Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

If a third instance makes a trend, then here’s a new trend: book titles that read like the T-shirts sold in spring-break hot-spots.
Are You There Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea, by Chelsea Handler (2008)
I Drink for a Reason, by David Cross (2009)
You Can’t Drink All Day if You Don’t Start in the Morning, by Celia Rivenbark [...]

Donald Harington has died. If you’re asking yourself “Who was Donald Harington?” you’re not alone–the man the New York Times calls the “Ozark Surrealist” never found a very wide readership during his long career (”Donald Harington, Ozark Surrealist, 73,” by William Grimes). But the readers he did have found him a wonderful writer.
“Don Harington is not an underappreciated novelist,” [...]

 
Given some of the more intense scenes and themes in Margo Lanagan’s dark, boundary-pushing, and extravagantly written Tender Morsels, it wasn’t outrageous to expect something a little scandalous in her acceptance speech at the 2009 Michael L. Printz Awards (administered by ALA Young Adult Services Association and sponsored by Booklist). Instead, Lanagan went for the reverse shocker and offered [...]

Nook, vook, blook, p-book, wovel, poegel . . . am I forgetting anything?
Some in the publishing industry say that, thanks to e-readers such as the Kindle, people are reading more books (”E-Book Fans Keep Format in Spotlight,” by Brad Stone, New York Times). Who, exactly, says this? Well, the manufacturers of the Kindle, but that’s [...]

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 [...]

You may recall that, way back in the middle of last summer (or thereabouts), Time Out Chicago hosted a book launch party for Bill Ott’s new book, The Back Page. Well, Daniel Kraus, whose fingers must be smoking from all the videos he’s been editing of late, put together a nice overview of the event. Unfortunately [...]

Author E. Lockhart isn’t afraid of a good argument, as she made clear in her acceptance speech for The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks at the 2009 Michael L. Printz Awards (administered by ALA’s Young Adult Library Services Association and sponsored by Booklist).  Readers have had wildly different responses to the book’s title character, a prep-school sophomore [...]

There’s no question that the Printz Honor–winning Octavian Nothing duet presents readers with an intellectual challenge. In his National Book Award acceptance speech for The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation; Volume One: The Pox Party, Anderson himself described the books as “a 900-page two volume historical epic for teens, written in [...]

The American West, without a doubt, is one of the most fascinating and intriguing regions of the United States. The vast openness, stark prairies, sheer cliffs and rock faces, and lethally beautiful deserts have a hold on Americans, as well as many people of the world, that is mysterious and unfathomable. The West is the [...]

On Thursday, September 10, Daniel Kraus gave a thumbs-up to a 30-second spot touting Laurie Ann Levin’s God, the Universe, and Where I Fit In. On Saturday, September 12, Bonita Rodriguez posted the following comment:
This is a good one; we viewed it in lit class.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuALxOAL0Ok
The link leads to a trailer for Eva’s Confessions: The MOOD [...]