I’m not sure how most people approach a vacation (extended or just a weekend), but almost as important as my destination/arrival activities are the books I bring along. I recently had back-to-back trips: a weekend in Connecticut, followed immediately by five days in Las Vegas. The weekend trip involved one book (Mary Jo Putney’s Petals in the Storm, a historical romance–my genre of choice), read during brief snippets of free time. The nearly 400-page book was a good choice, leaving me quite a bit to begin the longer trip to the West Coast.

Perhaps it was carlag (we drove to Connecticut), but in turning around to leave early Monday morning for the airport, I only packed an additional two books along with the remainder of the historical, which, it turned out, was just enough to get me from New York to Vegas, a nearly six-hour flight. OK. Two books left. Not terrible. Unfortunately, one was a title I had bought at a fundraiser the previous weekend for the paltry sum of $1. After about ten pages, I realized I had read it. My loss was my sister’s (and traveling companion’s) gain.

Now I’m down to a galley I borrowed from the office by an author I have read and liked before–a follow-up to a previous title I had not read. I quickly discovered that not having read the earlier book made the new book less than compelling. What to do? With numerous finished books/galleys sitting in my office and in my home, I went into a Las Vegas bookstore and discovered Putney’s Angel Rogue, the sequel to the historical romance I finished on the westbound flight. What were the odds of that happening? I was in Vegas; I’m sure I could have found out.

The new volume was working out fine until the day of departure and a four-and-a-half-hour weather delay. Sitting at the gate, I read a chapter, closed the book. Read a chapter, closed the book. Then, I walked around the airport. I completed the novel halfway through the return flight, leaving me with nothing to do but peruse inflight magazines and finish the already started crossword puzzles of a previous passenger.

Perhaps a book shop in another town would have had a larger selection than one in Las Vegas. Perhaps not. I just know that packing the proper reading material is more important than packing enough socks. One can always do a hand wash.

‘Tis the season to stuff our faces, so I’m not surprised to spy cookbooks in the top 25 of the big best sellers lists (the New York Times, Amazon, and, of course, Library Journal). As of today (for LJ’s, I’m drawing on the December 15th list), all three feature Irma Rombauer and others’ Joy of Cooking: 75th Anniversary Edition and Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa at Home.

Holding the No. 1 slot of the NYT’s Hardcover Advice list, however, is an even more enticing entry (at least for this editor): Mehmet Oz and Michael Roizen’s You: On a Diet: The Owner’s Manual for Waist Management. At least some portion of the population, it seems, is already thinking about how to rid themselves of the gingerbreadmen and -women ringing their middles. LJ’s got just the thing for those forward thinkers. For the last few years, we’ve reviewed the slews of diet/fitness books that publish in January and February, just in time for those “I’m going to lay off the Oreos” resolutions.

From 2005 and 2006, respectively, there’s “Starting on a Lighter Note” and “Diet and Fitness Roundup,” both by the very ambitious Susan Hagloch (I don’t know who else could, er, stomach reviewing a dozen diet books in four weeks). Susan has my respect because she can suss out commerical appeal and sound nutritional advice. Her 2007 roundup will publish early next month and would make for an excellent starting point for those sorry Janes and Joes who ate their way through a Paula Deen butter-and-lard fest.

We’ve got a lot of nonfiction this week for you, dealing with Bond, pretty girls, panic and anxiety, marriage, the Mediterranean, parental “ghosts,” and the traits that make us human.

Without further ado, our web-only, freely accessible Xpress Reviews for Week of Dec. 5, 2006

NONFICTION

Bouzereau, Laurent. The Art of Bond: From Storyboard to Screen; The Creative Process Behind the James Bond Phenomenon. Abrams

Castro, Rafaela G. Provocaciones: Letters from the Prettiest Girl in Arvin. Chusma

Foxman, Paul. Dancing with Fear: Controlling Stress and Creating a Life Beyond Panic and Anxiety. 2d ed. Hunter House

Love, Patricia & Steven Stosny. How To Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It: Finding Love Beyond Words. Broadway

Norwich, John Julius. The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean. Doubleday

Our Roots Are Deep with Passion. Other

Shengold, Leonard, M.D. Haunted by Parents. Yale Univ.

Walter, Chip. Thumbs, Toes, and Tears: And Other Traits That Make Us Human. Walker

A popular post on CAPHIS last year and this year came from librarian K.D. Proffit. The topic? Internet shopping sites. Drawing on the results of her call for the best of the web, Proffit organized an immensely popular class on Internet shopping at the Sutter Resource Library in Sacramento, CA. Said Proffit, “[I]it brought people to the library who had never visited before.”

Another possible tactic to up traffic came to me this morning when I glanced a redhead reading James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans on the subway: the banishment of late fees. By which I don’t mean a patron’s debt should be canceled automatically; I just mean why not make it possible for a friend or relative of that patron to cover the fees as a kind of holiday gift? This would call for some marketing ingenuity, but think of all the people who dodge using libraries because they know they owe, so off to Barnes & Noble they go.

One more suggestion: as we Book Review Editors complete our Best Books 2006 list (check here next week for the winners), I couldn’t help but think how ours and other lists could serve as, well, gift guides for bibliophiles. Much as consumer magazines compile ideas (”For The Insanely Glamorous, a Swarovski crystal–encrusted iPod”), so could libraries by posting these lists or doing a display of winners. Collection development librarians could flex their cerebrums and break the books into categories for thriller fans, romance heads, etc.

Well, the Los Angeles Times has just posted the first review of Thomas Harris’s new novel about everybody’s favorite cannibal serial killer, Hannibal Rising. Grrr! I am so frustrated because I had asked for an advance copy of this book but was told by the Delacorte publicist that I couldn’t get a copy until the on-sale date, which is today.  Thanks a lot, Mr/Ms. Publicist! Obviously in the embargoed books world, there are different standards for who gets advance copies. Major media like the LA Times, the BBC (as Margaret Heilbrun noted in her own incisive blog Embargoed. Not Embargoed) and the New York Times get first dibs on the “big books” while professional publications like LJ  have to scramble to catch up. Ironic really, considering that  in recent years major newspapers have been drastically reducing or entirely eliminating their book review sections. Meanwhile for this year, LJ has reviewed well over 5000 titles. How many newspapers can boast those numbers?

After a balmy 70s in NYC today, temperatures are predicted to drop to the 40s over the weekend. So Sunday evening I plan to sip hot chocolate and watch Noah Wyle star as our favorite librarian/action hero in The LIbrarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines, the sequel to TNT’s “inexplicably successful” 2004 TNT movie: The Librarian:  Quest for the Spear. Yes, the first movie was cheesy and silly, and the New York Times critic didn’t like the new one either. Still how often do you get to watch a librarian as a sexy hero, rather than as a repressed, bun-wearing shushing harridan?. (By the way, Wyle in an interview  noted he got gratifying mail from librarians who were pleased “that we’re trying to rewrite the paradigm of what an action hero is supposed to be — that it’s not just might that makes right, that sometimes the biggest brain can win you out in the end.” And to see Bob Newhart, playing the library curator, chastise Wyle for wiping his sweaty face on the Shroud of Turin is worth the two hours of wasted TV watching. 

My old friend Judy Quinn and I have a phrase that we say  whenever we see libraries and librarians portrayed in movies or on television. We call them “Library Journal moments”. The two TNT Librarian movies are ultimate LIbrary Journal moments but some other favorites include David O. Russell’s Spanking the Monkey in which the incestuous mother, who is a librarian, is lying in bed with a broken leg reading LIbrary Journal, and Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan in which one of the WASPY Park Avenue characters quotes a line from a LJ book review. What’s your favorite Library Journal moment?