Previews, Reviews, and Collection Development
The Oscars will be presented this Sunday with the usual craptacular pomp and nonsense. Woopty doo. Once the Academy began nominating more than five titles for Best Film without also nominating the respective directors it was the last nail in the coffin and proved that ticket sales and TV ratings are more important to the [...]
Douglas Brinkley’s Cronkite, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Chester Himes’s A Rage in Harlem, L. Ron Hubbard’s Trouble on His Wings, and Elton John’s Love Is the Cure are among the diverse range of 142 audiobooks contending for the 2013 Audie Awards® in 28 categories, which the Audio Publishers Association (APA) announced February 19. “It is always [...]
Here at LJ , we receive about a thousand galleys per week. You might imagine that with that volume, it’s all a blur, and sometimes it feels that way. Still there are books that stand out, whether they’re from a beloved author, they’ve had a lot of buzz, they’re in a genre we’re newly addicted to, or—yes, it happens—the cover reeled us in. Here, then, are some of the titles that have gotten us talking lately, with thoughts from us and comments from their authors. A fun part of this for us is exploring materials in an area that’s not “ours”—in my case, that means stepping outside of reference to reveal my devotion to mystery novels. Perhaps it’s time to try some genre-jumping of your own.
Before you take off on this long holiday weekend, don’t forget to mark your calendars for the Spring Mystery Announcements webcast, Tuesday, February 19, 2013, 3:00-4:00 PM ET/12:00–1:00 PM PT. Our moderator is LJ‘s mystery columnist Terry Jacobsen, and presenters include Soho Crime, Oceanview Publishing, Titan Books’s Hard Case Crime line, and Severn House and [...]
Look up in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a librarian! The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF) posted a terrific story on Carol Tilley, a library science professor at the University of Illinois, whose research shows that child psychologist Frederic Wertham falsified data for his 1954 volume Seduction of the Innocent, [...]
In addition to Beautiful Creatures, which received a less-than-stellar reception from film critics, and the next installation in the Hunger Games series, Hollywood is turning to additional YA print properties in an attempt to fill the gap left by the conclusion of the Twilight franchise. Entertainment Weekly reports that Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments: City [...]
If the recent identification of King Richard III, buried ignominiously in Leicester, awakens interest in the pre-Tudor British monarchy, and gives readers an appetite for understanding the armored world that led to the Wars of the Roses, culminating in Richard III’s 1485 death in battle, they must turn to Dan Jones and his rousing history, The [...]
In a twist of absurd irony, Chris Kyle, the most decorated U.S. military sniper in history, was murdered on Saturday in his home state of Texas by a fellow war veteran. The New York Times reports that Kyle and his friend, Chad Littlefield, were scheduled to meet suspect Eddie Ray Routh, a Marine combat vet, [...]
The January 26 Association of American Publisher’s (AAP) Debut Author Panel, which featured novelists published by Riverhead, Atlantic Monthly, Norton, and William Morrow, gave four writers an opportunity to talk about how their first books began and how they got to market. Dina Nayeri, Margaret Wrinkle, Sean Pidgeon, and Tara Conklin spoke at length on [...]
Okay, geeks, I hope you’re all ready for the big game this weekend and have laid in plenty of brews and munchies! If you’re thinking the Superbowl has nothing to do with geekdom and you’ll be spending another Sunday watching reruns of The Big Bang Theory, then au contraire mon frere! During the game’s second [...]
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