Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

It only took 45 minutes, but I’ve found half a year’s worth of material for my book groups next year. This is just from one panel, mind you. I ran across plenty of other titles in my many laps around the Javits Center for BookExpo America. These were the highlights from the Library Journal Day [...]

Our staff book group at Williamsburg Regional Library made biographies our theme this month. Reading on themes is perfect for a staff group, as it exposes us to a variety of different titles which we can then share with the public. Biographies work well in this format: It’s fascinating to get highlights of a dozen different lives [...]

Ayelet Waldman created quite a controversy when she wrote an article for the New York Times proclaiming that she loved her children but she wasn’t in love with them–she was in love with her husband (who happens to be Michael Chabon). The article set off a firestorm on blogs and listservs and even on the Oprah Winfrey [...]

I’m not writing this simply to piggyback on Nick’s recent post. I legitamately woke up this morning thinking, “I know, I’ll write about non-fiction.” I have been feeling as though I have been mainly writing book reviews rather than exploring substantive book group issues for this blog, and awoke to find that Nick had scooped me.
But Nick brings [...]

While meandering aimlessly around the Internet this morning, much like a couch potato might with the remote, I landed on a blog that is going onto my list of “blogs to check as regularly as my schedule permits.”
It’s Three Guys One Book. What you read is what you get. It’s three guys (and a recently added “silent [...]

When was the last time a book review made you laugh? I mean really laugh–like the involuntary laughter that busts out of you while reading on the bus?
Most book reviews aren’t written to make you laugh. Most book reviewers don’t invite you into their private lives. (What does Michiko Kakutani watch at night, I wonder? Does [...]

My husband and I recently met with two other families to discuss Alfie Kohn’s Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishment to Love and Reason. We had met these families through a local parent listserv and were eager to talk with other families who are thoughtful in their parenting choices.
One thing that you learn as [...]

One of the aspects of my job that I like the most is seeing what all the book groups in our system have chosen to read. I’m always amazed at how few titles are duplicated over a ten location system.
The KCPL Women Who Dare book group is only two years old, but they have grown [...]

How do you discuss a book when it is not at all what the readers expected? This was the conundrum that faced the KCPL Downtowners book group at yesterday’s meeting. We gathered to talk about Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou and the book did not fail to meet expectations, but it didn’t meet [...]

It was originally my intent to write extensively about the selections in my unified list of the best books of 2008, compiled from over 80 sources. But as I look through the list, even this book-crazy blogger is daunted. Over 1700 books were mentioned in these best-of-the-year lists. Since I don’t read exclusively from new books, I [...]

Eleven readers gathered at The Kansas City Public Library’s Central Library on Sunday, February 8 for the KCPL/Kansas City Star co-sponsored book group to discuss Mark Twain’s classic travelogue, Life on the Mississippi and share comments and perceptions as varied as their reading experiences.

Most of the participants had not read Twain’s memoir of his steamboat adventures. [...]

When I was a bookseller, I took delight in seeing the sales increase on the books I handsold or wrote “shelf-talker” reviews for. Somehow, seeing circulation statistics rise on a book in the library doesn’t give me quite the same thrill. There is something about your words, your recommendation, inspiring enough confidence for a customer [...]

Which books were really the best of last year? As I wrote in an earlier post, that’s a very subjective question, but to make it a little less so, I compiled a unified list of the best books of the year as named by 70 different review sources and award nomination lists.
The unified list shows [...]

It feels so good to write those words! President Obama is a reader, as this recent New York Times article by esteemed critic Michiko Kakutani attests. Perhaps I should qualify that with a President who reads and even talks about books. The article mentions that Bush read quite a few books, too, but I don’t [...]

 
The Final Frontiersman by James Campbell
I live in Wisconsin so one of our winter sports is discovering what might be a possible relief from the deep cold.  How about reading an account of the life of Heimo Korth and his family who lived alone in the Alaskan arctic wilderness refuge? 
Campbell is Korth’s cousin and [...]

Happy New Year everyone! Even though we all have new calendars, ’tis still the season for last year’s best lists. I wanted to share Nancy Pearl’s list as I feel it has some books on it that aren’t showing up on all of the other lists. One of the things I love about Nancy is [...]

My last posting on upcoming film adaptations and the books upon which they were based covers films with release dates in the last four months of 2009. Chances are that several of these release dates will shift and that other adapted films will be added to the schedule before the upcoming year is finished, but these [...]

My third installment on upcoming film adaptations begins in the summer season of 2009, so you’ve got plenty of time to build these books into your group’s schedule before the release date. These are summer films and many come from light, humorous books, so schedule them for that month after you’ve tackled something tough.
This year’s summer [...]

A sports book, you say, and one about an event held almost 50 years ago at that… that’s not the book for our group.
But before you turn away from David Maraniss’s Rome 1960: The Olympics that Changed the World, hear me out. The joy of reading sports books, as my friend Kaite Mediatore Stover would say, is [...]

When my book group discussed Barack Obama’s memoir, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, in 2004, we had no way of knowing that the author would become the 44th President of the United States.
It made me wonder how book groups picking up the book now will read it, how Obama becoming [...]