I’m only human in New York City, which means I often get sick of looking at human faces. In fact, I’m supposed to avoid looking at them because you never know—a tired glance could be taken as a murderous glare, a smile for an invitation to run all the bases.

But I digress. What I’m trying to say is that I love cartoons. Give me a vulnerable, gorgeous French cartoon girl like the one pictured on the cover of Capucine and Olivier Ka’s Le Philibert de Marilou, and I’m all eyes. That sounds bad, but all I mean is it’s interesting as hell to look at an artist’s rendering of humanity. 

To boot, I’m glad to blog about my first foreign-language sighting because America is a country of multiple tongues, duh. Plenty of libraries order French materials, and given the popularity of graphic novels, they should know about this notable title by Capucine and Ka. Not much information in English exists on either author, or their creation for that matter.

With the help of Google’s not-exactly-dead-on translation mechanism and my college French, however, I’ve deduced that the graphic novel tells the story of a lonely, beautiful, celibate 30-something (Marilou) whose clinical neuroses take the form of a terrific monster (Philibert) that prevents her from being happy—and cultivating a romantic relationship with a man.

The kids and critics alike seem to dig this dark story—several French teens and twentysomethings mention it on their MySpace profiles, and it appears Ka, a Lebanese-born Frenchman known for his children’s books and comics, has a reputation for intense stories. His latest graphic novel, Pourquoi j’ai tué Pierre (Why I Killed Pierre), a winner at this year’s International Comic Book Festival in Angoulême, recounts the sexual abuse Ka suffered at the hands of a priest at a summer camp when he was 12.

LJ, unfortunately, does not get in many French translations of graphic novels, a pity considering the seemingly smokin’ talent. French speakers in America, you’re one lucky piece of the library demographic. 

Books don’t have feathers; books are not birds, but I’m going to apply the old saying about sticking together anyways because it’s Thursday, and my multitasking brain is leaking out of my ears. But to the point, dear readers: I’ve come across two forthcoming titles that are made for each other, possibly for the same audience

They are Christopher Hitchens’s God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (May, Twelve: Warner; see LJ 4/15/07), which—and I’m slipping into Sneak Peak mode here—our reviewer C. Brian Smith dubbed “provocative, challenging, and passionate,” and Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion (April, AMACOM).

I’m going to try to make this a regular blog series. Call it off-the-cuff reader’s advisory. Do add any further like reads.

As an adult circulation desk attendant at the Fargo Public Library, I spent a lot of time reshelving Zane Gray novels—or at least trying to. I’d be in the middle of putting a book back in its place when I’d feel a soft tap on my shoulder. Sure enough, one of the male senior citizen regulars wanted to get their hands on the title before somebody else. This was in 1998, but I would bet my nonexistent horse that Gray’s books remain top circulators.

Of course, we all know that in public libraries on the whole, mystery rules genre fiction (see Barbara Hoffert’s “Budgets Rebound: Book Buying Survey 2006″), but a call for Louis L’Amour readalikes this week on Publib reminded me of the appeal of Westerns. It may very well be that only “little old men readers,” to use one poster’s expression, devour them like biscuits and gravy at a Texas canteen, but they are part of the public and deserve more of the same, so to speak. 

So who to turn to when your patrons have exhausted Mr. L’Amour’s bibliography? Here are some names that were mentioned:

• Tony Hillerman (who, one poster pointed out, was born in the same town as L’Amour, that is, Sacred Heart, OK)
• Frederick Chiaventone
• Terry C. Johnston
• Douglas C. Jones (Hasford Family Saga)
• Elmer Kelton
• Larry McMurtry
• Howard Frank Mosler
• Douglas Hirt
• Don Coldsmith
• Dusty Rhodes (author of “clean” Westerns based in Arkansas)
• Robert J. Conley (Cherokee specific)
• Lauran Paine
• Ralph Cotton
• Ralph Compton
• Elmer Kelton
• Alistair MacLean
• Max Brand

In today’s New York Times resident pop fiction reviewer Janet Maslin gives a favorable review to a first novel by Joe Hill. Calling it a Valentine from Hell, Maslin praised Heart-Shaped Box  as a “wild, mesmerizing, perversely witty tale of horror”. And who is this Joe Hill? None other than Joseph Hillstrom King, the son of you-know-who. While our reviewer Kart G. Siewert of the Tulsa City County Library noted some predictability in the plot, he called the novel “a wrenching and effective ghost story…that reads like good early [Stephen] King mixed with some of the edgier splatterpunk sensibilities of David J. Schow (The Kill Riff)”.

I know there will be high demand for this title, but make sure your patrons don’t confuse with it with April Henry’s amateur sleuth mystery Heart-Shaped Box. However, this might be the perfect time to steal a page from Entertainment Weekly and do a reader’s advisory display of novels with the same titles. A Battle of the Books! How about David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas versus Liam Callanan’s The Cloud Atlas? Or Geraldine Brooks’s March duking it out with E.L. Doctorow’s The March? Or Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man going head to head with  H.G. Well’s Invisible Man? Check out  library blog Papercuts for more suggestions.