he respects. The Internet being what it is, some of those other lists include links to yet more
Best Book Lists.
Click through a bunch of these lists, and you'll end up with a compelling To-Read List or a worthwhile To-Buy (Wish) List
in no time, and some of these titles you would probably never have heard of otherwise.
- NPR Expands Book Coverage
Posted July 2, 2008
As anyone working a service desk in a public library could tell you, thousands (millions?) of Americans have tracked down
books they first heard about (or whose authors they heard interviewed) on a National Public Radio broadcast. Booklovers
and library selectors will be happy to learn that
NPR's excellent website has greatly expanded its coverage of books and authors of books. Publishers Weekly has
the details.
Found via LISNews.
- Virtural Book Browsing
Posted July 10, 2008
If you'd rather do your book-browsing from a chair staring at screenfuls of hyperlinked book covers instead browsing
lists of books - or actually visiting an acutal bookstore or library - Zoomii may become
one of your favorite Internet sites. Think "Amazon with [Virtual] Shelves."
True, it takes a bit of patience to figure out how to zoom in and out of the various subject areas, but once you get the
hang of it, browsing Zoomii does seem a bit more interesting than surfing Amazon (or a library catalog) - especially if you
aren't looking for any particular title, but rather some ideas for what to read. Once you zoom in on a title that
interests you (based on its cover image), you get all the usual Amazon-provided book details.
Found via Infodoodads.
- Another Roundup of Stuff-Used-as-Bookmarks
Posted July 22, 2008
Last month we posted a link to a list of things librarians have found in returned books.
Here's a list of things found in books by people who work in bookstores specializing in used books.
It turns out that booksellers routinely find the same sorts of weird stuff in their (ab)used books as librarians do.
Our own fave impromptu gross-out bookmark of all time: a strip of bacon.
Found via LISNews.
- Another Online - and Free - Great Fiction Readers Advisory Resource
POsted July 24, 2008
The marvels of the wonderful NoveList aside, readers or librarians trying to quickly obtain a list of,
say, all of Nora Roberts' books by date of publication, can do that at a website called
FictionDB.
This is a nifty (and free) tool for people needing series-related titles and publication dates. That group of people
includes not only individual readers who've resolved to read every last book Author X ever wrote, but people needing to
know the order in which titles in series appeared, and library selectors trying to identify gaps in their runs of various
authors in their fiction collections.
FictionDB has other features that NoveList has, but not every public library system can afford to make NoveLIst
available (free) to its card-holders. (Fortunately, AFPL does.)
Found via the
Librarian in Black.
- Authors' Top 10 Books on Mostly Very Narrow Themes
Posted August 6, 2008
The UK's Guardian has posted a bunch of short
recommended-books lists on various amazingly specific topics: graphic novels, islands, wilderness, "kids books with
kickass heroines," "Asian crime fiction," wine, etc.
Despite (or because of) the scattershot nature of these lists, you're bound to find something useful in this intriguing and
not-so-little grabbag.
Too bad, though, that the opportunity for ordering books for AFPL's collections this year is about to come to a
screeching halt. (Because the library powers that be haven't convinced the county manager that the library needs to purchase
books year-round, AFPL branch library selectors are forbidden to order books after mid-August each year.)
Found via LISNews.
- 100 Places to Connect with Fellow Bibliophiles
Posted August 7, 2008
Quite the comprehensive list, at least as of mid-2008. And it's annotated! Thank you,
online Education Database's Laura Milligan.
Found via LISNews.
- Confessions of a Readaholic
Posted August 21, 2008
From the [London] Times.
Found via
LISNews.
- Another Online Book Reviewing Website
Posted August 22, 2008
Lit Mob debuted earlier this month. Here's what the four authors of the site have to say
about the focus of their promising-looking site:
Open Letter To Readers:
This is a tough letter to write as technically you do not exist. “They” say that no one reads anymore and that you spend
all of your time watching TIVO’d episodes of Dancing With The Stars, playing video games, or stealing music from your
computer. If you don’t exist then neither do we, which seems rather odd as we really did write this letter and you are now
in fact reading it.
We obviously think that great literature and a strong and intelligent reader base are alive and well. That the media has
chosen to ignore readers is insignificant. We believe in great books and created Lit Mob as a way to showcase those books
that are worth your time. We will not be reviewing all books. You will not see the words “John” and “Grisham” placed
together anywhere on our site. The new Harry Potter? Sorry, we won’t be covering that either. Like The New York Times
Book Review? Great, so do we, but we will be traveling on a much different path than the Good Gray Lady.
So what can you expect from Lit Mob? We promise our readers concise reviews of books that we feel are interesting, and
worthy of a strong latte and a warm comforter. We won’t love them all, and we won’t be afraid to voice our opinion. We
are independent, intelligent, and LOVE books - just like you.
Found via Fade Theory.
- Peeking into Writers' Rooms
Posted August 25, 2008
The UK's Guardian has a long-running series of stories (some with photos) about the rooms writers (famous and not-so-famous)
wrote their books in. If you love literature-related gossip - or at least British literature-related gossip, you'll love
this series.
Found via LISNews.
- Another Blog for Book Industry-Related News and Gossip
Posted August 28, 2008
There's no information at Nonstop Bookshttp://www.nonstopbooks.com/ about who its author is, but we love the
set of book-related links displayed on this website, and library selectors and book lovers (especially people who routinely
purchase books online) will find many of the blogposts interesting.
Found via LISNews.
- Book Patrol Joins Other "Book Culture" Websites
Posted September 8, 2008
Those of us who routinely bookmark every book-centric website we stumble across are going to have to create a separate
folder for them soon, as their numbers are rapidly proliferating.
The newest one we've seen is Book Patrol, and here is a books-into-art image posted there recently:
Found via Bibliophile Bullpen.
- "Gateway Books" (as in "Gateway Drugs") That Hooked Readers Forever
Posted September 10, 2008
Last week, the New York Times "Paper Cuts" blogger Gregory Cowles, inspired by a wonderful quotation from Eudora
Welty, posted an invitation for Times readers to report the title of the book that turned them into voracious,
lifetime readers. The four dozen or so readers' responses posted since then make for mighty interesting reading!
Take a look.
- The Particular Joy of Reading an Obscure Book
Posted October 25, 2008
The Guardian recently served up another feast for bibliophiles with a blogpost written by one Betty Mills entitled
"The Joy of Sharing Your Favourite Obscure Books".
As is often the case with the online versions of the Guardian's book-related stories, this intriguing blogpost is
accompanied by numerous equally-enlightening - and equally delightfully-expressed - readers' comments.
As we head into another winter, bibliophiles on both sides of The Pond are already squirreling away their little bits of
paper (and, for some of us, various computer printouts!) inscribed with the titles of books we intend to track down for
those days when the weather is far too nasty outside to do anything but stay indoors and hunker down with a good read.
The Guardian blogpost is chock-full of particularly obscure possibilities, so get ready to hit your PRINT key once
you've pulled up the link to this satisfying screed.
Found via LISNews.
- British Library Releases Rare Audiotapes of 20th Century Writers
Posted October 28, 2008
National Public Radio broadcast the story this past weekend; the online
version includes a link to this delicious - and rather startling - audiotape (the only one in existence) of the voice
of Virginia Woolf.
Found via LISNews.
- A Blog Devoted to Bookshelves
Posted October 30, 2008
You'd think there'd be a finite number of ways to design a bookcase, but you'd be wrong.
Bibliophiles unhappy with the usual rectangular racks and rows - as well as librarians seeking inspirations for new ways to
configure books in their book displays - can find plenty of ideas (almost 250 of them so far) at Alex Johnson's
Bookshelf.
Some of the bookcases highlighted by Alex are either extremely high-tech, very expensive, or exceedingly ugly. Some, however,
are none of these things. The bookshelf shown here was made by sawing two identical coffeetables in half, stacking them on
top of each other, and bolting them to the wall. Voila!
Found via Bibliopolis, which we found via
PhiloBiblos, which we found via
Bibliophile Bullpen.
- Pierre Bayard and Umberto Eco Talk About How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read
POsted November 2, 2008
Rarely does the WATCH urge its readers to watch an hour-long video on the Internet, but this is one of those times.
The New York Public Library recently hosted (and videotaped) a conversation between Pierre Bayard, author of How to Talk
About Books You Haven't Read and Umberto Eco.
Bayard's and Eco's remarks - and/or Bayard's book itself, if you decide to obtain a copy - may change forever the way
you look at the role of reading in Western culture or even transform the role you think reading plays in your own life.
Fortunately, these two writers are as entertaining as they are brilliant and provocative. (In Eco's case, Atlantans
fortunate to have heard Eco deliver the Ellmann Lectures at Emory University last month will not be surprised; Bayard,
however, is equally as charming and clever and persuasive as Eco.)
Hats off to NYPL for videotaping this encounter and allowing it to be posted (via something called "Fora.tv") to the Internet.
What an inspiring example of the wonderful book-related programs some public libraries are doing for their book-loving
constituencies. The trouble and expense undertaken by NYPL (or perhaps by Fora.tv) to record this conversation allows
thousands of people who don't live in New York City to enjoy, at our convenience, this extraordinary exploration of ideas
about this particular aspect of "the sociology of reading."
Watch the video - even if
you must do so in several installments.
Found via LISNews.
- Back to the Future with Home Libraries?
Posted November 14, 2008
Making the rounds in various newspapers recently are articles
like this one that have seized upon a recent real estate industry study that found more Americans are deciding that
home libraries are A Good Thing.
Well, OK, so now home libraries are trendy again.
What's odd to us about this renewed interest in home libraries
is how these contemporary purpose-built rooms tend to end up looking more like imitiations of the libraries of Gilded Age
industrialists (J.P. Morgan's, for example) than like any of the sleek glass-and-steel public libraries and academic
libraries being built these days.
If "cozy refuge" is the ambiance associated in the Public Mind with the ideal library, we sure wish library architects
would take note of that, and embed some old-fashioned niches within their hideous minimalist-based designs.
Found via LISNews.
- More Gift Ideas for Fellow Booklovers
Posted November 30, 2008
If you've got an Internet connection (which you probably do, since you are, after all, reading this Bulletin), what looks
like The Mother of All Resource Lists for Givers of Gifts to Booklovers has been posted
here.
Found via LISNews, whose readers
contributed several additional gift-buying ideas and/or resources.
- More Holiday Gift Ideas for Bibliophiles
Posted December 8, 2008
This intriguing list, with
nifty photos of each gift (like the one below), was posted at Book Hunter's Holiday.
Found via Bibliophile Bullpen.
- Dept. of Book Groups Gone Terribly Wrong
Posted December 9, 2008
Many library users are members of book clubs, and some libraries sponsor book clubs. As those of us who've participated
(or led) such groups can testify, the right interpersonal chemistry in a book club can generate plenty of delightful
experiences. But many of us can also remember dropping out of a book group gone awry. A few familiar-sounding examples of
how that can happen are described in this New York Times
article.
Found via LISNews.
- Website Devoted to Rescuing "Neglected Books" from Total Obscurity
Posted December 9, 2008
Library book selectors and avid book readers who enjoy wandering off the well-trodden (not to mention rather
commercialiezed) trail through the mainstream book-hawking media might want to investigate
The Neglected Books Page, wherein they will find passionate recommendations for various under-appreciated tomes, both
fiction and non-. The site has an intriguing blogroll, too.
Found via LISNews.
- Want to Include a Distinctive Bookmark Along with That Book You're Giving to Someone?
Posted December 9, 2008
It's a bookmark! It's a gift card! Wait, it's both. Pick from 15 styles;
$4 each (plus shipping, if you buy online).
Found via LISNews.
- Some Help with the "Too Many Books, Too Little Time" Dilemma?
Posted December 18, 2008
While scanning through the comments to another warning that the end of book-reading is near, we came
across a link to Flashlight Books: Handpicked Book Recommendations on Hundreds of Topics, which turns
out to be one of those wonderful "list of lists" sites that can save the (remaining) booklover (or his/her theoretically
staunchest ally, the library book selector) loads o' time. Bookloving Internet screen-owners will want to bookmark this
site and visit it often.
The "People of the Book vs. People of the Screen" essay found via LISNews.
- More Best Books Lists for 2008
Posted December 26, 2008
The end of every year abounds in lists of recommended book titles, and here are a few of those lists that conscientious library book selectors
and wish-list-making bibliophiles might wish to mine for prospective purchases:
And just for fun, you might want to take a gander at cracked.com's
13 Most Baffling Book Titles.
Booklover Alerts Posted in 2007
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