PLA press release 2/1/2010:
The Allie Beth Martin Award recognizes a public librarian for demonstrating a range and depth of knowledge about books and other library materials and the distinguished ability to share that knowledge. This year’s award of $3,000, donated by Baker & Taylor, will be presented to Rebecca Vnuk for her unwavering dedication to books of any cover.
http://pla.org/ala/mgrps/divs/pla/plaawards/awardwinners/index.cfm
Comments OffIt took a little time (and a little complaining on our part…) but the feed for our new setup at Library Journal is now in working order!
So please add us to your feed reader from the LJ site, (http://www.libraryjournal.com/RSS, you’ll have to scroll to the bottom to find us) or, add the feed URL directly to your favorite reader (Karen’s partial to iGoogle, while Rebecca’s a Bloglines fan, but hey, we like ‘em all and think they are a brilliant invention.)
http://feeds.feedburner.com/ShelfRenewalBlog
Subscribe away!!
…and thanks!
Dear Loyal Readers,
Well, it didn’t take long, we found ourselves a sugar daddy. So it’s time to move out of the Barbie Dream House… will you please come visit us at www.libraryjournal.com/shelfrenewal?
The look is a little less luxe, but we promise you all the same content you first fell in love with. (and, momma always said looks don’t matter, it’s what’s inside that counts.)
We’re not leaving you entirely, either…check back here at www.shelfrenewal.com for updates on what Karen and Rebecca are doing in libraryland. For example, we’d be thrilled if you invited us to come and play at your library for a training or a staff day. We can provide information as well as entertainment – see what ILA had to say about us!
http://illinoislibrariesmatter.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/readers-writers-books-and-blogs/
So head on over to www.libraryjournal.com/shelfrenewal for our regularly scheduled blog postings. Don’t forget to update your feedreader as well if you’re a regular – and thanks!!
Karen and Rebecca
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I’m not saying Grisham isn’t a good storyteller. I’m not saying that at his best he’s not a great storyteller. And I’m not saying that I got a free copy of Grisham’s book before it was available to the public as, apparently, Conroy routinely does. I’m just saying that once there was a little boy who said he kept seeing wolves, but there actually were no wolves, so everybody stopped believing him. And then, this one time, there was a wolf. That’s all.
noneShelf Awareness: Daily Enlightenment for the Book Trade. OK, so this isn’t technically a website or a blog, it’s a daily e-newsletter, but hey, if you don’t want to bother subscribing to it, you can go to the site and just treat it like a blog by reading the daily issues. ShelfAwareness is meant for the book trade, so you’ll get insider news, information on upcoming books, and pertinent ads from publishers. A ridiculous amount of information in a handy daily little package.
oneFor our inaugural Dusty post, let me remind you of their purpose. We don’t mean dusty as in old, necessarily. Just as in, sitting around on the shelf collecting dust. Possibly a candidate for the weeding cart! Oh horrors! As a librarian, it breaks my heart to see books languishing on the shelf that I know would be checked out and enjoyed if only someone would find them. So we would like to pay tribute to those books waiting patiently for their reader. Our hope is, if you’re a librarian, you’ll pull these guys off the shelf and stick them on your endcap or your next display. Or perhaps you’ll handsell it to the next patron who asks you for something good to read. If you’re a reader, we hope to entice you to look beyond the bestseller list and ask about these books.
And with that, we bring you…
Tully by Paullina Simons. 1994.
Simon’s first novel had a large print run and garnered positive reviews, but quickly hit the remainder table. Possibly thanks to it’s door-stop length (594 p!) and fairly bland cover. It doesn’t help that Simons went on to write all over the map, from historical Russian fiction to twisty thriller to college noir. But if you can get this book into a reader’s hands, they just might fall for tough-girl Tully. Her lower-class Topeka, KS adolescence is marred by an abusive mother, and the suicide of a close friend. Things don’t get much better when she begins an affair to escape her reality. You know, I can’t understand why this wasn’t an Oprah selection! It sounds bleak and depressing, but it’s really an honest and well-spun story with great characters.
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Glass Castle phenom Jeannette Walls arrived on the New York Times’ Best Seller list again last week with her new “true-life novel” Half Broke Horses. In this slightly fictionalized account, she speaks in the voice of her wise-cracking, horse-breaking, school-teaching, plane-flying maternal grandmother Lily Casey Smith.
As a tomboy in West Texas, Lily is a daddy’s girl who roars through life with great whoops of confidence and a well-honed sense of adventure. A boarding school attempt at civilization leaves her no more ladylike, but inspires her to become a teacher. Which, at 14, she does. Lily’s struggles to fit in to the conservative small towns that will take an adolescent teacher exemplify the unwillingness to compromise that will define her. Through marriages, floods, blizzards, men named Rooster who fall hopeless in love with her, poker games, and hearses turned into school buses, Lily stands her ground, even when stepping aside might have been the smarter choice.
Readers wanting more stories of strong women making their own way in the world will enjoy:
Away by Amy Bloom
After her family is killed, Lillian Leyb leaves Russia and comes to the United States in 1924. Doing whatever it takes to survive, Lillian finds new determination when she learns that her daughter may still be alive. Though much bleaker than Half Broke Horses, Lillian is a tough-willed woman storming her way through America’s often inhospitable landscape.
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich
After a convent deflowering, common-law marriage, and bank robbery abduction, Agnes DeWitt assumes the identity of Father Modeste, a priest on his way to serve on a North Dakota Ojibwe reservation. There she spends the rest of her life, living as a man and keeping watch over those around her.
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg
Eighty-six-year-old Ninny Threadgoode puts Evelyn Couch’s midlife crisis in perspective as she tells her the story of Idgie and Ruth. The whole town of depression-era Whistle Stop, Alabama, was moved by the change they saw in brash, independent Idgie when she fought for gentle Ruth and her son Stump.
A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel
Like Lily Casey, Haven Kimmel’s 1960s childhood home was small (Mooreland, Indiana. Population 300) but her world was grand. A little girl who often displays more sass than sense, I once told a friend, “It’s like reading Ramona Quimby’s autobiography. But it’s real!”
These Is My Words by Nancy Turner
I swear, if you put Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennett in 1881 Arizona you’d have 17-year-old Sarah Agnes Prine. As Sarah and her family travel back to the Arizona Territories from a disastrous trip to Texas, she meets the outwardly disagreeable Captain Jack Elliot. And there’s banter and misunderstandings and Indians. And it’s wonderful.
What’s that you say? It’s Friday AGAIN? Well then it must be time for our Web Crush of the Week…
This week’s crush is Reading the Past.
This blog features previews of upcoming historical fiction as well as backlist reviews. Sarah Johnson is tareference/electronic resources librarian at a midwestern university and the book review editor for the Historical Novels Review; she also reviews and writes about books for Booklist, NoveList, and CHOICE, among others. Some of the reasons we enjoy her blog are: she has an unpretentious style; you can tell she totally LOVES historical fiction; and, there just aren’t very many historical fiction blogs out there, so if you’re going to do one, do it right! And she does.
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Covet, the first book in J.R. Ward’s new “Fallen Angels” series debuted on the New York Times’ Paperback Best Seller list last week.
In the latest from the erotic paranormal romance writer (her words), tough guy Jim Heron’s performance on seven tasks will determine the fate of the world. If he’s successful, the angels win and hell and its minions disappear. If he fails, the demons win and the world as we know it and all the angels up in heaven go bye-bye.
His first mission is to save the soul of driven businessman Vin diPietro. At first Heron thinks he is supposed to help Vin commit to his mysterious girlfriend Devina. But no, Vin’s soulmate is really Marie-Terese, an abused single mother on the run from her her powerful ex who only works as a prostitute to keep her son safe. (And, yes, the movie “Pretty Woman” is referenced half a dozen times.)
The book is a traditional romance in that the main story becomes the relationship between Vin and Marie-Terese and they do get their happily ever after. There are several steamy sex scenes, but fewer than one might expect in nearly 500 pages from a best-selling erotic romance writer. Faithful readers of Wards’ Black Dagger Brotherhood series will enjoy the focus on alpha-males on a mission. Fans of both series may also enjoy:
Lara Adrian
Midnight Breed series
Book 1 “Kiss of Midnight”
Keri Arthur
Riley Jenson series
Book 1 “Full Moon Rising”
Christina Dodd
Chosen Ones series
Book 1 “Storm of Visions”
Christine Feehan
Carpathians series
Book 1 “Dark Prince”
Sherrilyn Kenyon
Dark-Hunter series
Book 1 “Night Pleasures”
Alexis Morgan
Paladins fo Darkness series
Book 1 “Dark Protector”
C.E. Murphy
Negotiator Trilogy
Book 1 “Heart of Stone”
Lynn Viehl
Darkyn series
Book 1 “If Angels Burn”
The recent news coverage of the boy in the balloon, which turned out to be a hoax, had me thinking about unreliable narrators/twist endings. So today’s list features books where you can’t be sure of who is telling the truth. Don’t worry, I won’t spoil anything for you (like the time I wanted to read Primal Fear, so I asked my husband if he had ever read it or watched the movie, and he immediately replied, “Oh, the one where ********?” Sigh.) Then again, if you like that sort of thing, then we should chat about my dysfunctional relationship with MoviePooper.com.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie is undeniably a (if not THE) classic example.
Hercule Poirot investigates a series of mysterious deaths, culminating in the murder of one Roger Ackroyd. A list of suspects is quickly assembled, with our narrator knowing more than they’re willing to tell.
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk.
Our unnamed narrator hates his life and everything in it. Then he meets Tyler Durden, a charismatic yet psycho young man who changes everything. I’d tell you more, but the first rule of Fight Club is, You Don’t Talk About Fight Club.
The Basic Eight by Daniel Handler.
The debut novel of the man who would become Lemony Snicket, this is the story of precocious Flannery Culp and her high school clique, who call themselves The Basic Eight. When the group falls under the influence of drugs and absinthe, murder ensues – or does it? Is Flan a psychopath or simply a drama queen? At turns darkly hysterical and deeply disturbing, Flan is one hell of an unreliable narrator that you won’t soon forget.
Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane.
Shutter Island is an old military base that is now a hospital for the criminally insane. U.S. Marshal Teddy and his partner, Chuck are sent to investigate the disappearance of a young woman from the facility, but discover there are more sinister things at work on the island – or do they? Lehane throws a number of red herrings, odd plot twists, and a hurricane in to the mix, leaving the reader wondering exactly what is going on.
Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff.
In this dark, fast-paced satiric novel, a strange young woman named Jane is being held in a Las Vegas jail cell and interrogated for murder. She claims that she works for a secret government organization: the Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons. Meaning, her job is to kill people, “Bad Monkeys”, who aren’t… nice. As her tale unfolds, it becomes less and less clear if she is criminally insane, or if she’s actually telling the truth.
Atonement by Ian McEwan.
Our narrator here is pre-teen Briony, jealous of her glamorous older sister, Cecilia. When a confused and jealous Briony tells a lie that spirals out of control, she changes the destinies of Cecilia and their childhood friend Robbie, as well as her own. Personally, I would have liked a some more action here (and really didn’t need 2 pages of description about the lawn and a fountain…) but literary fiction lovers will devour this all the way through the twist at the end.
Primal Fear by William Diehl.
When Aaron, an altar boy, is accused of murdering a Catholic Archbishop, an unscrupulous lawyer takes the case in order to gain publicity for himself. But when Aaron confesses to the crime under the influence of a dual personality disorder, the trial becomes even more sensational, with a stunning conclusion.
The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian.
Narrator Laurel has survived a brutal attack while biking on an isolated trail. Some years later, she comes across photographs taken by a homeless man, and among them is a picture of her on her bike. She becomes obsessed with finding out more about the photographer, including how on earth he may be connected to her. But is she telling us everything we need to know?