ALA Report Post Coming Soon. In the Meantime...

I have not been posting because I have been spending my days at the wonderful American Library Association Conference. I will be writing up 2 posts about programs I went to that pertain to RA issues specifically, and at least a third about random things that are worth sharing.

In the meantime, I wanted to remind everyone that our brand new Saturday Book Discussion Group at the Berwyn Public Library, "revisiting greatest hits from discussions past," begins this Saturday with My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult. Click on the link to get details. If you've read the book and are in the area, stop by.

New Blog by a MA Public Library

A few days ago, Laurie, an RA from the Brockton (MA) Public Library asked me to check out their new blog. I am always excited when librarians embrace new techniques to reach their patrons, so I dived right in. Here is a link to their blog.

Laurie and a colleague appear to be focusing on writing about the books they are reading and providing patrons further avenues of exploration for each title. Nice work guys.

This brings up 2 good points. First, all of you librarians out there should be writing at least a little about what you are reading. This helps you to remember what is best about a book, for which readers it will most appeal, and allows you to begin drawing connections from one book to another. This will only make your job easier and help your patrons get better leisure reading suggestions.

At BPL, along with my blog, our entire RA staff is required to write something about the books they are reading and at the very least suggest 1 possible readalike. We post these on Shelfari. You can click here to see our group shelf; and here for my shelf.

The second point Brockton PL's new blog brings up is that at its heart your library's RA service is driven by your patrons. It is an intimate and extremely local service. From one state to another, even from one town to another, the types of books, their settings, genres, and topics that are most popular will differ. This is why it is nice to see library blogs from other parts of the country. We can all see what people are reading and talking about somewhere else, and maybe it will spark us to suggest something totally different for our patrons.

So go on over and check out the Brockton Public Library's blog; maybe it will inspire you to start one of your own. And, feel free to contact me and pass on your book blogs. If I get enough responses, I will compile a permanent archive of library book blogs.

RA Programs at ALA Conference

You may have noticed that I am actively advertising for the American Library Association Conference beginning this coming weekend right here in Chicago. As a Chicagoland librarian, I am very lucky that this conference comes through town every 4 years or so.

This year there is quite a bit going on for those interested in providing cutting edge RA service for your library patrons. In fact, Cindy Orr over at RA Online's blog posted a very nice consolidated list of the RA specific offerings.

I am most excited about the RUSA President's Program, led by Neal Wyatt. From the RUSA Blog:

The program, which will be held from 1:30 to 3 p.m. on Monday, July 13, is the inaugural session of the Readers’ Advisory Research and Trends Forum, a new RUSA initiative where ideas, best practices and creative possibilities are actively engaged and deconstructed in order to contribute to the advancement of RA service. This year’s theme—how appeal is an interdisciplinary concept that applies to music, art and books—will be addressed with program content that covers multiple perspectives on the topic, including service implications and collection building.

The Adult Reading Round Table is also a sponsor of this event. I will be working at ARRT's table during the program, so come by and say hi. You can click here for more details on this program, which will be held at the Hyatt Regency and does not require an extra ticket beyond basic conference registration.

The ALA conference also brings many authors to town. I am hoping to catch Michael Connelly, Junot Diaz, and Charlaine Harris among others.

Over 12,000 librarians are expected to invade Chicago this weekend. Maybe I'll see you there.

What I'm Reading: The White Tiger

I recently listened to Aravind Adiga's Booker prize winning first novel, The White Tiger and was blown away. I read a lot of books, but The White Tiger impressed me on so many levels. The imagery and descriptions were vivid enough that I literally felt, smelled, and heard the action. Adgia presented a believable story about the contradictions of modern India, a place where the old caste system butts heads with modern capitalism on a day-to-day basis.

What I enjoyed the most was how Adiga chose to tell his story of modern India. Our narrator, Balram Halwai spends seven nights recording his life story on a tape he is ostensibly planning on sending to the Prime Minister of China in anticipation of his trip to India. Balram is literally speaking to us, sharing his experiences, but also the experiences of those around him. Also, I listened to this book, and since it is written as if it is an audio recording, it worked very well as an audio book.

Before I begin with some plot details, this book has a big limiter. Balram tells us early in the book that he killed his boss and is unrepentant about it. He tells the reader this important information right at the start, and some readers may be turned off by a main protagonist who is an unapologetic killer. However, in this reader's opinion, Adiga builds Balram up so well throughout the novel that I kept thinking that maybe he lied, and he really didn't kill his boss. I wanted to believe in him so much. Personally, in the end, it was not an issue for me, but it could very easily be a huge issue for some readers.

Balram's life begins in the country as a poor boy. Through his natural curiousity and unwillingness to accept his lot in life, he gets a job as a second driver for a rich land owner. After black mailing the 1st driver, Balram gets promoted and is sent to Delhi with the land owner's son, Mr. Ashok. From what I can tell, Mr. Ashok's main job is to bribe politicians so that his family does not have to pay taxes. Balram drives Mr. Ashok around Delhi and learns the ways of the city. He begins to resent the caste system and Mr. Ashok's ways. He realizes he will never be a free man unless he kills Mr. Ashok.

After a brutal murder scene, Balram escapes with a bag of money and his nephew to Bangalore where he uses all he has learned working for Mr. Ashok to start an extremely successful start-up, running a taxi service for the call center workers. It should also be noted that Balram knows his actions will cause the death (read: murder) of his entire family back home.

The bulk of this book takes place in Delhi. Balram explains the people and places of this chaotic city. He describes the ways of the rich, their servants, and the poor on the streets. We see the traffic, confusion, and "democracy" of modern India. The level of detail is amazing. Yet the story moves swiftly.

This is not a book for the faint-hearted though. There are real problems and tradegies described here. But it is an authentic experience. There is more dark than light here, but some good does shine through. Despite all he has done, it is hard not to like Balram. I literally laughed out loud at times. But you must always remember, he may not be the most reliable narrator.

Readalikes: Those who liked the movie Slumdog Millionaire and/or the novel which the movie was based on, Q and A by Vikas Swarup will enjoy The White Tiger. Conversely, those who were turned off by the extreme poverty and and general "unfairness" in Slumdog Millionaire, should stay away from The White Tiger as it could be described as Slumdog Millionaire on steroids.

Two books I have read and written about that are excellent readalike options for readers who enjoyed the Indian setting are The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri and The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai. My account of our book group's discussion of The Inheritance of Loss has quite a few more readalikes, including nonfiction options.

When I was searching for readalikes for The White Tiger on NoveList today, I noticed that the book discussion guide for the novel suggests trying Ralph Ellison's American classic, Invisible Man. This suggestion intrigues me. I think it would be an excellent choice for readers who wanted to read more about forgotten people.

The contradictions and problems of modern India often remind me of the current situation in China. In fact, The White Tiger itself draws this comparison. A good suggestion for those who enjoyed The White Tiger, and are willing to exapand to a Chinese setting, is The Banquet Bug by Geling Yan.

Finally, in my years of serving leisure readers, I have found that the list of Man Booker winners is a readalike category onto itself. For most major awards this is not the case, but for some reason, people who like one Booker winner, seem to like them all. Here is a link to past winners.

Fifty Books for Our Times from Newsweek

One of my on going diatribes is for librarians and readers to remember the one thing that libraries do better than book stores, and that is that we have the backlist. Libraries will always have, for example, copies of that book which was popular 3 years ago, but no one remembers now. Yes we have the newest books and the classics, but unlike the bookstores, we have everything in between. Oh, and by the way, our books are free to borrow.

Promoting the backlist is where libraries can help readers best. This week, Newsweek is focusing on the backlist with this list 50 books for our times. As they say in the article, who needs them to tell you that The Great Gatsby is a great book?

This really is a great list, with helpful annotations. They cover a wide range of genres and have fiction and nonfiction. There should be something here for just about any reader.

Thanks to Early Word for singling out this great list.

What I'm Reading: The Last Dickens

I thought it was just me, but here in America we seem to be on a Dickens kick. I just finished Matthew Pearl's latest, The Last Dickens and I am in the process of listening to the 24 discs that make up Dan Simmons, Drood.

There have also been the PBS Masterpiece reworkings of Dickens' Tales. I also looked back at my blog over the past 12 months and saw that Dickens had come up frequently. All I have to say is that somebody has been doing some great subliminal Dickens' marketing.

But on to the book at hand, Matthew Pearl's The Last Dickens. I have read all three of Pearl's books. His newest has a more convincing mystery than Poe Shadow and is less bloody than The Dante Club. But like both of his previous books, The Last Dickens is chocked full of historical facts and people. In fact, at the end of the book, Pearl lists which characters were based on real people and which were made up for the narrative's sake.

Here is the basic plot. James Osgood, the American publisher for Dickens' work is waiting for the 6th installment of Dickens' latest novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, to arrive. He sends his right hand man to the dock to await the manuscript, but the young man mysteriously dies on the way back to the office. Was it murder? A nefarious foreigner is also introduced as chasing down the manuscript.

A few days later, Dickens dies; thus leaving his last work unfinished forever. Osgood and and a young divorcee from his office, Rebecca, travel to England to try and unravel the mystery surrounding Dickens' death and his mysterious last novel. Like any amateur detective novel, Osgood is in for more than he bargained and mortal danger, high speed horse and carriage races, and burning buildings await him on his journey. Their adventures and inquiries make up one of the two main story lines.

The second storyline takes place 3 years previously, during Dickens' last American tour. James Osgood was a part of this tour, but it is Dickens' young bodyguard Tom Branagan, through whom we see the story here. The two story lines do merge in the "present" of the book in a satisfactory way.

The Last Dickens was published in 2009, but is written as if it were a novel of 1870. So to those reviewers who complain that the villain's need to explain himself at the end is a bit much, I say that's how it would have been in a crime novel in 1870. That is why I enjoyed this novel. It was very much about the time while also mimicking it. It is even written in 6 "installments," just as the real publication of The Mystery of Edwn Drood was. And much like installment published novels of the era, Pearl ends each installment with a cliff hanger, but begins the next with the other storyline, alternating until the two collide and the novel moves briskly toward a conclusion. Again, just like most novels in the late 19th Century. As a reader who appreciates the history of leisure reading, I loved this aspect.

Without giving the ending away, I do have to mention some of the complaints about it. This is a work of historical fiction. Historical fiction needs to stay true to history. History stands than The Mystery of Edwin Drood went unfinished. This book needed to end with an unfinished book. However, The Last Dickens is also a mystery. And here our mystery involves what the finished book would contain. So, Pearl needed to have Osgood find the manuscript to have a satisfactory resolution to the mystery, but then he still needed to have it lost somehow, preserving the true historical outcome.

Personally, As I was getting closer to the end and Osgood had discovered that the last 6 installments were probably out there, I was getting worried that he would find them. Once he did locat ethe pages, I appreciated that rather exaggerated way in whcih they were lost forever. But really, I think it is a matter of taste; you will either like the ending or think it is a cop out.

Readalikes: There are so many options here. First and foremost is the other current book about Dickens' and his last work, Drood by Dan Simmons. Also, many are going to want to read The Mystery of Edwin Drood for themselves. Here is a link to all of Dickens work while we are at it.

Some critics have called The Mystery of Edwin Drood the first modern crime novel. Some other books that compete for that title are Moonstone by Wilkie Collins and The Dupin Tales by Poe (this edition has an introduction by Mattew Pearl).

Other similar titles would be the novels Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott and The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti, both of which I have read and written about here and here.

Similar nonfiction readalikes would be The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester, The Lost City of Z : a Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann, and The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale.

Book Discussion Survey Results

In this post I urged you to take the Reading Group Guides Survey for book club participants. They just posted the results here.

7,700 people took the survey. One of the findings that most interested me was the fact that over 70% of people get their discussion book suggestions from friends. This is a void into which your public library can step.

Whether or not you library hosts a book discussion group, the staff should be able to help you find appropriate titles for your group.

Here at BPL we have noted this finding, and we are going to try to market our services better to the groups that meet outside of the library. People don't know what we can do for them unless we tell them.

Now It's Your Turn to Vote on the Best Beach Reads

Enough of everyone else telling you what the best beach read is. NPR is going to let you tell them. Click here for details and vote for your favorite beach read.

They asked, I say we tell them!

Click here for all of my summer reading posts.

Over 100 Summer Reading Lists!

Someone with way more time than me has been keeping a list of every summer reading list he has come across. Click over to his delicious bookmarks to check them out for yourself.

Again, you can also click here to see everything I have posted about summer reading.

Library Lovers Unite to Save Ohio Libraries!

As reported on the 23rd in Early Word, Ohio Libraries (which unlike most public libraries in the country, get the majority of their budget from the state) are facing a 50% cut in funding.

A blog called, Save Ohio Libraries has been set up. Go on over there to see how you can help.

Ohio, along with my home state of Illinois, is known for having some of the best public libraries and public library services in the country. In these tough economic times, the library is one place where funding needs to at least stay the same.

Click here to see my past posts about how the economy is effecting library service.

Please go to their blog and help as best you can. Just adding them as a friend on Facebook will help. No matter where you live, if you believe in the value of public library service, they need your help. Spread the word.