A collaborative blog presented by the staff of Library Journal
April 17, 2007
Whee! I always look forward to Tuesdays, so I can let everyone know what titles are reviewed in our web-only, freely-accessible, RSS-friendly Xpress Reviews section! We’ve got Fiction, Nonfiction, Graphic Novels, and Audio reviews this week. Without further ado:
Xpress Reviews for Week of Apr. 17th, 2007
FICTION
 Causey, Toni McGee. Bobbie Faye’s Very (very, very, very) Bad Day. Griffin: St. Martin’s.
Kohler, Sheila. Bluebird, or the Invention of Happiness. Other.
Slavin, Helen. The Extra Large Medium. Black Cat: Grove.
NONFICTION
Bauer, Joy with Carol Svec. Joy Bauer’s Food Cures: Easy 4-Step Nutrition Programs for Improving Your Body. Rodale.
Cohan, William D. The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co. Doubleday.
Condon, Bill. Dreamgirls. Newmarket.
Duberman, Martin. The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein. Knopf.
Grossberg, George T., M.D., & Barry Fox. The Essential Herb-Drug-Vitamin Interaction Guide: The Safe Way To Use Medications and Supplements Together. Broadway.
A Leaky Tent Is a Piece of Paradise: 20 Young Writers on Finding a Place in the Natural World. Sierra Club Bks., dist. by Univ. of California.
Llewellyn-Thomas, Julie (text) & Ruth Jenkinson (photogs.). Breathe Your Way Through Birth with Yoga. Mitchell Beazley, dist. by Sterling.
McDougall, Wendy (photogs.) & Matt Willis & Paul Burrows (text). Classical Destinations: An Armchair Guide to Classical Music. Amadeus: Hal Leonard.
Phillips, Adam. Side Effects. HarperPerennial: HarperCollins.
Waitzkin, Josh. The Art of Learning: A Vibrant New Perspective on the Pursuit of Excellence. Free Pr: S. & S.
GRAPHIC NOVELS
Aoki, Yuya (text) & Rando Ayamine (illus.). GetBackers. Vol. 17. Tokyopop.
Carey, Mike (text) & John Bolton (illus.). God Save the Queen. Vertigo: DC Comics.
Higuri, You. Gorgeous Carat. Vol. 4. BLU: Tokyopop.
Malkasian, Cathy. Percy Gloom. Fantagraphics.
Matt, Joe. Spent. Drawn & Quarterly.
Modan, Rutu. Exit Wounds. Drawn & Quarterly.
Monchi, Kaori. Wagamama Kitchen. Juné: Digital Manga.
Mutou, Hiromu. Never Give Up. Vol. 4. Tokyopop.
Nilsen, Anders. Dogs & Water. Drawn & Quarterly.
Ogawa, Yayoi. Tramps Like Us. Vol. 11. Tokyopop.
Peach-Pit. Shugo Chara! Vol. 1. Del Rey: Ballantine.
Powell, Nate. Sounds of Your Name. reprint. Microcosm: dist. by AK Pr. & Dist. (revised review)
Soryo, Fuyumi. ES: Eternal Sabbath. Vol. 4. Del Rey: Ballantine.
Toriyama, Akira. Dr. Slump. Vol. 12. Viz Media.
Wagner, Matt. Grendel: Devil by the Deed. Dark Horse.
AUDIO
Crais, Robert. The Watchman. Brilliance Audio.
Crombie, Deborah. Water Like a Stone. Sound Library: BBC Audiobooks America.
O’Rourke, P.J. On the Wealth of Nations. Tantor Audio.
April 16, 2007
Cormac McCarthy is having a very good year. As if an Oprah endorsement weren’t enough (see From the Book Review Vault: McCarthy’s The Road), now he’s got Joseph Pulitzer on his side. With this much brouhaha over his postapocalyptic novel, you know patrons are going to be asking for readalikes in the not-too-distant future. Nobody writes quite like McCarthy, but other scribes have successfully played with the idea of an American wasteland.
Just today, I came across our Xpress review of a 2004 graphic novel reissue from Drawn & Quarterly: Anders Nilsen’s Dogs & Water, according to our reviewer J. Osicki, is “a compelling, one-of-a-kind trip akin to Samuel Beckett conceiving Cormac McCarthy’s The Road as a graphic novel”; it’s made up “of a series of spartan black-and-white illustrations of a young man on a road to nowhere in a vast, denuded landscape.” A stuffed teddy bear and various and sundry packs of animals are the boy’s only pals—the few people he encounters, meanwhile, are “desperate and hostile.”
The Road, of course, centers on a father and son who scavenge for food in “a devastated country,” to quote our reviewer Stephen Morrow. Here, “friends are extinct.” The protagonist in Dogs & Water can no doubt relate. Order his odyssey, and watch the circ numbers escalate.
Reviews of books by David Hasselhoff and Alice Cooper will make it into the May 15 issue of LJ, but Criss Angel seems doomed to blog territory (see “Performing arts celebs spring out this season“). It happens sometimes, to our frustration, that a book doesn’t get reviewed because we don’t have the person for it. As far as Angel’s Mindfreak goes, I just don’t have enough tween boy reviewers.
Based on his popular TV show of the same name, his book is half biography and half how-to for magic tricks. I didn’t get through the introduction: a description of hanging from helicopters by hooks through his flesh isn’t my idea of good Monday morning reading. He writes, “While music [two of my favorite Korn songs, “Right Now” and “Alone I Break,”] pumped from my iPod, I felt so insignificant…The body suspension was as close to an out-of-body experience as I have ever had.”
This made me think of a galley I recently saw—Save Me from Myself: How I Found God, Quit Korn, Kicked Drugs, and Lived To Tell My Story by Brian Welch, out from HarperSanFrancisco in July—a book whose audience I don’t predict is similar to that of Mindfreak and may be less easy to pin down. I must confess I was happy to pass this one on to Graham Christian for consideration in our new Spiritual Living column. In an effort for consistency (see the inaugural “Books of a Feather?“) let’s call the link between these two plausible, to use the ratings system of our friends the MythBusters. After all, Angel likes Korn, young boys like both, and both celebs have forthcoming soul-searching memoirs.
I was at ACRL in Baltimore in late March (yes, it’s now mid-April. So many books, so little time. You’ve heard it before — you’ve said it before yourself!). I was sent on a press pass by LJ to be a roving reporter there. I guess since I’d worked in a research library for many years, LJ figured it made sense for me to go to the annual meeting of Academic and Research Libraries in Baltimore.
I dug out my Reporter’s Notebook, those narrow ones that look like something Jimmie Olson would use (Q: why is a Steno Pad twice as wide as a Reporter’s Notebook — and why is one a notebook and one a pad? Does it matter?), put on my Calvin Klein pinstripes from the sample sale at CK’s “Better Sportwear” offices here in the Reed Elsevier building (on the fancy Elsevier side), and tried to remind myself to feel like Lois Lane, rather than Jimmie Olson.
I managed to banish Jimmie, which meant it was me and Lois there together in Calvin Klein — followed on Saturday by Carole Little — at ACRL. The LJ roving reporter submitted her report by email to the news folks here at LJ, but here is what Lois Lane has to say:
LJ had rooms booked in a truly charming inn. Granted I’m not a world traveler — except for a few special flights — but this was a lovely retrofitted brick wharf building in the Fell’s Point district. What it lacked in adjacentcy to the convention center it more than made up for in appeal. There was even a bottle of wine, gratis, with a personalized card. But Lois Lane doesn’t drink, alas.
Next, let me tell you that at the convention center at the same time was a Mary Kay Cosmetics confab. Mary Kay doesn’t say “So many books, so little time.” She says “So many gift-giving occasions. So many perfect gift ideas.” I doubt she suggested the free wine at our inn. And the inn’s lotions and shampoo were from — another vendor. Pleasing mixture of basil and lime.
Yes, it was rather easy to distinguish the Mary Kay conventioneers from the librarians, but maybe not as easy as you’d imagine. To complicate matters, there seemed also to be a conference of young cheerleaders in attendance. On the escalators, we librarians and publishers’ reps would encounter clumps of lithe girls with lots of bows in their hair and with cute warm-up clothes on. We wondered, amongst ourselves, whether they noticed the Mary Kay-ers, the librarians, and the academic publishers, and how or whether their observations might influence their career paths once cheerleading loses its lustre.
Lois Lane has blogged long enough. For the professional news about ACRL, you’ll need to read LJ’s Academic Newswire (it’s easy to subscribe to that and other LJ news outlets), or see LJ’s brief report, with a longer one to come in the May 1st issue!
April 13, 2007
Every spring, this editor gets the itch to throw a party to banish the winter blues. And for the first time in nearly a decade, I’m acting on that urge and hosting some good friends tonight in my humble Brooklyn firetrap.
On the modest dinner menu, you will find both meat and vegetarian chili, cornbread, and for dessert (my favorite part of every meal), cupcakes—chocolate w/chocolate buttercream icing, vanilla w/vanilla buttercream icing, and by special request, red velvet w/cream cheese icing. For the first two varieties, I got recipes from my baking genius of a mother, who, alas, doesn’t know diddly about red velvet (she’s a damn Yankee, after all).
For that Southern delicacy, I wanted the best of the best, and the web’s many ardent cupcake bloggers all agree that Sylvia Woods of Sylvia’s Restaurant in Harlem blows the door off the oven with her concoction. One “Sweet Monkey Cakes” on the Cooks’ Illustrated message board swears by it, but with two minor changes (more cocoa and buttermilk!).
Last night, I tried Sweet Monkey Cake’s take, which is based on Woods’s recipe from Sylvia’s Family Soul Food Cookbook (Morrow, 1999), and I’m happy to say I got the most delectable red gems, moist with just the right amount of smoky cocoa taste. Mine aren’t probably going to look as professional as the one pictured below when they’re frosted later today, but they’re going to go down like butter—two sticks, to be exact.
Poor Rachel Singer Gordon. As LJ’s Computer Media columnist, she gets several pounds’ worth of the latest computer manuals dropped on her doorstep every month. After she’s done using them for reviewing purposes, she can’t very well keep them all—she lives in a house, not a research library—so she’s giving them away. If you want a piece of PC or Mac action, click here.
April 12, 2007
To paraphrase my curmudgeonly coworker, it’s a wonder ole Vonnegut didn’t die sooner—the guy packed more tobacco than a tobacco tree. But I’m not here to cuss the poor sod out for his smoking habits—I’m here to celebrate him, LJ style, with a quick recap of relevant reviews from our database.
While I couldn’t come up with our take on his seminal Slaughterhouse-Five (except the audiobook version, read by actor, er, writer Ethan Hawke), we do boast coverage of his late career material, some of which may deserve another look:
April 11, 2007
I said it last year, but I’m going to say it again, kittles—April is Autism Awareness Month, and I’ve been steadily increasing our coverage of conditions on the autistic spectrum since 2002. I couldn’t have done it, of course, without one Corey Seeman, an LJ star reviewer if there ever was one. The father of an autistic child, he signed on to tackle autism for LJ five years ago when there wasn’t a lot being published. That all changed when autism made the cover of Time magazine in May 2002—soon, the New York houses were treading the traditional turf of Woodbine House, Guilford Press, and Jessica Kingsley.
To keep up with the resulting boost, I sent poor Corey a book a month, and he kept his head above water, dutifully reviewing the likes of groundbreakers like Judy Karasik and Paul Karasik’s The Ride Together (Washington Square), Carolyn Thorwarth Bruey’s Demystifying Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Guide to Diagnosis for Parents and Professionals (Woodbine), and Charlotte Moore’s George & Sam: Two Boys, One Family, and Autism (St. Martin’s).
Thank you, Corey, for your valuable contributions, including what I’m pretty sure is the first analysis of relevant literature, “Sending Postcards from the Airport,” a 2003 entry in our collection development series, and its sequel, “More Postcards from the Airport: Playing Catch-Up with Autistic Spectrum Disorders.” Thank you, too, Lisa Jordan and Elizabeth Safford for bringing up the back and helping expand LJ’s scope.
April 10, 2007
Did you know that Kathleen Norris, author of The Cloister Walk and other spiritual memoirs, once reviewed for Library Journal? Or that our primary reviewer of Westerns was a nun, the rootin’ tootin’ Sister Avila Lamb (”no sex or cussin’; violence okay”). Our reviewers are a talented bunch of active and retired librarians, college professors, and freelance writers. And many of them write books as well. The latest to be published is Seattle Public Library’s own Jeff Ayers, whose Voyages of the Imagination: The Star Trek Fiction Companion was released last November by Pocket Books .
There is a nice interview with Jeff in the Seattle Times. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. In the meantime, I’m keeping Jeff busy reviewing the latest thrillers, another passion of Jeff’s.
Hello everyone!
Here are the titles reviewed in this week’s web-only, freely-accessible Xpress Reviews section. You’re excited, I’m excited, let’s get on with it, shall we?
Xpress Reviews for Week of Apr. 10th, 2007
FICTION
Dickey, Eric Jerome. Sleeping with Strangers. Dutton.
Smith, Alexander McCall. The Good Husband of Zebra Drive. Pantheon.
NONFICTION
American Food Writing: An Anthology with Classic Recipes. Library of America, dist. by Penguin Group (USA).
Glassman, Keri with Sarah Mahoney. The Snack Factor Diet: The Secret to Losing Weight by Eating More. Crown.
Myers, Mitch. The Boy Who Cried Freebird: Rock & Roll Fables and Sonic Storytelling. HarperEntertainment: HarperCollins.
Waldburger, Jennifer & Jill Spivack. The Sleepeasy Solution: The Exhausted Parent’s Guide to Getting Your Child To Sleep—from Birth to Age Five. Health Communications.
GRAPHIC NOVELS
Katsura, Masakazu. I”s. Vol. 12: Room 305. Viz Media.
Kikuta, Michiyo. Mamotte! Lollipop. Vol. 1. Del Rey: Ballantine.
Kirkman, Robert (text) & Tony Moore & others (illus.). Brit. Vol. 1: Old Soldier. Image Comics.
Minekura, Kazuya. Wild Adapter. Vol. 1. Tokyopop.
Porcellino, John. King-Cat Classix: The Best of King-Cat Comics and Stories. Drawn & Quarterly.
Sakuragi, Yukiya. Inubaka: Crazy for Dogs. Vol. 2. Viz Media.
Takahashi, Yashichiro (text) & Sasakura, Ayato (illus.). Shakugan No Shana. Vol. 1. Viz Media.
AUDIO
Child, Lincoln. Deep Storm. Books on Tape.
Orman, Suze. Women & Money: Owning the Power To Control Your Destiny. Books on Tape
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