Like its print counterpart, Locus Online is your one-stop-shop for pretty much everything you need to know about science fiction and fantasy publishing. If’ it’s been typeset and has a spaceship or a dragon on the cover, it’s been in Locus. (No spam please. I know that those are awful cliches and the that industry is much more sophisticated and stratified than that.)

The website is produced from southern California, independently from the editorial staff of the magazine and features:

• News – Awards nominations and results, obituaries, and major publishing developments. As of January 2009 these are posted in the Locus SF&F Newsblog, with most posts from the Locus Magazine offices in Oakland, CA.
• Monitor – Locus Online‘s weekly to monthly listings of new books and magazines, with descriptions, cover images, links to relevant author and publisher websites, and quotes from reviews; and a weekly compilation of genre books that appear on general bestseller lists.
• Reviews – Selected book reviews from Locus Magazine (typically two per month, plus Graham Sleight’s bimonthly “Yesterday’s Tomorrows” column), plus special-to-Locus Online coverage of significant genre films, with reviews by Gary Westfahl and by Howard Waldrop & Lawrence Person.
• Perspectives – Essays and commentary, including occasional special-to-Locus Online features by Gary Westfahl and others, Cory Doctorow’s bimonthly columns from Locus Magazine, and (as of February 2009), a new Roundtable blog with posts from Locus reviewers and other invited guests.
• Resources – Static and periodically-updated pages of indexes and links, including the Links Portal, listings of forthcoming Conventions and Author Events, selected Forthcoming Books as compiled by Locus Magazine, annual Directories with bibliographic listings by type of books published with links to descriptions, bestseller lists, and reviews; indexes to reviews and interviews that have appeared in Locus Magazine, and the independently compiled Locus Index to Science Fiction, by William G. Contento, and the Locus Index to Science Fiction Awards, by Mark R. Kelly.
• The Magazine – Samples of each issue of Locus Magazine, including the Table of Contents, excerpts from the interviews, and listings of Locus Bestsellers and of New & Notable Books.
• Blinks – Sidebar links to notable reviews, articles, and websites

Steph and Tony are an uber-cute couple in Nashville who created a blog to post random musings.  One of the things they like to post about is books, which is why they’ve been selected as one of our Web Crushes!  Their book reviews are sprightly, interesting, and tend to be on contemporary, recent releases.  If you’re so inclined, they also blog about recipes and pop culture, but the main content of their blog is books and reading (and you can filter to just those using their handy tabs).

If you like informal book review blogs, check out Step and Tony at http://www.stephandtonyinvestigate.com.

Don’t want to let go of your warm fuzzies for the city that never sleeps? You don’t have to! Join the New York Times’ new Big City Book Club and fall in love all over again.

If you work in a public library, you get stumped trying to come up with book group ideas. This is where Lit Lovers introduces itself as your new best friend. In addtion to links to guides and “how-to’s,” what you’re really going to love are the up-to-the-minute recommendations of hot titles. Today they’re promoting:

• Cleopatra (Schiff)
• Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter (Franklin)
• Finkler Question (Jacobson)
• Freedom (Franzen)
• Great House (Krauss)
• Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Skloot)
• Imperfectionists (Rachman)

See what I mean? They’re good!

No Web Crush this week (we’re taking an internet break for Labor Day…um, yeah right), but I wanted to alert you to something that Becky Spratford over at RA for All (one of our all-time crushiest Web Crushes) is working on to assist libraries affected by Hurricane Irene.

Please check out her post Disaster Relief for Vermont Libraries.  Thanks!

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(If you haven’t seen ANY of the Video Music Awards coverage, that’s Lady Gaga as Jo Calderone. Get it?)

Hipster Book Club is an online review journal that aims to cover literature from all different genres, not bestsellers.  In fact, a large percentage of the books they feature are older backlist titles.  (hm, must be why we like them!)

The site also features a number of interesting book-themed articles, and offers a fair amount of criticism – they aren’t simply a book recommendation site.  (The opening line to a review of The Magician King caught my attention – “If I could punch Lev Grossman right now, I would.”)

From their About section:  “This website was created as an offshoot of the LiveJournal community of the same name. Formed in October, 2003, the Hipster Book Club LiveJournal community grew from word of mouth alone and boasts members from a variety of nations, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Germany, Spain, Japan, Honduras, and the Netherlands.”

Excuse the non-book related post, but I just had to spread this around.  As loyal ShelfRenewal readers may know, I (Rebecca) have a bit of an obsession with zombie fiction (um, as does quite a bit of the rest of the reading world, based on how many dang zombie books have been published these last couple of  years!)

What can I say, I’m pretty sure the world’s coming to a very unpretty end shortly, and I want to be fully prepared, so I’m reading all the post-Apocalyptic fiction that I can stomach.  When I came across this couple’s engagement photos... well, they speak for themselves.  Enjoy.

http://www.amandarynda.com/2011/08/zombie-engagement-photos/

Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding may be this fall’s “It” novel. Could part of the appeal be its striking similarity to these other novels featuring a  small white ball of destiny?

Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Things Invisible to See by Nancy Willard

A television adaptation has already been pitched. (Don’t look at me that way, Variety couldn’t resist the puns, either.)

The Bookrageous Podcast on PodBean.com is about being serious about books without always being serious. It’s about having fun with books, making books exciting again, reminding readers why they read, and introducing great people to great books. It’s about books being awesome and people being willing to be a little bit silly in the name of celebrating them. (They’re pretty serious about the awesomeness of books.) In additiont to a roundup of what individual contributers have been reading, the podcast also features great discussions on topics from Literary Pet Peeves or Favorite Underdog Books.  Podcasters include Josh Christie from BrewandBooks.com, Rebecca Joines Schinsky from The Book Lady’s Blog, Ali Colluccio from wonderali.com, and Jenn Northington from The Adventures of Jenn I(n) R(eal) L(ife). Happy Listening!