Keir Graff and editors from Booklist's adult and youth departments write candidly about books, book reviewing, and the publishing industry
Wednesday, January 27, 2010 11:44 am Reid Wins Costa Posted by: Courtney Jones
With Reid’s A Scattering named Costa’s Book of the Year, Colm Toibin continues to be a bridesmaid. Albeit a bridesmaid £5,000 richer. Reid’s book of poetry, an account of his wife’s struggle with cancer and eventual death, won in an upset over Toibin’s Brooklyn.
Unlike last year’s winner, the panel of judges had nothing but glowing things to say about A Scattering:
Novelist Josephine Hart, who chaired the panel of judges, said his winning book, A Scattering was “good bordering on great,” and that when she said great she meant the likes of Yeats and Browning. “It is devastating piece of work and all of us on the jury felt it was a book we would wish everybody to read.”
Hart said the winner, decided by an 11-person jury, had been chosen by a “substantial” majority. The dissenters were happy for it to win, she said. (”Christopher Reid wins Costa book prize,” by Mark Brown, The Guardian)
Tuesday, January 26, 2010 11:55 am What to Read at Work Posted by: Keir Graff
On the Guardian’s Books Blog, Toby Lichtig bemoans bad weather’s effect on workday reading: when you can’t go outside at lunch, just where and how are you supposed to get any reading done? He also identifies five books not to read on your lunch break – because they bring with them “a horrible sense of deja vu”:
I read at my desk all the time, although only on lunch hour (even at a book-review journal we’re too busy to read), and what I read is determined more by what’s being published soon than my own personal whim. If publishers suddenly stopped publishing, I’d probably read more old books about pool – but then I’d be out of a job and I’d have all day to read.
What factors do you consider when bringing a book to work? Which help the day go faster (Lichtig suggests Bertrand Russell’s In Praise of Idleness and Tom Hodgkinson’s How To Be Free) and which are best avoided?
Tuesday, January 26, 2010 10:29 am National Book Critics Circle Announces 2009 Nominees Posted by: Courtney Jones
On Saturday, the National Book Critics Circle gave nods to the best in fiction, nonfiction, autobiography, biography, poetry, and criticism, including Booklist’s own Donna Seaman.
For the complete list of finalists, visit the NBCC’s blog. Winners will be announced on March 11.
The Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) also gave out awards in Boston. Winners include Adriana Trigiani whose novel Very Valentine took top honors in the women’s fiction categoryon the 2010 Reading List. Instead of giving a speech, Trigiani called her mother and gave away a prize:
Thursday, January 21, 2010 8:00 am Minority Report: Library is the New Cool Posted by: Vanessa Bush
I was thrilled to read the review of This Book is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All by Marilyn Johnson and see how the image of librarians may be shifting into cool. Anybody who loves books and libraries doesn’t need to be convinced that librarians are cool.
I particularly hope the news filters into the culture of young black men. Recently, while reading the newsletter on the web site for ALA’s Black Caucus, I ran across the unhappy statistic that 0.5 percent of the nation’s 110,000 librarians are black men. I’d never thought about it but was certainly aware that it was rare to see a black man behind the librarian’s desk, so rare that I guess that’s why I’d never thought about it. The newsletter featured profiles of several black men on staff at university libraries, community libraries and the Library of Congress.
So, I do hope the news reaches more young black men. Meanwhile, I struggle with the two of my own to get them reading more, whether they are destined for librarianship or not. The younger one, at 13, has discovered books by author Anthony Horowitz and hopefully is moving beyond Manga.
The older one, at 21, suffers through my many recommendations but seems to feel that his reading list at Ohio Wesleyan University is enough for now. After reading CBS News correspondent Byron Pitts’ memoir, Step Out on Nothing: How Family and Faith Helped Me Conquer Life’s Challenges, and learning that he too went to Ohio Wesleyan, I slid the book across the kitchen table to my son (at home on spring break) and suggested he might enjoy a fellow commiserator on how dull Delaware, Ohio, is (all the better to study, I think). When my son got up to finish packing to return to school, the Pitts’ memoir remained on the kitchen table. (Months later, Pitts visited OWU on his book tour and got to reunite with professors he mentioned fondly in his book.) But recently, home for winter break, my son — entirely voluntarily — picked up my copy of The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther and asked if he could have it to read. Of course, I gushed “Of course!”
Wednesday, January 20, 2010 2:12 pm R.I.P., R.B.P. Posted by: Bill Ott
The news that Robert B. Parker died on Monday of a heart attack at age 77 (he was sitting at his desk writing at the time) comes as a shock to hard-boiled fiction fans everywhere. Parker wrote more than 60 books in multiple genres, but for most of his fans, his career was defined by the Spenser series, starring the sasssy Boston private eye–a gourmet-cooking descendant of Raymond Chandler’s Marlowe. The Godwulf Manuscript began the series in 1973, and the sequels followed year after year, each distinguished by the world-class banter spewing forth not only from the quick-witted Spenser but also from his longtime lover, psychiatrist Susan Silverman, and his longer-time best pal, the thug-with-a-heart-of-gold Hawk.
Many reviewers have opined in recent years that the Spenser series had jumped the shark, the formula running on fumes, even the signature dialogue turned punchless. There’s an element of truth to this view, but it’s equally true for most series that attempt to freeze time (Spenser, a Korean War vet, was a perpetual 40-year-old). Yes, many of us Spenser devotees (full disclosure: I’ve always liked Spenser, but I’d trade him in a minute for Hawk) have drifted away from the series in recent years, but I never stayed away for long. The easy comfort of reading a Spenser novel–the dialogue, though predictable, was never punchless–always drew me back eventually, and occasionally I was delightfully surprised by what I found. So don’t buy completely the conventional view that only early Spenser is good Spenser.
Read Potshot, from 2001, for example, in which Spenser, Hawk, and a rainbow coalition of fellow tough guys clean up the town of Potshot, Arizona. Think The Magnificent Seven with just a touch of Blazing Saddles. The joke throughout is that while the painfully sensitive Spenser laboriously comes up with plans that will limit bloodshed, his cronies clamor for carnage. (As Hawk puts it, rolling his eyes, “Being your faithful Afro-American companion ain’t the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”) Or read The Professional, 2009, the latest Spenser novel, in which Parker offers an homage of sorts to Of Mice and Men that ends with a genuinely poignant finale–might even prompt a few hard-boiled tears.
So what is it that kept me coming back to Spenser and leaves me feeling so bereft today? It’s certainly not realism. I love the dialogue, but nobody talks that way–we’re not tough enough, quick enough, and we certainly can’t spout literary allusions well enough. But if we were quick enough, it sure would be fun to talk like Spenser and to hang out with Susan and Hawk, and let’s face it, it might also be fun to beat up the bad guys in our lives every now and then. Parker gave us the chance to do that, and I, for one, have enjoyed every lightning left hook and every staccato slap of perfectly timed repartee. I’ll be looking forward to the publication of two posthumous Spenser novels now in production, and I have a hunch I’ll continue to revisit my old favorites, too. Parker may have left us, but Spenser will always be a flat-bellied 40.
Monday, January 18, 2010 10:21 am ALA’s 2010 Youth Media Award Winners Announced Posted by: Courtney Jones
This morning, the winners of ALA’s most prestigious youth media awards were announced in Boston. Below are some quick links to Booklist reviews of the winners — for the full list, consult the official press release. And keep your eye on Booklist Online, where we’ll soon be posting fully hyperlinked awards, honors, and lists.
Sunday, January 17, 2010 3:36 pm From Android Karenina to Huckleberry Fang Posted by: Keir Graff
And to think it all started with a plucky little mash-up called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. In her review, Mary Ellen Quinn asked, with tongue firmly in cheek, “What’s next? Wuthering Heights and Werewolves?” Not a bad guess, but the next offering was actually Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. Since the public’s appetite for good manners and bad horror seems limitless — or, at least, the folks at Quirk Classics are hoping that it is – this week Quirk announced the third title: Android Karenina (”Tolstoy Will Do the Robot in the Next Quirk Classic,” Shelf Life).
Let’s assume this trend has legs — legs as long as King Kong’s. If so, Quirk is going to need titles, and lots of them. And titles are the tough part — authors are a dime a dozen. So, as a helpful service, Booklist would like to offer the following contenders. This list includes suggestions from myself, Gillian Engberg, Ilene Cooper, Brad Hooper, Ray Olson, Mary Frances Wilkens, and Donna Seaman.
The Adventures of Tom Slayer
Are You There God? It’s Me, Man-Eating Martian (”this one speaks for itself”)
The Bled Pony
The Brothers Kalashnikov
A Connecticut Yankee in the Lair of the Abominable Snowman
Dandelion Slime
Dr. Jekyll and Hannibal Lecter
Finnigan’s Werewolves
The Fire-Breathing Lizard of Oz
The Fountain Bled
The Ghouls of Wrath
The Goblin Notebook
Grave Expectations (”a Victorian coming-of-age story set among the undead”)
The Heart Is a Lonely Vampire Hunter
The House of Seven Giants
Huckleberry Fang (”an abolitionist vampire joins Huck and Jim on their journey”)
Little Werewolves
Lonesome Werewolf
Long Day’s Journey into Fright
The Man Who Would Be King Kong
The Merchant of Menace
Our Eyes Were Watching Godzilla
Our Mutual Fiend
Portrait of a Lady Undertaker
Prawns and Prejudice (”a romantic comedy of errors set in a colony of giant mutant shrimp”)
Pride and Predator
They Stake Vampires, Don’t They?
To Kill a Monster Bird
Ulysses and U-Boats
Vampire Fair
Vampires Come for the Archbishop
War and Pieces of Gore
Zombies’ Things Fall Apart
With Reid’s A Scattering named Costa’s Book of the Year, Colm Toibin continues to be a bridesmaid. Albeit a bridesmaid £5,000 richer. Reid’s book of poetry, an account of his wife’s struggle with cancer and eventual death, won in an upset over Toibin’s Brooklyn.
I was thrilled to read the review of 
So, I do hope the news reaches more young black men. Meanwhile, I struggle with the two of my own to get them reading more, whether they are destined for librarianship or not. The younger one, at 13, has discovered books by author Anthony Horowitz and hopefully is moving beyond Manga.
kitchen table to my son (at home on spring break) and suggested he might enjoy a fellow commiserator on how dull Delaware, Ohio, is (all the better to study, I think). When my son got up to finish packing to return to school, the Pitts’ memoir remained on the kitchen table. (Months later, Pitts visited OWU on his book tour and got to reunite with professors he mentioned fondly in his book.) But recently, home for winter break, my son — entirely voluntarily — picked up my copy of 
The news that Robert B. Parker died on Monday of a heart attack at age 77 (he was sitting at his desk writing at the time) comes as a shock to hard-boiled fiction fans everywhere. Parker wrote more than 60 books in multiple genres, but for most of his fans, his career was defined by the Spenser series, starring the sasssy Boston private eye–a gourmet-cooking descendant of Raymond Chandler’s Marlowe. The Godwulf Manuscript began the series in 1973, and the sequels followed year after year, each distinguished by the world-class banter spewing forth not only from the quick-witted Spenser but also from his longtime lover, psychiatrist Susan Silverman, and his longer-time best pal, the thug-with-a-heart-of-gold Hawk.
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