Daily Thoughts 5/29/2010

New York Sunday Journal, May 3, 1896. Why did I post this on Saturday, to protest the idea of having to collect all my thoughts on Sunday and post them all at once as a Salon post.

Daily Thoughts 5/29/2010

Anyways, the big book convention is over. I had a chance to go through and look at the blog list of the Book Bloggers Convention. I never did put up a button for them. These are a few of the blogs which I liked from the list. I visited all of them to see what they looked like. Sometimes, it is a chance to just see what people are doing. http://bookbloggerconvention.com/attendees I probably should have gone through this before I went to the reception. But, then I am not very good at should have.

I really like the Rasco from RIF (Reading Is Fundamental) blog. It has a very clear design and excellent message. http://www.rascofromrif.org/ Reading Is Fundamental is part of the Summer Reading programs at most public libraries in the United States. I also liked Jeff's, The Reading Ape Blog http://thereadingape.blogspot.com/. His summary of Book Expo America is quite good. I joined the Book Bloggers Hop on Crazy For Books, I am #175, http://www.crazy-for-books.com/. I sometimes twitter with Marie from The Boston Bibliophile which is a quite nice blog. She is also a librarian blogger. http://www.bostonbibliophile.com/ . Maw Books by Natasha is of course wonderful, she was the primary arranger of the Book Blogger Convention. http://blog.mawbooks.com/ . There is also The Book Publicity Blog which I find fascinating.http://yodiwan.wordpress.com/. I have never seen so many book publicists in one place...

I also looked through the industry bloggers. The AMACom Blog looks quite interesting, it is often hard to find decent reviews for business books. I think I will get Investing In A Sustainable World Why Green Is The New Color of Money On Wall Street by Matthew J. Kiernan, Ph.D. http://amacombooks.wordpress.com/ . Another industry blog which looks very nice is Online Publicist. http://onlinepublicist.blogspot.com/. I liked the design of Authors on the Web, they left us a gift in the goody bag yesterday, a reading light. http://authorsontheweb.com/. I was surprised to have missed Quirk Books, http://irreference.com/ They are famous for Seth Grahame-Smith, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. We also purchased Queen Victoria Demon Hunter from them as well as Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter for our library. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was recently turned into a graphic novel.

Some Final Thoughts on Book Expo and the Book Blogging Convention.

One of the underlying conversations at the Book Expo was about reviewing. Although, it was not said out loud, the publishers were giving out a lot less review copies to attendees. Some were also limiting their copies to "reviewers." They were also trying to switch away from physical copies to either codes which allowed downloads to books or egalleys. This was a way to lower costs and improve distribution. While I was following the Ning Book Blog group there were questions about how international readers could get galleys. I would imagine that shipping a physical galley overseas via airmail would be cost prohibitive.

During Ron Hogan's talk he said that blogs had won out against review sites. He told us that places like the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and others were creating their own blogs to review books. The specific blog that Ron Hogan mentioned was Jacket Copy of the Los Angeles Times. Ron Hogan made a statement that Bloggers have won. I read the Books section of the New York Times on occassion looking at Paper Cuts one of the New York Times blogs.

I am not 100% sure about this, but I can tell you that blogs do have some advantages. They do not have to follow a formula or editorial policies created in review periodicals. They can innovate in their style. I often find myself when reading library review material wondering if they copied the dust jacket copy practically word for word to create the review. I think this is one of the reasons that Kirkus Reviews survived; they were willing to include more negative reviews and more florid language.

Bloggers can put an original voice and style into reviews. They can also add new conventions to describing books like adding descriptions of layout, style, and photography in books. There are no rules right now. Also, with nonstandard language it is much easier to prove you have read a book. A blogger can use much more original language. Hopefully, reviewers at the professional journals will adapt some of the better conventions from blogs as they are tried.

While I was at the Book Bloggers Convention, there was another group conversation about bloggers and reviewers. Bloggers do not have to write negative reviews. If someone gives you a book and you write a negative review, you might not get another free galley from them. It is often difficult to write a negative review. A blogger is not getting paid to write a review. Often, they are reading for pleasure. There is no requirement for them to finish reading a book which they do not like. A reviewer is being paid. The blogger can simply stop reading. I still think it is best to have at least a mention that they stopped reading a book and why.

There is an unacknowledged tension between the style of "readers advisory" and "literary criticism." The style of literary criticism appears to be fading a bit for popular titles. During the Librarians 2nd Annual Shout and Share, which is a book talking panel by collection development librarians, at around 3:45 p.m. Miriam Tuliao cofounder of Earlyword.com http://www.earlyword.com/ mentioned a new trifecta for bestsellers. If a book is prominently featured in USA Today, People, and Entertainment Weekly it will most likely appear on the bestseller lists. I hope, I will not have to read these magazines to measure some of the popular titles to get.

This is a bit stunning. I like many of the print publications like the New York Review of Books which is on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/NYRB.Classics and hope they are quick and adaptable in meeting the challenges facing them. My hope is that purely popular institutions will not have too much impact on our reading habits.

The final question which I faced directly, is "Is a blogger a reviewer?" Many people both write literary reviews and blogs. How do you approach a company and ask them for books who want their books reviewed, but are a little shy of giving a blogger a book. Luckily, because I work around a constant flow of books, I don't have to hunt for new books to read and review. Others do. I still really want certain titles on occassion. At the Book Blogger Convention, we were given contact sheets for Harper Collins to request review copies if we wanted them for blogs.

Daily Thoughts 8/6/2009 ( Email Newsletters )

Karl Capek author of R.U.R. -- Rodham's Universal Robots. Karl credited his brother, Josef Čapek, as the true inventor of the word robot.

Daily Thoughts 8/6/2009

These are all email newsletters I get in my inbox for the latest information on books being released.

Fast Facts from Baker and Taylor
http://www.btol.com/fastfacts/
Email fastfacts@btol.com to join this one

　
Read Alert
http://www.booklistonline.com/default.aspx?page=general_info&id=64

　
Shelf Awareness
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/

Michael Chabon has a new book Manhood For Amateurs which is coming out in October. I really like Chabon's books. This is a nonfiction title which should be interesting. He is mostly a literary author.

Today has been another quiet day. I spent some time reading Kirkus Reviews this morning and still have to read The New York Times Book Review. I also spent some more time weeding books. It has been a steady predictable day.

On the way home, I read some of Harry and the Pirates And Other Tales From The Lost Years by Brian Lumley. This is a kind of weird tale featuring Harry Keogh, a psychic and mystic who can talk to the dead. It is not that scary, but it does have some creepy beasts in it with odd historical footnotes. This book contains two novellas; For The Dead Travel Slowly and Harry and the Pirates; and a short story; End Piece: Old Man With a Blade. Brian Lumley is a British Fantasy Award winning author. He travels in the footsteps of H.P. Lovecraft and other writers of strange tales.

Goodbye Chunky Rice-- Craig Thompson-- Review

Goodbye Chunky Rice by Craig Thompson is a short graphic novel. It is done in an eclectic black and white style. There are a mix of cute animal characters and people. The story is not particularly violent. It has an oddball feeling to it. There are a few strange characters like a siamese twin on a boat. The main part of the story is about the freindship between Chunky Rice, a turtle, and Dandel A deer mouse.

Chunky and Dandel are freinds. They go to the beach together and camp out and build sand castles. When Chunky Rice looks at the ocean he gets an overwhelming urge to travel. In contrast, Dandel says, "My home is right here." This has a wistful memorable feeling to it.

Chunky packs a box and heads out to sea on Chuck's ship. Chuck reminds Chunky to travel light and get rid of excess baggage. He throws a number of Chunky's things in the ocean in a series of memorable cartoon panels.

The ocean is vast, seemingly endless in the narrative of the story. Dandel takes to throwing bottles with letters in them into the ocean which drift outward on the currents.

This graphic novel, (another fancy name for comic book), is about memory, freindship, and wanderlust. I really enjoyed reading it. Craig Thompson the writer has won three Ignatz awards. http://www.spxpo.com/ignatz.shtml This is a prestigious comics lit award. It is named after Krazy Kat drawn by George Heinman. He also has won two Harvey awards. The Harvey Awards are named after Harvey Kurtzman, the founder of Mad magazine, one of my favorite comics. http://harveyawards.org/

If you are looking for good choices if you are a librarian or bookseller these list very interesting and high quality titles to look at. The Ignatz Awards are more alternative press, and the Harvey Awards are much more mainstream and will include many superhero comics.

A pictureless image from Amazon:

Morning Thoughts, Supermarket Reading

Hello, I have finished reading Oil by Upton Sinclair. I will be taking some time to take notes so I can write a review of this very complex novel. There is still a lot that is very relevant in this book to todays world. In fact, I feel in some ways, it is a novel written before its time.

Right now, I am relaxing a bit. I looked at a few sites from blogcatalog. I went through and looked at library related blogs. There wasn't that much that was very interesting. I looked at both recommended blogs on the American Booksellers Association site and the American Library Association site. Only a few seemed interesting. American Library Association recommended http://www.bookslut.com/blog which is fairly entertaining, but can be a little raunchy at times. After looking at the American Booksellers Association blog, I only found one blog which they linked to which was very interesting; Vroman's books, the largest and oldest independent bookstore in Southern California http://vromansbookstore.blogspot.com/

It was interesting looking at these sites. I am not sure that it really made any difference. I am still looking around at professional blogs. There is one for Infotoday which covers their conferences. It is actually kind of interesting to read conference blogs because there is always something interesting to point out. The point of conferences is to entertain the attendees in addition to whatever professional activities go on. The Infotoday Blog covers four conferences over several years, Computers In Libraries, SLA-- Special Library Associatin Conference, Internet Librarian, and Online Information in London. http://www.infotodayblog.com/

I am not sure this does anything for my regular readers who are interested in my thoughts on books. There is a classic statement that "You don't want to sell anyone else's products. Direct people to things in your store." I think it applies to websites as well.

I was at the supermarket shopping for a little bit to get groceries. Something to remember is that 60% of books are no longer sold in bookstores. There is a small section for adult books at teh supermarket. It is mainly bestselling thrillers and romance books. Authors like Dan Brown and Jeffrey Archer who can entice a person to buy on impulse. The romances have your typical Fabio Lanzoni covers. Fabio was supposedly the first man to write a romance novel not under a pseudonym. I think of him as a romantic version of the cartoon character He-Man. I find him to be quite funny. If I go to the drugstore Walgreens near my house, the book selection is no different.

What really surprised me during the visit to the supermarket is that they were selling a few paperback reference items, the Merck Manual, the Oxford Essential Dictionary, and a Net Carb Counter. The Merck Manual was the most surprising item. I guess people are becoming a little more conscious about their health. Of course because this is superbowl time, there was also a glossy magazine on the superbowl.

The magazine selection was no different than you might find in Harpell's drug store. It had your typical titles like Forbes, Playstation, Wired, Nascar 2008, Bride, Cosmopolitan, along with a mix of crossword puzzle books and now sudoku books.

Next to the baby food section there was a selection of little golden books. I actually like a lot of the little golden books, there are condensed versions of Richard Scarry and Thomas the Tank Engine which are really quite nice. Unfortunately almost all of the Little Golden Books were disney items like Aladdin, the Jungle Book, Home on the Range, and other childrens movie tie ins.

There was a small section of childrens books not far from the Little Golden Books rack. These mainly consisted of popular authors and movie tie ins as well. There were Shrek children's books, The Spiderwick Chronicles-- a soon to be movie which looks like it will be spin off of the string of preteen fantasy movies that are coming out; The Chronicles of Narnia, The Golden Compass, and Harry Potter. Also the redwall books by Brian Jacques were being sold. I think they are going to make these into a movie as well.

Among the drek were a few decent board books. I rather like Eric Carle and Margaret Wise Brown. But, for the most part everything was a commercial designed to encourage you to buy or see another commercial product.

As you came up to the front checkout counter, there were some magazine racks with Better Homes and Gardens, Cosmopolitan, the National Enquirer, and a few other cheap newspapers.

It is increasingly hard to get the Weekly World News at the supermarket or even at the local corner stores. The corner store is Pakistani and they say they won't carry it because it repeatedly insults muslims and they won't carry it. The Korean news store which is not far off says the same thing. The Korean store claims it is stupid, obnoxious, and racist. I can't get it at 7-11 either for the same reason.

I can get it at the Walgreens. They don't seem to pay attention to that kind of thing. The Weekly World News is basically the paper which claims things like Aliens abducted Elvis, and Batboy is Hunting for Osama Bin Laden. I admit I read it sometimes for a laugh. It is dumb. It is also not politically correct.