Reminder: Backlist Can Become Frontlist At Any Time

In libraries we are usually ready for a previously popular book to come back into the public consciousness. Today's example is Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou:

The full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of a multibillion-dollar startup, by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end in the face of pressure and threats from the CEO and her lawyers.

In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup "unicorn" promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood tests significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at $9 billion, putting Holmes's worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn't work. 

For years, Holmes had been misleading investors, FDA officials, and her own employees. When Carreyrou, working at The Wall Street Journal, got a tip from a former Theranos employee and started asking questions, both Carreyrou and the Journal were threatened with lawsuits. Undaunted, the newspaper ran the first of dozens of Theranos articles in late 2015. By early 2017, the company's value was zero and Holmes faced potential legal action from the government and her investors. 

Here is the riveting story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron, a disturbing cautionary tale set amid the bold promises and gold-rush frenzy of Silicon Valley.

Back in 2018 this book was everywhere. And it stayed popular for quite a while. I did this book as a book discussion title in February of 2020 with ARRT and you can read the notes here.

I read it with my ears as an audiobook, so did my husband. Very few books overlap like that for us. It was bonkers to see what Elizabeth Holmes was able to do. It was also a refreshing true crime story that did not involve a serial killer.

Well, you all know where this is going..... Obviously Bad Blood is back and paperback sales of this book are, once again, through the roof as reported by PW here because of the popularity of the documentary You Can See Everything.

This book was still in most library collections because it was so critically acclaimed and Holmes had stayed in the news meaning people sought the book out on a regular enough basis that it was not weeded. And now, it is checked out in every possible format at most libraries (including my own). 

So first things first, good news if you still own it. Yes you can add more paperback copies or ebooks to satisfy demand. But also because it is an older title that was popular back when it first came out, there are MANY Reddit threads of readalike options. (Scroll past the AI options).

And there are also great threads of Reddit book suggestions for non-murder true crime.

We are not going to be able to keep adding copies to satisfy demand on this one. And, interest in this title isn't going away anytime soon. The movie will stay on the radar and in the mainstream discussion from now through the Academy Awards in March 2027.

So add what you can, but use this opportunity to make displays and lists of your MANY true crime offerings that are NOT murder-based that they can enjoy while they wait.

Viral books and movies bring people into the library, sometimes for the first time in years (and "into the library" is also if they only access us through Libby). Sure they will be slightly disappointed if Bad Blood isn't available. but when you show them so many other awesome choices to enjoy while they wait their turn, many (not all of course) will be excited to rediscover the library and all it has to offer.

And all of this is possible because we don't just keep the newest books on our shelves. We always have great titles from the past that are still great reads if only our patrons knew there were there, hiding in the stacks.

Using Awards Lists As a RA Tool: The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize Edition

 This is part of my ongoing series on using Awards Lists as a RA tool. Click here for all posts in the series in reverse chronological order. Click here for the first post which outlines the details how to use awards lists as a RA tool.

It is Election Day here in America. We could all use some levity-- AFTER VOTING. In fact, if you live in America and are reading this before you voted, please stop reading and go vote. I voted last week myself.

Okay back to today and needing some levity, I saved this post for today, the short list of books nominated for the Wodehouse Prize. From their about page:

The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction is the UK’s longest running prize for comic fiction and is designed to highlight the funniest novel of the past twelve months, which best evokes the Wodehouse spirit of witty characters and perfectly timed comic prose. The prize was launched in 2000 on the 25th anniversary of the death of P.G. Wodehouse and 2025 marked the 25th anniversary of the award. Each year, the prize celebrates the novels that have genuinely made people laugh. Publishers are advised to focus their submissions for 2026 on books that really made them laugh out loud, in order to give them the best chance of being shortlisted.

These are books that are of high literary merit and are also funny. Books can be both and this prize has made that point crystal clear for many years. In fact, the entire backlist of nominated titles and winners going back to 2000 are cataloged here. 

The short list and juror statement about each book form this year's list are here and below:

A Good Person by Kirsten King – Published by Fleet (Little, Brown)

Lillian is having a great time with Henry: he's charming, well-educated, and exactly the kind of guy she'd like to end up with. That is, until she stays the night at his flat and they end up in a huge argument. Furious, Lillian seeks revenge on Henry by performing a drunken YouTube hex on him. But then Henry actually ends up dead. Desperate to control the narrative, clear her name, and assume her rightful place as Henry's mourning girlfriend, Lillian's pursuit of the truth will throw her into a dangerous tailspin, which just may just upend her life for good.

Stephanie Merritt said: “A wickedly funny reinvention of the revenge-plot comedy, with a gloriously deluded narrator. As you'd expect from a screenwriter, Kirsten King has a killer ear for dialogue, and so many of her lines made me laugh out loud.”

 Black Bag by Luke Kennard – Published by John Murray Press

A penniless and out-of-work actor picks up a job working for Dr Blend, a university professor who is conducting a psychological experiment. How will Dr Blend's students react to someone zipped into on oversized bag, sitting at the back of the lecture hall over a series of autumn term lectures? The role, eagerly accepted, soon has unexpected consequences. A professor of post-humanism develops research questions of her own, in particular if you can love someone secreted away inside a black bag. Meanwhile, the actor's childhood friend and flatmate forms a vision for monetising this new situation… A warped campus novel, Black Bag is an investigation into the crisis of masculinity and an off-kilter love story.

Tristram Fane Saunders said: “Luke Kennard's utterly original campus novel nudges at serious questions - about art, authenticity and modern masculinity - but always with a light touch. It's a novel that achieves a marvellous balance between the mundane and the surreal.”

How To Lose a Lord in Ten Days by Sophie Irwin – Published by HarperCollins

He wants a wife. She wants to be jilted. This is war. Rich, handsome and titled, Lord Ashford has every lady in England longing for his hand in marriage. Everyone, that is, except Miss Lydia Hanworth – the only young woman Ashford wishes to marry. Pressured into accepting Ashford’s proposal, the announcement must be kept secret for ten days. Can Lydia free herself from her obligations before the engagement is publicly announced, without ruining her reputation? You can achieve an awful lot in ten days, after all…

Sophie Ratcliffe said: “Packed full of dukes, dowries, and double-edged wit, Irwin’s Regency spin on the classic romcom charmed the judges with its sly humour and period detail.”

Motherfaker by Anna Brook-Mitchell – Published by Macmillan

Barri Brown is a respected teacher and an upstanding citizen of Guernsey. She’s also down for a bit of law-breaking… At thirty-five, Barri spends her time slaving away as a teacher, getting passed over for promotions and constantly covering for colleagues with kids. When her husband vanishes – along with her savings – it’s the final straw. And so, she hatches a wild plan: fake a pregnancy and use the paid maternity leave to start over somewhere new. With seven foam bumps, a wardrobe full of smock dresses and a great pregnancy heist underway, all Barri has to do is blag it until she can disappear for good – without getting caught and being sent to prison for fraud. How hard could it be?

Tristram Fane Saunders said: “Could you fake a pregnancy just for the paid maternity leave – and get away with it? This outrageous, harebrained scheme is an irresistible premise for Anna Brook-Mitchell's farce, in which one lie soon leads into another. It's a warm, bighearted farce with a heroine you can't help rooting for.”

Offseason by Avigayl Sharp - Published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (Orion Publishing Group)

In Offseason, the fiercely observant but self-deluded narrator finds herself teaching at an all-girls boarding school in a remote coastal town. In between manic lectures that veer from Charles Dickens's Bleak House to the childhood maltreatment of her beloved Iosif Stalin and the generational legacy of the Holocaust, she implicates everyone she meets in her quest to pin down where exactly her own life went wrong.

Stephanie Merritt said: “'Wry, deadpan, absurdist: Offseason perfectly skewers the self-absorption of contemporary life (and fiction) and finds comedy in the bleakest situations. It feels fresh, original and multi-layered; I loved its strangeness and dark humour.”

We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad – Published by Scribner UK (Simon & Schuster)

This is the highly anticipated follow up to the viral sensation Bunny. When We Love You, Bunny opens, Samantha Heather Mackey has just published her first novel to critical acclaim. But at a New England stop on her book tour, her one-time frenemies, furious at the way they’ve been portrayed, kidnap her. Now a captive audience, it’s her (and our) turn to hear the Bunnies’ side of the story. One by one, they take turns holding the axe, and recount the birth throes of their unholy alliance, their discovery of their unusual creative powers ― and the phantasmagorical adventure of conjuring their first creation.

James Naughtie said: “Mona Awad's horror-satire crackles with the same edgy pulse that made her first Bunny novel a phenomenon - exploring ruthlessly the social mayhem of a group of privileged Ivy League student women. Funny, bloody and irresistible.” 

Click through for more information about the award and this year's jurors.

A book that can make you laugh out loud is an evergreen choice. Make sure you have the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize and the archive of past winners bookmarked as a great resource to help readers find a book that is well constructed and will make them laugh. Especially during stressful times, humor is a great option.

While there are a lot of books to choose from, you can add to this resource and make it more locally focused by using the prize as a conversation starter to display option.

Your question for your community-- What is a book that made you laugh out loud?

Click here for more on how to turn a conversation starter into a display. In the mean time, get those Wodehouse Prize books-- short lister, winners, from past and present-- out on display. It's a stressful time in America right now and many could use a chuckle from their books.

Conversation Starter to Display Monthly Question: What Books Are You Most Grateful For?

This is part of a monthly series of conversation starters which can be made into evergreen displays that I first proposed here (with 12 examples that could last you full a year). You can expect a new conversation starter on the first week day of a new month. Use the newest one for the next month, or access the long backlist of these ideas anytime by using this link. 

Back in June, I wrote about how to use conversation starters to create evergreen displays (see link above), and in that post I promised to give you one conversation starter a month at the start of each month. I also make it clear in that post that these displays can be small. 3-5 books that you keep rotating. You can even use this link to make it into a scavenger hunt of small displays all over the library.

This month question is: What books are you most grateful for?

While this question, coming during the month when we all celebrate Thanksgiving is not a shocker, asking it can help you now -- to get a display up right away of the season, a display that will be diverse and inclusive because the answer is not tied to any one genre or age level AND it will help you understand what books in your collection hold the most meaning for your readers.

What books are you most grateful for?-- This is a question that everyone who is a reader can answer quickly; much more quickly than when you ask people to share a favorite book or the last good book they read. This is a question that has an immediate and visceral response. It is also a question that changes. I you ask someone this question today, you will get a few titles, but then ask them 6 months later and you will have a few more. 

And the answers are evergreen by default because people always need a pick me up from a good read and finding a book others are grateful for is an excellent recommendation 

Start by asking staff, What books are you most grateful for?- at the very least. Do it through an electronic form so that the answers get filed into a spreadsheet. And then do some searching.

The title of this display you make is the question itself: What books are you most grateful for?

Why? Because this is interactive. Your display is a conversation. It will draw patrons toward it, their interest piqued. You are asking them a question and presenting some answers, but they will have their own and they will want to tell you! It will invite everyone to participate. 

Now, you can follow my more elaborate suggestion on how to ask every patron to help answer this question and add titles to your spreadsheet of options, OR you can start smaller. Put up a white board or bulletin board near the display and allow people to add titles. You can pull them as needed or just leave them there, answers to your question, a way to SHOW your community that you care about their answers. You should be adding these to the spreadsheet overtime as well.

That spreadsheet is key here because it is a way for the library to KNOW what books matter to their patrons. Circulation statistics just show us what checks out. It doesn't tell us if they were enjoyed, let alone a book so treasured the patron recommends it to everyone they know. Asking this question makes an excellent, interactive, and, quite frankly, easy display, BUT it also gives us valuable collection development data.

First, if the books people are recommending to answer this question and their circ stats are not great, this lets us know that the book should stay in our collection. It alerts us that it is a patron fav and we now know to get it on display where another reader will almost certainly give it a try (with a title of a display like that, it is sure to circ now)

Second, this conversation starter allows us to see what books matter to our readers and we can pass that information on to those who buy the books for our collections so that they can look for similar titles. As someone who bought for the fiction collection, I would have loved to have this information. I knew my key patrons and bought books I knew they would like, but this question would have reach more people. Many who never stop to talk to use will answer. You will get a much wider view of the books your readers love and crave. That data is collection development gold!

You can search out readalikes that you have, and add more. All of that will lead to small displays, in the library or online, ones you can title, "These are the books our community is grateful for....now try these similar options." Those can be online and in small spaces. 

You are asking a question, getting responses to fill a display, gathering valuable collection development data, and then creating more displays. All by asking one question: What books are you most grateful for?

You have nothing to lose here. You and your patrons win the second you ask the question.

Back next month with anther question, but as always, use the link at the top of this post for many more questions you can use today, tomorrow, or in a few months. Just start asking your patrons questions so you can see what really sticks with them. Your displays will be easier to build, more inviting, and you will have a better sense of what other titles need to be added to your collections.