Booklist Online: More than 130,000 book reviews for librarians, book groups, and book lovers - from the trusted experts at the American Library Association

Being celebrated by the literati as the most venerable of critics, we editors are inevitably invited to stand before the assembled gala crowd, looking smashing in our tuxes and holding our martinis, to give our opinion of the about-to-be-published book. Sometimes this goes well. Other times it goes really, really, really badly. To give you [...]

I’ve always said it will be time to quit this job when I don’t feel at least a tingle as a new season’s books starting arriving. Spring 2012, a trickle of books  a few weeks ago, has turned into a steady stream, and everywhere I turn, there’s something new I can’t wait to read. Meg Rosoff is [...]

Earlier this year, my esteemed colleague Dan Kraus wrote a manifesto (My 2011 YA Wishlist) outlining the seven things we need to see less of in teen fiction. Well, in the spirit of making this a regular feature around here, here’s another report from what we’ll be calling the Booklist Book Crimes division. Think of it [...]

Decided last night to watch The Best of Everything (1959), a Valley of the Dolls-style movie about three young secretaries slaving away at a New York City publishing house and trying to work their way up to the vaunted position of “EDITOR.”  I was dumbstruck by the movie’s unfaltering realism. Why, this is exactly how [...]

Robert Pinsky had a great piece in Slate yesterday about a literary hatchet job . . . from 1818. The lessons we can take from it, however, are timeless. In “How Not to Write a Book Review,” Pinksy enumerates the three rules of book reviewing: 1. The review must tell what the book is about. [...]

Readers who followed along to “Desperately Seeking DeSario,” my article about tracking down the forgotten author of one of my all-time favorite novels, take note: Joseph P. DeSario’s Sanctuary is now available in a brand-new e-book edition. Random House has a collection of links where you can buy it from a variety of retailers, including [...]

If you haven’t read the Mystery Showcase feature “Desperately Seeking DeSario,” read it right this instant. Don’t do it for me; do it for Joseph P. DeSario, the author of Sanctuary–I novel I fell in love with when I was 15 and read repeatedly until three months ago when I tracked down DeSario and discovered [...]

( . . . and we sure don’t say that very often.) Booklist seeks experienced fiction reviewers with critical acumen and knowledge of public-library audience. E-mail writing samples (preferably published work) and reviewing preferences (general, crime, historical fiction) to Joanne Wilkinson, editor at large, at jwilkinson@ala.org. Good luck!

The Booklist hallway. Where are we?  Off writing our 2011 manifestos. It is entirely possible that we in the Booklist youth brigade read more YA books than anyone else in the freakin’ world. You can’t do this and not start to feel a pang of despair when you’ve seen the same plot device, character quirk, [...]

Three years ago, I made a public vow (well, it appeared on this blog, anyway) to read a book by Harlan Coben. I had read a profile of him in the Atlantic (“Paperback Writer,” by Eric Konigsberg) that, while not damning him as some have damned James Patterson, did portray Coben as being a guy who cared as [...]