Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

I have a confession to make. I was among the many who thought romance novels were silly. Formulaic, pure fluff. Damsels in distress. Ladies in long dresses and painful bodices. Men in puffy shirts. Then I became Booklist’s romance editor. I scrutinized the wonderfully varied array of romance novels that arrived in the mail. I attended a Romance Writers of America [...]

From Bookends:
Cindy and Lynn: Recently on YALSA-BK listserv there was a request for suggestions from a librarian who wanted a list of “Clean Vampire” novels. Now, we appreciate the efforts to satiate the Stephenie Meyer Twilight fans and are working hard to do that ourselves, but really, clean vampire stories? It’s our feeling that if [...]

Writing in the New York Times, Motoko Rich asks, “For Books, Is Obama the New Oprah?” If he is, he’d better get more specific or he’s going to drive everyone crazy.
When President-elect Barack Obama appeared on “60 Minutes” on CBS on Sunday in his first interview since winning the election, he mentioned having read “a new [...]

To avoid unintended merriment at my expense, I’ll keep this short: Cynthia Crossen thinks A Fraction of the Whole, by Steve Toltz, is too long (”A Book in Need of a Good Editor,” The Wall Street Journal):
But the blurbers and reviewers were so enthusiastic — Mr. Toltz was compared to Mark Twain, John Irving, Martin Amis, Tom [...]

And now for something completely different.
Looking for a successful post-9/11 novel, Adam Kirsch finds one in the 19th century: Dostoyevsky’s Demons (”Demons Inner and Outer,” New York Sun). He asks:
Why is it that our novelists, despite their best efforts, cannot write a politically informed, psychologically convincing book about Islamic terrorism? Why is it so difficult to bring [...]

Sunday, June 29, the morning of the Booklist Adult Books Readers’ Advisory Forum: Post-9/11 Fiction (that’s the short title; I’d give you the longer version but we’d have to change this blog’s hosting plan to include more bandwidth), I thought I’d look over my remarks one more time while I ate breakfast. So, I went [...]

I’ve been meaning to take a look at BookLamp for awhile, a site that describes itself as being like Pandora for books. Where LibraryThing helps readers find books based on similarity of taste, BookLamp takes a more technical approach, scanning the books and, well, here it is in their words:
So the first thing that we did was [...]

I’ve been enjoying the posts at Book Group Buzz. Yesterday, Misha Stone’s “When Fiction and Reality Collide” addressed–well, you’re probably one step ahead of me on that one. Says Stone:
As a Fiction Librarian, I often get a little annoyed when patrons distinguish the difference between fiction and non-fiction as "fake" versus "real."
As a fiction reviewer, [...]

 
Just one post today–to let you know about the launch of Booklist Online’s second blog, Book Group Buzz. We had some interesting conversations at the old Booklist Book Club, but what people kept telling us was that what they really wanted were resources to help them with their in-person (I disdain the digirati’s use of [...]

Two books to consider:
Rengen by Patricia Martin
Natural Born Charmer by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Besides having a flat-out fantastic name, Patricia Martin’s book explores a very interesting idea about a cultural shift in America: the creation, rise, and influence of a cultural consumer.
… individuals who are hungry for innovative ideas and ways to express them… a cultural [...]