STACKED

books

My unedited shelves

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Since it appears everyone is sharing their unedited bookshelves, I thought I’d participate. Remember when I actually organized all of my books before? I would say that flew out the window pretty much immediately after it happened. I do have a system to my madness, so let me give you a tour of my bookshelves. They are completely unedited and thus a disaster. And some of these photos leave something to be desired.

This is the living room book case, and this is where new books I pick up or receive end up. There are library books shoved among ARCs shoved among finished books. There are also a ton of other non-book things on the shelf. I will say this — I’m mostly a neat person, and this is the only part of my house as messy as this. On the left on the floor, you can see audiobooks, too. Here are is a close up of the middle shelves of this case:

To the right of this book case, a pile of books. Same story: they’re ones I haven’t read yet, just came into the house, or I have other action to take. That box also has books in it. 

So the room behind the living room is the guest room are four boxes of books. They’re all older, antique, maybe-but-probably-not rare books that my husband’s parents shipped to us when they moved. In January. Yep, those boxes are still doing a great job holding those books:

My bedroom has become the official landing place for all of the committee-received books. I don’t want to do a closeup for a number of reasons, but if you were wondering what sort of commitment being on a selection committee is, here’s an idea of the staggering amount of material received: 

There’s a small pile in my office/library room, and these are books I picked up at ALA that I’ve been slowly working through: 

Then there’s a pile and a box in the same room. Same story: working through these books, figuring out what to read, what to review, and what to pass on. 

I’m not a huge book purchaser. If I’m going to buy a book, it’ll be something I plan on rereading or revisiting or lending out personally. A number of the books on these shelves have been in my life for a long time, and some of them are galleys of books I still need to do something with (read or pass on). Let’s start with the adult books:

I love Bill Bryson, Haruki Murakami, Franz Kafka, along with my maybe not-so-secret loves of Don DeLillo and Douglas Coupland. My favorite book in the world — Ann Patchett’s The Magician’s Assistant — sits on these shelves, as does my favorite collection of short stories, Aimee Bender’s The Girl in the Flammable Skirt. The very bottom shelf on the right hand side are my poetry collections. I used to be so into that. Maybe someday I’ll return. And yes, I own Snooki’s book. I couldn’t even get through it. I got it on sale, for what it’s worth. 

This is the middle set of stacks in my library/office. The top shelf are mass markets. Judge away, but I keep that copy of Atlas Shrugged there because I got through the damn book.

The shelf below — starting with Deadly and ending with The Girl of Fire and Thorns — are all my signed books. Some are finished copies and some are ARCs. It’s one of my favorite shelves. 

Just above the mass markets on the top of that book case are my comics. I don’t own too many. 

The very bottom of that book case are my series books. Obviously, there are some holes.

The next book case in the library/office are my YA books. This is a mix of finished, must-keep copies of books nearer the top and mostly ARCs I still need to read or pass along lower down. 

The top shelf are a combination of my favorite YA books and authors, along with books I really liked and a couple of books I still need to read. And on the far right are some classic Babysitter’s Club titles.

And there are my shelves unedited. Be kind. I think maybe the titles on my shelves and the way I keep them around the house share way more about me than I would share otherwise.

Speechless by Hannah Harrington & The Love is Louder Campaign

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A couple of weeks ago I posted a review of Hannah Harrington‘s sophomore novel Speechless, which you can read here. Here’s a little more about the book:

Everyone knows that Chelsea Knot can’t keep a secret. Until now. Because the last secret she shared turned her into a social outcast — and nearly got someone killed. Chelsea has taken a vow of silence to learn to keep her mouth shut and to stop hurting anyone else. 

Speechless tackles real-life teen issues, including bullying, mean girls, LGBT awareness and hate crimes. In October 2012 — a month from now, Harlequin TEEN will be releasing a new survey following up on interviews with 1,500 girls between the ages of 13 and 18 on the subject of bullying. In part of this project, they’ve teamed up with the Love is Louder Campaign.

Love is Louder is a non-profit group and Harlequin TEEN partnered with them to help use the power of YA literature to take a stand against bullying. The Speechless action kit is up on the Love is Louder site and uses tie book to provide ideas for activities and events that promote the anti-bullying movement. The goal of this partnership is to help make a difference in the lives of teens, one student at a time.

If you weren’t aware already, October is anti-bullying month. Keep your eyes around the blogosphere because I bet this is a topic that’ll be touched on quite a bit over the next month and a half.

To celebrate the partnership between Harlequin TEEN and the Love is Louder campaign, I’ve got two copies of Speechless to give away to those who live in the US or Canada. All you have to do is fill in the form, and I’ll pull two winners on September 24. If you’re interested in book trailers, I’m including it here for you to check out.  

Links of Note

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I’ve found I love doing these posts — they’re a little all over in terms of content, but I tend to like reading across topics, so I hope other people find these as interesting to read through as I do.

  • Do you keep track of what books have been optioned for film? The LA Times ran a story with a bunch of new YA titles recently optioned. I bet you’ll recognize many of the titles (and maybe groan at a few). 
  • New blog alert! Sarah Flowers and her son Mark have put together a blog based on the concept of their generation gap — how do they read YA books and share them with one another? What are their similar and different perspectives on YA librarianship? This looks like a blog to watch. If their names sound familiar, it’s because they’re both heavily involved in YALSA.
  • From Flavorwire, a look at the first edition covers of 25 classic novels. I love how simple and clean most of them are and it’s interesting to see which images are still the iconic ones associated with certain titles (like Gatsby). 
  • The resident YA expert at The Atlantic writes about the way online critics have been given a hard time when it comes to reviews, including a rehash of the Emily Giffin debacle. I will say this: I’ve noticed a huge change in tone for review/response in the last year and behavior among bloggers and authors. That’s part of why I’ve had a hard time reviewing this year. It’s always a weird risk, as silly as it sounds. I should be used to it having done this for 3.5 years, but it seems tensions are higher than ever now and sometimes the risk isn’t worth it for me. 
  • What kind of reader are you? The Atlantic has a guide to define your type. I read through all of the types listed on that page and I didn’t fit any of the descriptions. But lucky for me, there is another page of reader types here. I would call myself a mix of Hopelessly Devoted, The Critic, and The Sharer. Maybe also a bit of an “it’s complicated” reader, though I’m not a Pisces, thank you very much. I am a balanced, variety-seeking Libra.
  • Is this the year of the infographic? Here are a ton of library-related infographics that have made an appearance this year.  Bonus: tools for making your own infographic — this will be particularly helpful for a little project I’m working on (tease!)
  • How many Norton Anthologies clutter your book shelves? Between my husband and I — both of us were English majors in college — we have more than one shelf of these door stoppers. Did you know the Norton turned 50 this year? Check out the story behind the anthologies.  If you’re wondering, my favorite Norton is my Postmodern American Fiction edition (it’s portable, not too heavy, and contains amazing postmodern work. . . my favorite kind of lit).   
  • The Horn Book has a fascinating story about font choices and picture books worth reading. If you get a print version of the magazine, I also suggest spending some time reading “Whitney and Me” in the September/October edition. It’s a great story about work-for-hire writing and about how the author’s perspective of writing that way changed when charged with writing a biography of Whitney Houston. It’s not on the website yet, unfortunately. 
  • Razorbill UK just made a deal with self-published author Tammara Webber to publish a number of her books traditionally.  Of interest to me in this story are a few things: it’s another self-published author (and one doing really well if you pay attention to rankings) choosing to go with a traditional publisher and what caught Razorbill UK’s attention was her “new adult” novel. I have feelings about that label — it’s adult and there’s no shame about it — but I found the publisher’s discussion of how this is a new trend worth looking into interesting. That’s basically the opposite of the reaction in the US, isn’t it? 
  • You should go ask Courtney Summers a bunch of really tough questions over at the YA Book Club Group on Goodreads. Also, I don’t normally link to other contests around the web, but she’s giving away 4 books coming out this fall that I’ve read and approve of: Beautiful Music for Ugly Children by Kirstin Cronn-Mills, Through to You by Emily Hainsworth, Yesterday by CK Kelly Martin, and Send Me A Sign by Tiffany Schmidt. Go enter here — and yes, you will see reviews of all of these books on STACKED soon.  
  • Still on the fence about Kid Lit Con? Betsy Bird has posted the entire schedule on her blog, and you should read it and be convinced to go. You saw Maureen Johnson is the keynote speaker, right? Because I’m pretty excited about that. 
  • Ever dreamed of having your book design dreams become a reality? Simon and Schuster are looking for the next look for Ray Bradbury’s classic Fahrenheit 451 to commemorate it’s 60th anniversary. Details here! 

    And that’s a wrap! But before I sign off on this post, I’m curious: are there things that are of interest worth sharing in bi-weekly link roundups? Would you be interested in links to contests on other blogs or venues for books we dig? Non-book news that catches our eyes? I don’t know about anyone else, but I read a ton of different blogs and collect a lot of different, interesting pieces and wonder about what other people would be interested in seeing. Drop a line in the comments — or privately via email — with any suggestions or thoughts you have. Ninety-nine percent of what I blog is what I want to blog about; this is the one percent where I’d be happy to tailor it a bit to what readers might be interested in!

      What I’m Reading Now

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      Finishing a book lately has been rough for me. I keep on picking up a title, getting about 50 pages in, setting it down, and not feeling compelled to pick it up again. It’s not that there’s anything really wrong with the book in question. I’m just in a bit of a reading funk, and from what I’ve read from others right now, I’m not the only one.
      A few reasons for my lack of desire to read much: it’s blistering hot outside, where I tend to do most of my relaxing reading; I’ve been working until 7pm most nights, which means my evenings are dinner and bed, usually; and I’ve been more interested in working on my puzzle, which is difficult to do while reading. It’s difficult for me to read while tired, too – I always fall asleep, no matter how compelling the book. It makes those 7pm nights particularly bad for reading.
      What this means is that I’m currently reading quite a lot of books, although I’m not finishing them (yet). These are books that would normally appeal to me, and I expect to finish most of them at some point – maybe some of you have read them and can speak for how wonderful they are, thereby convincing me to keep at them until the end.
      Long Lankin by Lindsey Barraclough
      Kelly loved this one, and it appealed to me before she loved it, so I’m going to keep at it. So far, I’m having a hard time adjusting to some of the dialect used (British slang). Still, I’ve read and enjoyed stories with much tougher dialect than that included here (Knife of Never Letting Go, for example), so I know it will just take time.
      Diverse Energies edited by Tobias S. Buckell and Joe Monti
      This is a collection of SF short stories featuring teen protagonists of color. Most of the stories are dystopian in some way, although at least one of them is just straight science fiction. I decided to pick this one up especially hoping it would break me out of
      my funk – in 20 pages or so, I can get a beginning, middle, and end,
      and I haven’t invested huge gobs of time. The stories have been hit or miss, as expected. My favorite so far is Malinda Lo’s story about a girl hunting for her missing brother in the tunnels below a city where racial purity is mandated by law. It’s one of the better-written stories and also makes sense narratively. A couple of the stories have been more disappointing than usual – I feel like they were too disjointed and hard to follow, not just “eh, not my thing.”
      Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
      This book, which features dragons that can assume human shape, royal intrigue, and lots of delicious secrets, has been highly acclaimed by readers I trust, and it’s just the type of book I usually love. It’s been praised for its originality and its writing, but I haven’t been able to make myself move past a few pages.
      Erasing Time by CJ Hill
      As a teen, I thought it would be the coolest thing ever to be taken out of my own time period and brought to the distant future. To this day, it’s still a great tragedy in my mind that I won’t be able to see the amazing things the far future will bring. (I love dystopias, but my heart always convinces me to picture a more utopian future.) CJ Hill’s Erasing Time does just what I dreamed about as a teen – it brings two girls from our present day into the distant future for a specific purpose. I’m excited about this book’s premise, but it hasn’t been able to pull me in yet.
      Are you in a reading funk? Is there anything in particular you’ve done to get out of prior funks?

      Why Good Readers’ Advisory Matters

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      A teen boy came to the reference desk while I was working a couple of weeks ago. He asked me to tell him a good book to read. I knew nothing about the boy, other than he looked maybe 14 or 15.

      My first step in answering his question was to ask him more questions: what was the last thing he read that he liked and what kind of books does he usually like? The first question stumped him, but the second question he answered with: I like scary stories and things that are kind of fantasy.

      The first author that came to mind was Darren Shan. He writes scary books and they’ve got massive appeal to boys. I led my patron over to the shelf, and that’s when he said to me (before I handed him a Shan book) that the last book he started reading and liking before he had to return it was something to do with Demons. It hit me he was already talking about a Shan series, and I showed him the cover of the first book of the Demonata series — and that was the book he’d returned. He eagerly took it, as well as the next couple of books in the series, and he left the library happy.

      It was dumb luck that I struck upon the exact book he’d been reading before, but that I was able to pull out from his description of favorite types of reads Darren Shan was a good hit wasn’t. I asked the teen the questions about what he likes, and from there, I narrowed down a list of potential good fits for his taste. This is called readers’ advisory.

      The image above was shared by Molly Backes, and it came to her on a receipt after she purchased a copy of Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity from a bookstore. It’s kind of a neat idea, to suggest other books that the reader might be interested in based on what they’ve just purchased. However, what’s wrong with this image is this: those books have nothing to do with Verity, which is a book about friendship, spying and female piloting during World War II. Monument 14 is a dystopia set in the United States about 14 kids trapped in a big box store. Princesses of Iowa — Backes’s own book — is a contemporary story set in Iowa about a girl who is dealing with fitting back into her popular crowd of friends following a horrific decision of drinking and driving. Never Fall Down is a war book about a teen imprisoned in Cambodia. Second Chance Summer follows a family as they struggle with one member’s illness (there’s a romance here, too). Jersey Angel follows one girl’s sexual awakening on the Jersey Shore.

      Not a single one of those books makes a good comparison to Wein’s title. Beyond the obvious fact none are historical, none of them are set in Europe, and none of them tackle friendship in any of the same ways Wein’s title does. None explore spying or piloting, either. The only thing these books have in common is that they were all released on May 8, 2012 (except Monument 14, which was released June 5). This list of “you may also like” is not readers’ advisory. In this capacity, the list is clearly in hopes of selling additional books. From a bookstore’s perspective, readers’ advisory is a great way to make sales — nothing wrong with that, since that’s the bookstore’s purpose — but in this instance, there is no actual readers’ advisory going on here. It’s simply a book list of titles that have nothing to do with one another except similar publication dates. And they all happen to be YA titles.

      Readers’ advisory requires a certain skill set to perform well, though by no means is it something limited to librarians. The ways of performing readers’ advisory can be what sets librarians or others in the book industry apart from a friend offering book recommendations, though. It requires being able to ask someone about their reading preferences and being able to interpret their answers (or non-answers as often the case is) with sensitivity to their needs. In other words, what I like to read isn’t what matters; it’s what the person standing in front of me likes to read that matters. The questions I ask revolve around recent favorite reads, favorite genres, and my favorite — things they definitely do not enjoy reading. From there, I’m able to pull from my own knowledge of books or I’m able to do a search on the web or in one of the incredible databases that exist (see the end of this post).

      More than that, though, it’s about not judging the readers’ tastes. If a reader comes and asks for read alikes to Wein’s title, I’m not going to tell them how much I didn’t care for Code Name Verity (true story) but instead, I’m going to ask what it was about the book they liked — the setting? The relationships? The spying or piloting? The pace of the book? That it’s not straight foward in narrative structure? From there, I’ll build a list of 4 or 5 possibilities and quickly talk about the qualities those books have and why they might fit the bill. I can gauge pretty well if I’m hitting the mark or not based on their responses and then either I’ll show them where the book is at on the shelf or I’ll try again with other options. Along with not offering judgment based on my feelings about a title, there’s a lot to be said about sensitivity toward the qualities that make a book work for a reader. Someone asking for books similar to Fifty Shades of Grey? Their needs are just as valid and worthy as someone looking for those similar to Wein’s title.

      This may just be me, but one of the readers’ advisory questions I get that makes me cringe a little bit is being asked what some of my favorite books are. Knowing my tastes are wide AND specific (in that I’ll read anything that sounds good but I tend to love books that are dark) and knowing I have opinions about books, I tend to redirect those sorts of queries. I like to ask the reader to tell me what they’re looking for instead, and most of the time, they just need a little prodding on my part to get to the real question at hand (that they want a good mystery or something else that I don’t tend to read as widely). That doesn’t mean I keep my tastes out of the question completely — if I’m offering a list of suggested titles and a patron asks if I’ve read/what I’ve thought of them, and I can say something positive, I will. I don’t tend to offer negative opinions.

      So why a whole post about readers’ advisory? Because I think it’s a topic that’s important and I think that librarians, bloggers, and anyone who reads widely has a stake in it. They’re interested not only in terms of being a good readers’ advisor themselves, but they’re interested in being recipients of good readers’ advisory. They want to know how to figure out whether the next book they pick up is going to compare to something else and they want to know how to best ask someone how to find a good next read. I think there are a lot of people — professionals and non-professionals — who believe reading culture is a dying thing and it’s not worth investing time or effort into. That people aren’t interested in being hand-sold a book.

      I can’t think of anything further from the truth. Not only do I get a host of readers’ advisory questions at the reference desk, I think bloggers themselves provide readers’ advisory services when they write a book review and make comparisons among books. They do it when they put together book lists or talk about the trends emerging in YA books or in genre fiction. I think a lot of people believe reading culture isn’t important because getting a handle on it is tough. It requires work and critical thinking and association. It’s not something you can learn sitting in a classroom or sitting through a workshop. It’s not a one-off task. It requires constant work and constant learning, and maybe most importantly: it requires reading. A lot of reading.

      It’s half science and half art. 

      Readers’ advisory requires thinking about the elements that make up a story. This includes genre/subgenre, the writing style, the character and the character’s arc, the plot generally and the plot specifically, pacing of a story, format (is it a traditional narrative? Epistolary? Vignettes? A novel in verse?), time period, and so forth. These things aren’t mutually exclusive, either. There are also the non-objective elements of a book that one thinks about when considering it that also are valid aspects of reader’s advisory — is a tear-jerker? Is it steamy? Does it leave you feeling confused? Contented? Are there plot points that stick out in the story as things that might interest readers? I like to note those — so things like road trips, setting (especially if it’s different — a foreign city or a beach or a small Midwest town), non-traditional family structures — tend to be things I hold on to mentally because they can be great go-tos for recommendations and comparisons. Often pulling out these aspects as I’m reading will tell me what books I’ve read before share similar qualities.

      I don’t read everything, though, so of course, there are genres and topics in readers’ advisory for which I am at a loss personally. But that’s why librarians and other professional readers have developed tools to make this easier. I love to read through book lists and I love looking them with the hopes of remembering an author or a title that’s similar to something I’ve put many holds on or something I’ve heard of in my own reading. In other words: reader’s advisors don’t read everything. They don’t have to. They just need to read and they need to be comfortable and confident enough to navigate the tools available for them. One of those tools? Other people.

      Early on in August, Liz Burns, Sophie Brookover, and myself started thinking about how we could put our interest and passion for readers’ advisory out there for those who themselves are interested in this skill set or who want to become more familiar with it. We thought hosting a weekly chat via Twitter would be worth trying out, and we were blown away with the positive reception in our first three beta chats (which happened during the Olympics, even!). We’re going to bring it back again starting Thursday, September 6, starting at 8 pm Eastern time. The hash tag is #readadv, and we hope you join us. Each week centers around a different theme, though we always have time for more general talk. It’s open to anyone who wants to chat books, recommending books, and strengthening reader’s advisory skills.

      I think readers’ advisory is something most readers have an interest in — even if they don’t call it that properly — I thought it’d be worthwhile to share some of the great resources that exist that almost everyone has some access to. This isn’t comprehensive, so if you know of other great readers’ advisory resources, feel free to drop a line in the comments:

      • Novelist: If you work in a library or you are a library patron, I bet you have access to NoveList in some capacity. For non-librarians, look under the electronic resources or databases on your library’s website. When you log into the database, you can search through titles (and read alikes to those titles), you can search by genres, and you can peruse different topical lists. I use NoveList extensively when I don’t know how to approach a genre or author read alike.
      • Books & Authors: Like NoveList, this is a subscription database you might have access to through your library. Same basic idea: you can learn read alikes, find book lists, discover new authors similar to perennial favorites, and so forth. 
      • Readers’ advisory guides (available through ALA): These come in a number of different genres (and formats — there’s an entire guide for graphic novels) and they’re likely available at the public library for those who don’t want to buy them. But they’re set up so you can browse by different categories within genres and find comparative titles. These guides pull out those qualities within a book that stand out.
      • RA for All blog: This is my favorite readers’ advisory blog because not only does Becky talk up many genres with which I’m unfamiliar, but she links to so many other great resources. If you don’t keep this one on hand, you should. 
      • Good Googling: When all else fails — and admittedly, sometimes my first stop — is to hop on Google and look for book lists developed by other librarians. Want a book like Sara Gruen’s Like Water for Elephants? Try the search string “Like Water for Elephants Read Alikes.” Then look through the lists on library websites. Easy but effective.

      Back to the subject of this post, though: why does good readers’ advisory matter? Because getting a list of random books that you might like based on arbitrary qualities like publication date stinks. Because there are millions of books out there, and each one has a reader. Each reader has something they want from a book. Because reading matters, and being able to connecting the reader to his/her book and that book to his/her reader only furthers that. Because there is nothing better than seeing a 14-year-old boy walking out of a library with exactly the kind of book he wants to read because you took the time to listen to what he likes and offer him something that makes him excited about reading.

      And the truth is? It’s not hard. It requires being aware of what’s out there, staying invested and engaged in your reading life, and understanding that books — and people — aren’t just widgets.