Once again, we’re here to round up and remind you what we’ve been up to!

Over on the Library Journal blog, Karen gave us some awesome possibilities for new mashup novels;  satisfied your needs for some Law and Order readalikes; and brought Pure Drivel to your attention.

Rebecca crushed on A Bookshelf Monstrosity;  puzzled over the real-life story behind Story of My Life; and pointed you towards Dark Fields.

Rebecca and a group of the “rock stars of Readers Advisory (including David Wright, Kaite Mediatore Stover, Barry Trott, and Neil Hollands) performed “The Top 5 of the Top 5″ in Portland for the PLA conference.

She also got a chance to wax poetic on one of her all-time favorite library topics, weeding, when she presented “Feel the Need… to Weed” for the Illinois State Library’s On the Front Lines conference in Springfield.  Hate weeding?  Does your library need help?  Give Rebecca a shout, and let her indulge in one of her passions.

Karen and Rebecca brought the house down once more with the updated version of “Readers, Writers, Books and Blogs” for the Adult Reading Round Table… we like to travel, hint hint!  (and we’re pretty cheap!)

Until next time… don’t forget to keep track of the Library Journal blog, and thank you for your support.

Karen and Rebecca

I don’t know where you are, but where I am today (Chicago) it’s abut 80 degrees and simply gorgeous.  Time to start thinking about those beach reads, right!  (Right, until it snows next week…)

In today’s BookSmack newsletter, you’ll find links to this year’s hot Women’s Fic and Men’s Fic summer reading picks, but since we here at ShelfRenewal are all about the backlist… here are links to Summer Fiction Roundups of years past.  Enjoy!

2009:  In the Good Old Summertime

2008: Summer Getaways for Chicks: Eleven Hot Staycation Reads

2008: Testosterone-Fueled Fiction:  Ten Action-Packed Summer Reads for Guys

2006:  Summer Chick Lit

Ah, Kitty Kelley.  There you go, talkin’ smack about Oprah.  Sigh.  And as librarians over the country scramble to fill the holds on your gossipy tome, perhaps some patrons may also stop to ask us about Oprah’s previous Book Club selections.

The venerable Powell’s bookstore has the best online list I have found, with brief annotations and links to their catalog information.

http://www.powells.com/prizes/oprah.html

Et Tu, Babe by Mark Leyner is one of the funniest, most absurd books I’ve ever read. In this steroid-fueled satire, Leyner writes about the larger-than-life success of author Mark Leyner after publishing his first book My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist. (Leyner’s actual first book.) The humor is often crude and based on exaggerated body parts, and the plot is intentionally preposterous. It’s as if the book were written on a dare. For readers who like this kind of stuff (and I do) a good dose of the humor comes from the shock value. I’m not the only one who likes him. Jay McInerney said, "Leyner is a twisted wizard, a genre-busting virtuoso, working at the outer edge of narrative convention."

In a recent New York Times article, Motoko Rich discovers "In E-Book Era, You Can’t Even Judge a Cover." Kindles, Nooks, and now the iPad show us anonymous back panels when we look around the waiting room or the plane. I still remember a flight to New York several years ago where it appeared that every woman on the flight was given a free Anita Shreve trade paperback before boarding. (I’m sure today those same women are given their choice of Jodi Picoult or Stephenie Meyer.) Just think of how anonymous our book choices will become in a digital era.

Here’s what this article has got me thinking. ..

1. How will we tell our house guests who we think we are if we don’t have bookshelves to fill?
(I’ll admit it. The hardcover John Irving and hipster McSweeneys books are in the living room and the chick lit is stored upstairs. )

2. What new sources of commonality or curiosity will we use to break the ice with strangers?
(Sure, you can always compliment a woman on her handbag, but saying, "Oh, I loved that book" is more likely to start an actual conversation.)

3. How dramatically will readers’ advisory change when we’re recommending that a patron go home and download digital content rather than showing him an engaging cover, putting the book in his hand, and watching his facial expression as he skims the first few paragraphs of copy on the flap?

What do you think?

Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind is a blog dedicated to mystery and crime fiction.  Writer and reviewer Sarah Weinman obviously loves her mysteries, and has lots to say about them. She picks up news on up and coming books, as well as discussing older favorites as well. Take a look at http://www.sarahweinman.com/.

In Bobby Rex’s Greatest Hit by Mariane Gingher, it’s 1961 and Pally Thompson’s life is turned around when Bobby Rex scores a risqué hit song claiming that he also scored with Pally back in high school.  Trouble is, it’s not true – but good luck trying to convince anyone in Pally’s small town otherwise.  Charming, and totally evocative of the era, this is lovely Southern Fiction. You could pair this with the similarly-themed YA novel Audrey, Wait by Robin Benway and the chick lit novels Dedication by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, and Off the Record by Jennifer O’Connell.

I don’t want to step on Rebecca’s toes, but I have to share one of my all-time favorite women’s fiction books, Out of Love by Victoria Clayton. Daisy and Min’s Oxford friendship dissolved when Min found Daisy in bed with her boyfriend. Fifteen years later, the two patch things up at a reunion, and Min invites Daisy to come spend a weekend with her family at their lovely country house. An injury forces Daisy to extend her stay and look after Min’s charming husband and adorable children while Min’s on the mend. Soon, Daisy doesn’t want to give up the ready-made family she’s stumbled into. This engaging British comedy of manners will have the reader rooting for both women and crushed to realize that one of them must end the book disappointed. 

Ian McEwan’s latest literary novel, Solar,  came out last week and stars a selfish physicst who can understand the most complex elements of the universe but is confounded by those around him. Readers intrigued by this books’s numerous reviews and smarty-pants premise may enjoy these other tales of scientific discovery and disappointment.

American Prometheus  by Kai Bird
This Pulitzer Prize-winning biography illuminates the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer–from his early work in the international physics community, to his leadership in Los Alamos, to his deep and public regret for unleashing the atomic bomb on the world.

Intuition by Allegra Goodman
Post-doc Robin questions the authenticity of her ex-boyfriend’s cancer research, exposing their entire Boston research lab to national scrutiny and forcing all the scientists working there to reevaluate who they trust and if they believe that ends justify the means.

The Age of Wonder: How the romantic generation discovered the beauty and terror of science by Richard Holmes
Holmes uses biographies of a handful of late 18th-century British scientists to illustrate how the quest for truth and beauty inspired the astronomists, chemists, and other researchers of the era.

A Beautiful Mind: A biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr., winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, 1994 by Sylvia Nasar
Nash developed a revolutionary mathematical theorem at 21 that put him in an elite class of economists. At 31 he experience the first of many schizophrenic breakdowns that would debilitate him for decades. It took 30 years for his condition to stabilize. leading to his work being recognized with a Nobel Prize in 1994.

Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers
A reference librarians and a computer technician/art historian work together to uncover why molecular biologist Stuart Ressler stopped his ground-breaking work in the 1960s and now spends his nights supervising work in a Brooklyn data-processing facility.

In Free Fall by Juli Zeh and Christine Lo
Considered Germany’s foremost young literary talent, Zeh’s new book two competing physicists strained friendship takes a hit one one of their children is kidnapped. Detective Superintendent Schilf’s investigation leads to a painful understanding of his own personal life.

Mark Athitakis’ American Fiction Notes is, no coincidence here, written by D.C.-based Mark Athitakis (ath-ih-TACK-iss), a writer, editor, critic, and blogger who has spent more than a dozen years in journalism. This is more of an "under the radar" blog with links to off-beat literary news and long reviews of books of personal interest to the author. A good Friday-afternoon visit.