Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

According to a feature by Mary Jo Murphy in yesterday’s New York Times, Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Sonia Sotomayor share more than just a passion for the law:

It doesn’t take a big clue to deduce that there’s something between Supreme Court women and Nancy Drew of River Heights, Somewhere, U.S.A., the teenage star [...]

Given the amount of time I’ve spent reading, reviewing, and having nightmares about post-apocalyptic fiction, I suppose this may have been inevitable: my short story, “The Read,” appears in the May 15 issue of Booklist as part of our Spotlight on SF/Fantasy. Is post-apocalyptic fiction a suitable subject for satire? Read The Read and let me know.

I’ve often written about what we do at Booklist and how we do it, about our recommend-only policy, the staggering volume of books we review, and the people we’re reviewing for–but, until now, I never had a visual aid.
Fortunately, Books for Youth Associate Editor Daniel Kraus, who in his spare time writes novels and makes documentary films, [...]

When Judith Krug died on April 11, the children’s and young adult literature communities lost both a tireless supporter and a defender. As the director of the Office of Intellectual Freedom and the founder of Banned Books Week, Judith was on the front lines helping libraries keep books in their collections, everything from Harry Potter to [...]

A couple of people passed along this link to an io9 post about the new Dean Koontz book, Relentless.
A bad review must have really gotten under Dean Koontz’s skin. His new book, Relentless, is about an evil book critic who gives a nice novelist a bad review — and then becomes a monster.
The premise recalls a [...]

A post yesterday on Galleycat, about a bookstore’s cancellation of Jayanti Tamm’s first public reading from Cartwheels in a Sari, made me think of a similar memoir, Kyria Abrahams’ I’m Perfect, You’re Doomed, which made me think of Kevin Roose’s The Unlikely Disciple–which, as luck would have it, was the subject of another recent Galleycat post. Coincidence–or [...]

Those blood-curdling shrieks you hear in the distance are the battle cries of School Library Journal’s Battle of the Kids’ Books. SLJ has gathered a panel of celebrity referees to judge each round of duke-’em-outs between some of the big youth titles of 2008. A bit late, perhaps, but a fun idea nonetheless, and already [...]

In a Los Angeles Times article about homework (”Some schools are cutting back on homework,” by Seema Mehta), Eileen Horowitz, head of the Temple Israel of Hollywood Day School, had this to say:
“As adults, if every book we ever read, we had to write a report on — would that encourage our reading or discourage it?”
I [...]

My review of Bernard Beckett’s impressive first book, Genesis, is in the April 1 issue of Booklist. Cleaning off my desk, I saw a scribble that reminded me of a comment that I couldn’t quite fit into the review. I predicted the ending about halfway through the book (which isn’t to say it’s predictable, necessarily, [...]

From the Guardian’s Books Blog:
There are certain turns of phrase in the modern reviewers’ arsenal that are guaranteed to turn the stomach of any reader. It is these descriptions that are then shoved on a dust jacket or printed on a giant advertising board slotted on the wall of a London tube station. “Unputdownable” is [...]