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!

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.

No, I’m not talking about audio CD or DVD versions of J.K. Rowling’s best-selling sorcerer tales—I’m talking about two Boston brothers who so love the Harry Potter series that they formed a band in honor of it, that is, Harry and the Potters. Their MySpace mantra: “We play songs about books!” Speaking of tunes, titles include “Save Ginny Weasley” and “The Yule Ball” (both from the band’s debut, Harry and the Potters).

Music and book lovers, you might’ve found your perfect match. And libraries looking to incorporate live music into their outreach programs, take note because these boys actually tour, and word on the street is that they’re good, for muggles anyway.

In other Potter news, the contract that Scholastic required librarians to sign if they were ordering Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows through Baker & Taylor is sparking more headlines. The AP wrote a story on it last week, though surprisingly, it didn’t address the fact that the fax number suffered, er, complications, which made for a lot of peeved librarians (see my blog Have Harry on Order from B&T? Sign the Contract!).

April 22 is Earth Day. Appropriately enough the Santa Monica Public Library and the City of Santa Monica’s Environmental Programs Division is sponsoring a new literary award that aims to ”commend authors, illustrators, and publishers who produce quality books for adults and young people that make significant contributions to, support the ideas of, and broaden public awareness of sustainability”. The Green Prize for Sustainable Literature will be awarded in September 2007 in the categories of adult fiction, adult nonfiction, youth fiction and  youth nonfiction.

Books published in the United States during the 2006 calendar year are eligible for the prize but publishers must hurry to submit their candidates as the deadline is April 30! And this means you, Abrams publicists! One book that sprang immediately to mind as an excellent candidate in the nonfiction adult category is Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21 Century (Abrams, 2006).

 

Edited by environmentalist  Alex Stephens of the popular blog worldchanging.com, ”this beautifully designed volume (which comes with its own slipcover)”, as LJ reviewer editor Irwin Weintraub raved in a LJ Xpress review last December, “collects ideas and workable solutions from more than 60 contributors that demonstrate the human potential to create a better future and a sustainable planet.” 

While this volume meets the the prize’s basic sustainability criteria (future and long-term oriented, awareness of ecological and resource limitations, regional and global in scope,etc.), the sponsors of this award  strangely forgot to include sustainable requirements for the nominees’ physical production, such as  requesting that a certain percentage of the submitted title  be printed on recycled paper or on paper that comes from environmentally managed forests (see “Harry Potter Goes Green”). Fortunately, Worldchanging is ahead of the game, having been printed on environmentally friendly  New Leaf Paper. And the publisher went one step further by purchasing wind power credits equivalent to the amount of electricity used to produce the book.

• 8:15-9:00           Registration and Buffet Breakfast
• 9:15-10:15         The most banned children’s book of the year: Authors Peter Parnell (playwright, author of QED; screenwriter/producer for West Wing and The Guardian) and Justin Richardson, MD [co-author of Everything You Never Wanted Your Kids to Know about Sex (But Were Afraid They’d Ask)], their editor, David Gale (S. & S.), and  librarian Pat Scales discuss the creation of And Tango Makes Three and the reaction to it. 
• 10:15-11:30       Editor’s hot picks: Top editors from adult trade houses reveal what fiction and nonfiction you should be buying for the fall and what the latest trends to watch are.
• 11:30-11:40       Break
• 11:40-12:15       LJ Talks to:  A conversation with a long-time editor/publisher.
• 12:15-1:15        Lunch
• 1:15-2:30        YA crossover: Many books speak to both adults and young people, but how do the editors and authors make the decision to pitch them to one audience or the other—or both. (TK).
• 2:30-2:40         Break
• 2:40-3:55        Romance: An editor, author, reviewer, and librarian discuss the latest trends in the most popular genre, including erotica, ebooks and e-marketing, and more.  Panelists include Eloisa James, whose latest book, due in June from Avon is Desperate Duchesses, and Kris Ramsdell, LJ’s romance columnist.   
• 3:55-4:00       Wrap up.
• 4:00-5:00       Cocktails

Although I am a slave to my gray tuxedo cat (see Mr. Felix below), I usually despise cat mysteries or any other kind of fiction involving felines, canines, or any other creature, great or small (with the exception of the classic and very rabbity Watership Down).

 

But as a former senior scribe of my high school’s Latin Club (also known as the Junior Classical League), I couldn’t resist when British mystery book blog, Euro Crime, posted a story (”All Hail Spartapuss!) about a new children’s series set in an ancient Rome ruled by cats.

  

The publisher Mogzilla say the books are ”based partly on historical events as recorded by the great classical writers Tacitus and Suetonius”. The first book, I am Spartapuss, tells the story of a slave from the Land of the Kitons who becomes a Roman gladiator (or is that cat-iator?). This is followed by Catigula and Die Clawdius. If only I had these in Latin class!

In other feline news, the New York Times reports today that Grand Central Publishing  (the former Warner Books) is paying $1.25 million for the rights to publish the life story of Dewey, a rescued cat who lived for 19 years in the public library in Spencer, Iowa. Wow! That would buy a lot of cat food and kitty litter.

Dewey’s biographer is librarian Vicki Myron who will co-write Dewey, a Small Town, a Library and the World’s Most Beloved Cat with Bret Witter, a former editorial director at Health Communications, the publisher of the “Chicken Soup for the Soulâ€? books.

And in a related NYT story, “Home Cooking for  Pets is Suddenly Not So Odd“, pet owners are starting to prepare home cooked meals for Fido and Fluffy in light of the recent Menu Foods tainted food crisis. As a result, sales of pet cookbooks like Real Food For Dogs and Home-Prepared Dog and Cat Diet are rising. If you have these and other pet culinary titles in your collection, you might do a special display for your  pet-loving patrons. 

 

This morning a fellow editor left  a copy of Stephen King’s April 6 Entertainment Weekly column in my chair. HIs latest The Pop of King editorial, “How to Bury a Book” raved about Mischa Berlinksi’s debut novel, Fieldwork and chastised publisher Farrar Straus & Giroux for failing to  better market the book. “Under the drab title and the drab cover, there’s a story that cooks like a mother,” he writes.

 

 A few months ago in an another EW column, “The Secret Gardiner”, King sang the praises of Meg Gardiner, an American thriller writer living and published in Britain.  Lo and behold, shortly after the column appeared, Dutton acquired the U.S. rights to publish her five novels plus two new ones.

Not surprisingly there will probably be increased demand for Fieldwork. A quick check of the New York Public Library’s Leo catalog shows 18 holds for the system’s 11 copies. I would be curious to hear from other libraries about patron response to King’s editorial. Still, I feel a little resentment at how the opinion of one person can sway millions of reading decisions, especially since a few months ago a librarian blogger complained that books that received positive LJ reviews didn’t circulate in his library (Best Books=Best Circulating?).

In light of today’s rapid technological advances, the future of the printed book is constantly debated. But think about those poor medieval monks whose beloved illuminated scrolls were replaced by those new-fangled books. How did you open those damn things? Check out the hilarious results at http://youtube.com/watch?v=aX0-nqRmtos .  And anyone who has called their company’s IT department for assistance in turning on their new computer can relate.

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!  

Yesterday morning, I came across a gem of a post on good ole Publib. “Off the Beat” told of the Madison (WI) P.L.’s list of recommended reads by the local police officers, and heavy-hitting history rules the precincts—e.g., Eloise Engel and Lauri Paananen’s The Winter War: The Russo Finnish Conflict, 1939-40 and Doris Kearns Goodwin’s No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, the Home Front in World War II. That same poster mentioned that mysteries happen to be very popular with prison patrons. (A Google search I did located an August 2005 story in the China Daily newspaper about the favorite reads of Guantanamo detainees. According to the unidentified prison librarian, Harry Potter was tops, and right on his heels was Agatha Christie.)

In all seriousness, I’d like to see prison patrons’ top picks in the genre because I am fascinated by the genre’s appeal across populations (according to our 2006 Book Buying Survey, “[I]n genre, mystery still reigns supreme”—and demand keeps on keeping on). Just from reading LJ’s Mystery column, I do know that mysteries often involve convicts, so perhaps prison patrons are curious how they’re being portrayed in fiction: Do they come across as three-dimensional? Are they ever heroes? Or maybe it’s simpler than that, and they just want to be transported and entertained.

I’ve never been a big mystery reader, although I love the idea of a character dissecting a crime in between brushes with mortality. Long story short, I’m ready for some leads, and prison librarians and/or their probably discerning customers seem like the go-to audience.