Latest Episode of Booklist's Shelf Care The Podcast with a FREE Training Opportunity and a Survey!

I always listen to Booklist's Self Care The Podcast and I love how the entire backlist of every conversation is available with a single click, but today I want to draw all of your attention to the current episode.

To start the year, Susan Maguire not only had three conversations about reading but also, she has a brief survey for all of you to take. 

From the start page of the survey: 

Readers’ Advisory Tools Survey

The goal of this survey is to identify which tools are most useful during real-time readers’ advisory (RA) interactions with adult patrons. We’re not focusing on tools for displays, book lists, or form-based RA. Instead, we want to know what you use when a patron:

• approaches you at the desk or in the stacks
• calls the library or sends a chat request

In short, we’re interested in the tools that help you when time is of the essence—and why they’re useful to you.

Before you go any further with this post, please take a moment to take the survey. Your input will go a long way toward helping all of us help more readers. 

Susan also announced this year's FREE Readers’ Advisory: Ideas & Practice. From the registration page:

Booklist's Readers’ Advisory: Ideas & Practice series continues to mine the depths of RA, helping the library worker improve their practice and better assist patrons with their leisure reading needs. This year, Booklist is offering three stellar one-hour presentations from a few leading librarians, covering readers’ advisory for history, a deep dive into romantasy, and an exploration of the four cornerstones of reader interest. Join us on Wednesday, March 18th, beginning at 2 PM ET / 11 AM PT. Registration is free!

You should sign up NOW. You can watch it all, in parts, or via a recording which will be sent yo you automatically if you register. All of it is worth your time. Click here to register.

And now, last but not least, the details of this episode of Shelf Care the Podcast.

On this episode of Shelf Care: The Podcast, host Susan Maguire speaks to Seattle Public Library Reader Services Librarian Misha Stone about nerding out about reading, reading more (or at least reading more intentionally), and the thrill of the backlist (along with Heated Rivalry, of course). Then, Booklist’s Audio Editor Heather Booth drops some brief but powerful insight into what makes an audiobook reader, and what makes them valid readers (because, yes, audiobooks count as reading), and what you can look forward to in Booklist. Finally, Booklist’s Editor-in-Chief and Adult Books Editor Donna Seaman chats with Susan about some forthcoming books all kinds of readers can look forward to.

Here's what we talked about:

To register for Readers’ Advisory: Ideas and Practice, visit booklistonline.com/webinars 

Take our brief Readers’ Advisory survey (please and thank you!)

How to Read More in 2025 – Shelf Talk (from Seattle Public Library)

“Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking.”
― Christopher Morley

Heated Rivalry, by Rachel Reid

Go Set a Watchman, by Harper Lee

Cat Sebastian

Pagebound

GoodReads

The Storygraph

SPL’s Your Next Five Books

Hemlock & Silver, by T. Kingfisher

The Mountains We Call Home, by Kim Michele Richardson

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, by Kim Michele Richardson

 “Reading Is a Vice,” by Adam Kirsch, published in The Atlantic on Jan. 2, 2026

Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga

Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon

The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary, by Terry Tempest Williams

The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change, Rebecca Solnit

Men Explain Things to Me, by Rebecca Solnit

Figuring, by Maria Popova

Traversal, by Maria Popova

Isola, by Allegra Goodman

This Is Not about Us, by Allegra Goodman

The Red Convertible: Selected and New Stories, 1978 – 2008, by Louise Erdrich

Python’s Kiss, by Louise Erdrich

Discipline, by Larissa Pham

Pop Song: Adventures in Art and Intimacy, by Larissa Pham

No Way Home, by T. C. Boyle

Five Weeks in the Country, by Francine Prose

Click here to access the podcast's landing page where you can access the current episode and ALL backlist episodes with one click.