Hello there to my fellow staffers who aren’t able to take a week or two off over these holidays!  How are you doing? (And hello to those of you actually on vacation and still checking out this blog!  Go enjoy your break, and we’ll welcome you back in the New Year!)

It’s busy in the library, right?  But I’m glad you’ve found a moment to steal a glance in this direction. A lot of people actually on vacation figured it would be a good time to head into your library, eh? I remember when I was a practicing librarian, at a NYC independent research library that was open on a walk-in basis. The day after Thanksgiving was just about the busiest day of the year in the reading room, but the time around Christmas was busier than usual as well.

It’s been busy here at LJ, too, simply because the February 1st issue has deadlines plunk in the middle of this time that finds many staffers away. I’ve just finished up most of my work on that issue’s annual roundup of Spring 2007 baseball books. I haven’t come up with a snappy kicker for it yet. Last year, I felt quite smug about “Readers will be caught looking at these winners!” (not present in the online version) because it used two baseball idioms, and turned them around from their usual meaning, but I never heard back from anyone about it (”How clever you are!”), so maybe “Here are some upcoming baseball books” would do as well! Look out for the column and you’ll see what I come up with.

My fellow roundup reviewers, Bob Cottrell, Paul Kaplan, Gilles Renaud, and I, found no spring 2007 baseball title quite with power comparable to last spring’s Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero, by David Maraniss, but you will find some good ones for your baseball readers nonetheless, including an historical summary of the role of cheating in baseball, a friendly and accessible viewing guide to the game’s ins and outs, a narrative of Jackie Robinson’s first year in the majors (April 2007 will be the 50th anniversary of his first Dodger at bat), and an impressively reflective autobiography by the new Tiger in Detroit’s tank, Gary Sheffield.

Well, another week or so of the holiday daze to get through! So let’s play a game! No, not baseball! If you could invite a handful of authors to your workplace, both to entertain your readers and to help you out with your end-of-year work chores, which authors, whom you read in 2006, would you pick?

Okay, I’ll start. I would pick Georgina Kleege (Blind Rage: Letters to Helen Keller. Gallaudet Univ. Press) for her perceptivity, her strength, and her skill at newly presenting a popular subject to us. I would pick Ruth Scurr (Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution. Metropolitan: Holt) because she’d clearly be able to handle the most irascible of library visitors with grace and skill. I would pick Rich Cohen (Sweet and Low: A Family Story. FSG) for his ability to juggle a bunch of non-fiction plots with authenticity, humor, and self-knowledge.

Just the three of them for now. I have to get back to reading some files here.  But I’ll be around, so send me your own thoughts! The distance from your library to this Library Journal blog is just a few keystrokes! Cheers!