Monday Discussion: Books You Love to Hate

On of the most important things I try to teach my students is that while this job is great-- you get to talk about books all day-- you also have to remember that when you are doing so, you are always on stage.

Everything you say about any book while working in the library is deemed as an expert opinion, even if it is just your own personal opinion.  We have to be very careful not to trash any book, no matter how much we or even the patron in front of us hated it.

While you may be talking to a patron or a fellow staff member, remember other people in the building are listening in too.  What if they hear you trashing their favorite author? I know what will happen.  That patron will never ask you (or possibly anyone at your desk) for help in finding a book to read.  You have just alienated a patron who may then go tell everyone in town how rude you are, and you have no idea what happened.

The only way for us to match every patron with the book that is right for them is to not be negative about any book...EVER.  You should shift the focus away from why you personally did not like a book and move toward who would like it and why.  For more on this please see my review of Fay by clicking here.

However, this does not mean that we RAs do not have books we despise.  We do.  So today, I ask for you to get it all out.  Unload all the negativity here, so that you don't unload it on a patron.  We all need time to vent.  But I ask for one small favor in advance; please tell me why you hate these books so much.

I will begin.  For me the books I am most upset with have very little to do with the text, but rather they are books and authors who cause problems with me for my patrons or in how I work with patrons.

Let me explain.  First on my "hate" list is James Patterson.  This one is easy.  He annoys me because:

1. He publishes too many books each year and they are not cheap. Since he is so popular we need multiple copies of each title. Soon Patterson will get his own budget line. I am not joking.
2. He writes with different authors and patrons get crabby about how his style is so different depending on who he co-wrote the book with. Of course it is, these books are written by different people.  Mr. Patterson, just stop the charade and give them their names back to become authors in their own right.
3. His picture is way too big on the back of his books, and he looks too smug. Okay, that reason is petty, but it still irks me.

Second on my "hate" list is any book that is bigger than itself.  What do I mean by this? Let's take The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown as an example.  This book kept me busy for three full years: placing holds, adding copies, finding readalikes, buying readalikes, making lists, etc...  All of this work, and now, years later, no one cares anymore.  Please note, this happens once every few years with a book, this title is just one of many examples.  The point is, I "hate" these books because they hijack the department.  Everything we do revolves around this one title and takes a huge portion of our time.  And that is time that is being taken away from other great books.

Third and last on my list are authors who use pseudonyms and then publish a single series under 3 different pseudonyms.  I am looking at you Jayne Ann Krentz! She has series where book one is written by Krentz, book two by Quick, and book three by Jayne Castle, but they are all her!  This would be fine except we file books here at the library by author's last name and not everyone knows these three names all equal one person.  So the series is filed in KRE, QUI, and CAS.  Thanks Ms. Krentz. For more on this click here for a past Monday Discussion on Pet Peeves.

Okay, so there is my venting.  For today's Monday Discussion, share yours.  And no holing back people.  This is your chance!

Click here for the Monday Discussion archive.

What I'm Reading: March 2009

As I mentioned here, my local library is part of "The Big Read" in the Western suburbs of Chicago. I read the book this month, Animal Vegetable Mineral by Barbara Kingsolver. This is a nonfiction/memoir title by the popular novelist. With the help of her husband and 19-year-old daughter, Kingsolver wrote about her family's decision to move from Arizona to her summer home/farm full time and embarked on a 12 month journey to eat only food they grew, animals they raised, or, food that was produced within a 100 mile radius of their home.

Kingsolver is a very engaging writer, and I was intrigued by her descriptions of their experiences, but, there were times when I felt like she was berating me for eating cucumbers out of season. Despite feeling, at times, like she was telling me how much better she was than me, I still found myself passing on many of the tidbits of information I learned from Kingsolver's book. That is the sign of a good book; one that stays with you and compels you to share it with others.

I am not going to spend my time listing readalikes because The Big Read website has plenty of suggestions here. One of the things I teach my students is not to reinvent the wheel. This is a great example. Librarians share information; it is at the heart of what we do. That is why I started this blog. So go see all the great work that my local library colleagues have done.

I also read another bestselling nonfiction title this month, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale. Summerscale tires to unravel the true story behind a particularly grizzly murder of a young boy in 1860. In a Victorian family home in Road England, a young boy disappears from his bed in the nursery and is found brutally murdered in the outhouse. This is the story of a strange family, the creation and rise of the police detective, and the dawning of the modern era.

What makes this true crime story different from many others is that the author takes an interesting angle. She uses this true event to show how it also gave rise to the modern mystery novel. She also throws in a quick discussion of the birth of Aquariums at the end too.

Personally, although I was intrigued by her arguments, I got bored in the middle and didn't really ever get back into the book. Once the sister confesses (don't worry, it's pretty clear from start that she did it), there are only minor revelations and wild speculations in the last third of the book. In fact, I felt it ended rather abruptly. Still, I think Summerscale's discussions of the emergence of the detective and the beginnings of mystery fiction at this time were worth reading it, IMO.

After reading Summerscale's book you will want to run out and read Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, all of whom are mentioned and quoted liberally throughout the book. I am all for books that want you to read more books! There is also the brand new title by Dan Simmons, Drood. In Drood, Simmons reimagines the inspiration behind Dickens' last, unfinished work, narrated by Wilkie Collins.

If true crime is more your thing, according an article by Neal Wyatt on EBSCO's NoveList Plus database, the five key titles to read in the genre are Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt, Helter Skelter: the True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, Blue Blood by Edward Conlon, and The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson.

Finally, I was less than impressed with the new satirical, superhero fantasy novel Captain Freedom by G. Xaiver Robillard. Basically it is a memoir by a celebrity obsessed and currently disgraced superhero in a near future America (mostly California). This book poked fun at just about everything in politics and pop culture today. When the hero becomes Governor of CA, he even uses a slogan ("Keep Freedom Free") and runs a campaign similar to Obama's. There is also a section devoted to lambasting the Da Vinci Code. In my opinion, this novel has too musch satire and not enough meat.

If you like Superhero stories, Perry Moore's Hero is much better, as long as you are fine with a parallel coming out of the closet plot line; I wrote about reading Hero here. Also Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize winning, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, about the comic book industry is one of my all time favorites. Even the Pixar film, The Incredibles, is better than Captain America.

However, there are many readers who loved this book. It has a 4 star rating on Amazon. Also, here is a link to the Shelfari page for Captain Freedom where you can read the opinions of people who loved the book and why. Although I am allowed to dislike a book, as a RA, I prefer to talk about books in a positive way. Just because I did not like a book, that does not mean there isn't another person for whom it is the perfect choice. As the Shelfari link shows, there are plenty of readers for whom this novel is a great choice; I will let them speak for it. They will do a much better job.

Beyond the Bestseller List: El Iliminado

I am not committing myself to a full blown new occasional series yet, but I have been waiting to write about the book in the title of the post for awhile now and couldn't really come up with a reason.

But as it says above-- Beyond the Bestseller List-- is exactly what I am trying to promote.  I talk about the popular new books a bit and the backlist a lot, but there is this whole other area of books that are new, not getting a ton of press, but are totally worth a look.  So for now I am labeling these books with that tag-- Beyond the Bestseller List.

To christen the series, I want to point you to a unique graphic novel that is getting quite a bit of buzz, and it isn't even a memoir.  El Iluminado by Ilan Stavans and illustrated by Steve Sheinkin is Da Vinci Code-esque thriller involving the Crypto-Jews (families of Jewish peoples who have hidden their religious identities for centuries, usually to avoid persecution or even death.)

Click here for the Graphic Novel Reporter reivew

Click here for an interview with Stavans

And click here to see what readers are saying

This is a great option for people who want a compelling story in graphic novel form. Fans of conspiracy thrillers, historical fiction, Jewish culture, hidden religious sects, or stories set in the American West would enjoy this book.

If only El Ilumindo got more media attention, I think it would be enjoyed by a large audience, hence my designation of Beyond the Bestseller List. I hope to bring the series back soon to highlight other worthy titles that need a bit more promotion.

Editor's Note: I first learned of this book from my college's alumni news as Stavans is a professor there, but no one solicited me directly or sent me a copy of the book for review.

Flashback Fridays: NPR 100 Best Beach Reads...Plus New 2010 100 Best Thrillers

As I was looking back at past year's posts for this week's installment of Flashback Fridays, I found this in a post from this week, last year:

Earlier this summer I was encouraging you to vote on your favorite beach reads over at the NPR web page. Well, they results are in, and the list is interesting.

Not only is the list of the 100 Best Beach Reads a great list to be reminded of, but just reading the old post reminded me that I should check on the results of this year's poll of the best thrillers which I have posted about before here.

So, here it is, the final list of the listener's picks on the top 100 Killer Thrillers:

The NPR audience nominated some 600 novels to our "Killer Thrillers" poll and cast more than 17,000 ballots. The final roster of winners is a diverse one to say the least, ranging in style and period from Dracula to The Da Vinci Code, Presumed Innocent to Pet Sematary. What these top 100 titles share, however, is that all of them are fast-moving tales of suspense and adventure.

I was heartened to see how many of the titles on the list could be classified as "horror" as much as "thriller."

Anyway, take a look at either list- Beach Reads or Thrillers for yourself. Even the pickiest reader will find at least one readable book between these two great lists

In fact, lists like these are the perfect thing to hand to your picky patrons who grumble and groan that "there are no good books these days," or that "they have read everything we have already." Hand them these lists and watch them find a whole new list of "pre-approved" books. It works every time.

Remember, you can follow Flashback Fridays anytime here.