- Another Website for Keeping Current with What's Happening in the Book Publishing World
Posted January 3, 2009
A year ago, a former editor and a former publisher of Library Journal launced a website/blog for helping librarians
navigate intelligently through the great marketing machine of the U.S. publishing industry. Read the site's
self-description and examples of its publishing-related scoops and predictions for 2008 and you'll probably decide you can't
afford NOT to bookmark Nora Rawlison's and Fred Ciporen's Early Word.
We're just added this website to "LibraryLand's" list of frequently-used sources.
Found via OPLIN 4Cast.
- List of Top 20 Science Fiction Novels
Posted January 8, 2009
This list, touted as "the
20 sci fi novels that will change your life" is hardly that - especially as the majority of them just happen to have been
published within the past 10 years - but it - and the additional titles suggested by readers - is a great tool for quickly
compiling a short purchase list of sci fi novels that should probably be in every public library fiction collection.
Found via the AFPLS Blog
via Readers Advisory Online via
Conversational Reading.
- British Writer John Mortimer Dead at 85
Posted January 20, 2009
The New York Times' obiturary, published this past Saturday, is
here.
Found via Bibliophile Bullpen.
- Writer Hortense Calisher Dead at 97
Posted January 21, 2009
The New York Times obituary, published last week, is
here.
Found via Bibliophile Bullpen.
- The 1000 Novels You Simple MUST Read...
Posted January 21, 2009
OK, you booklist-trawlers (including library fiction selectors) out there, here's a whale of a list
for you: a grab-bag of numerous themed booklists posted by the UK Guardian's columnists, with a grand total of 1,000
titles. Sure, some of these lists are skewed toward British readers, but there are plenty of candidates here for U.S. public (and personal) libraries here.
Found via Library Stuff via
January Magazine.
- "Reading Trails" Capitalizes on Reader-Created Title Suggestions
Posted January 30, 2009
If you've ever found yourself sucked deep down into Amazon.com's "Listmania" feature and profited by the experience, you're
going to love Reading Trails, a sort of "Listmania" on steroids.
The site allows readers who join the site to create lists on any infinite variety of topics, and, more importantly, to
discover topics that include the same title. That's how this site serves as a quick Reader Advisory resource: type in a
title you (or someone else) read and really liked, and you can get a list of "read-alikes" along a host of different angles
other than the mere plot (or subject) of the book. The site also allows you to create a list of books you've read, are
reading, or want to read. Details.
Found via OPLIN4Cast.
- The Zombiefied Austen: Clever Literary Mashup...or Disgusting Literary Ripoff?
Posted February 3, 2009
 Quirk Books will soon publish a rather radically transmogrified version of Pride
and Prejudice: the original text augmented with a parallel plotline of the indominable Jane battling zombies running
amok in her little corner of the world.
As you imagine the scenarios of (a) purchasing this item for your library, knowing full well it will be in high demand, and/or
(b) lending it out some day next fall (say) to some Actual Patron standing on the other side of the service desk, do these
scenarios excite you or depress you?
Is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies a creative homage or merely another dismal trashing of yet another literary
treasure? Will the new book introduce a whole new audience to the pleasures wrought by Ms. Austen, an audience who might
otherwise have ignored her exceptional (unaugmented) novel? Do you look forward to reading this novel yourself, or would you
not touch it with a barge pole? Perhaps even more telling, are you already looking forward to seeing the movie? Is the
prospect of stocking this book just one of the many things that makes working in a public library so delightful...or is it
more evidence that you have joined the ranks of those who feel they may have Lived Too Long?
Whatever your reactions are to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, we can probably agree that this sort of thing sheds
new light on why most authors and their heirs are such stubborn defenders of copyright laws, and that the publication of this
book is a particularly vivid example of what can happen to any novel that dwells (as they all inevitably do) in that spooky
and vulnerable - and sometimes lucrative - place called The Public Domain.
Found via Paper Cuts.
- Booklover Alert: Another Beloved British Author's Home Opens as Public Museum
Posted February 25, 2009
Agatha Christie fanatics can now start booking their flights for England: the house in Devon where she summered for 30 years has
been restored and is now open to the adoring public. The Guardian has the
details.
Found via
Bibliophile Bullpen.
- Dept. of Book-Themed Gifts: Behold, The Book-Purse!
Posted April 22, 2009
Caitlin Phillips' dreamed up a "novel idea" for recycling books and selling them as fashion accessories. Voila! A
practical - and, for Phillips, a profitable - way to route a few defunct library books away from the nearest dumpster.
(We're especially impressed with Phillips' equally brilliant idea for lining her purses with end-papers-esque fabric.)
National Public Radio chose to air this
story on Earth Day 2009 (today).
Mayhap some AFPL employee could get hold of one of these things and use it in a, um, book display for Earth Day next year?
Or even sooner than that - whenever it's time for another display of library materials about recycling.
Found via LISNews.
Booklover Alerts posted in 2008
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