Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

Terry Pratchett’s Nation is so exciting and funny that’s it’s almost too easy to forget the tragedy at its center. Young Mau is paddling back to his tiny island nation after spending a month alone as part of his manhood ritual. When he gets there he finds that everyone has been wiped out by a [...]

It’s been so long since I’ve posted that I had to dust off the blog’s dashboard before I could start. And, somehow, my fingers got stuck inside the computer monitor, and it was hours before the IT department could come to my desk and set me free. Very embarrassing.
The real problem has been a combination of late-summer [...]

Any kid who’s lost a tooth (or is waiting to lose a tooth) will enjoy Jenny Meyerhoff’s Third Grade Baby, about a girl who worries that she’s too old for a visit from the tooth fairy. Now students have a chance to win a visit with the author in person.
This month Meyerhoff is holding a contest, and [...]

Gotta keep up with the Joneses (er. Krauses) here on Likely Stories, so consider this the inaugural launch of Webcomics Wednesdays to align with Book Trailer Thursdays by my esteemed colleague and hall-mate, Dan Kraus.
While I’m not a huge fan of Harvey Pekar’s (though in the photo on my ALA ID card I look surprisingly similar to [...]

Are there statistics about library patrons who listen to NPR? I have the feeling there’s a big overlap. My ears pricked up this morning when Susan Stamberg began describing the favorite cafe of a writer I much admire, Eduardo Galeano, who lives in Montevideo, Uruguay. Stamberg’s conversation with the brilliant and controverisal writer is worth a listen.  And here’s [...]

In case you were unable to attend the first-ever Booklist Online Forum, “Books and Blogs: Made for Each Other?” in Chicago this month, panelist Mary Burkey recorded the proceedings and very generously shared the audio with me. You can listen to it here.
Librarian, blogger, and good guy Rick Roche also posted a wrapup on his blog, ricklibrarian.
Got [...]

I have been swamped–SWAMPED–the past few weeks, editing newsletters, mining data, writing reviews, and preparing for and attending Annual Conference. I say that not to complain but to account for my near-absence from both the blogosphere and the twitterdome. This absence pains me, because the news has been full of my kind of blogfodder. As I am an [...]

Yesterday, Ilene and I ducked out of work at the end of the afternoon to catch a screening of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Our impressions were pretty mixed. Both of us agreed that this film is probably best left to die-hard fans. Here’s what Ilene had to say at the end:
It’s all raging [...]

Everyone coming to Chicago for ALA’s Annual Conference this week undoubtedly has a full schedule already–but here’s a late-breaking, must-attend event: a launch party, sponsored by Time Out Chicago, for Bill Ott’s brand-new book, The Back Page.
Bill, who is of course Editor and Publisher of Booklist, will be interviewed live on stage by Frank Sennett, Editor-in-Chief of Time Out [...]

It used to hold that one of the reasons you became a writer was that you were the sort who ducked out of photographs and preferred to communicate through quill-written correspondence. These days, though, these Salingeresque avoidance techniques won’t win you much love from your publisher–and probably won’t push many books, either.
So Penguin’s the Screening [...]