List-lovers rejoice!

I love making lists – grocery lists, to-do lists, things-I’d-like-to-buy-when-I-win-the-lottery lists, vegetable-planting lists, and more. My list-making tends to annoy my family, which is yet another thing I can add to the what-annoys-family list.

WPL recently purchased a software application to help us with our collection maintenance. Not only does it help us identify what library books should be replaced or withdrawn, but it also creates lists of popular items. Imagine my delight!

If you haven’t already read Terri’s blog posting on our Booked site, she put together a top 10 list of the most popular young adult authors. As I’m a little late with this blog posting, I’m going to steal her idea. Without further ado, I present the top 20 fiction authors, as decided by you, our faithful customers:

20 – Jodi Picoult: her last book, Lone Wolf, is now available at the library.
19 – Stephen King: 11/22/63 is still doing well, and is available in regular print, large print, and audiobook.
18 - Kathryn Stockett: you might have heard of The Help? And wasn’t Octavia Spencer’s acceptance speech at this year’s Academy Awards ceremony touching?
17 – Robert B. Parker: In April 2011 Parker’s Estate decided, together with Parker’s publishers, to continue two series of his books – new Jesse Stone novels will be written by longtime friend and collaborator, Michael Brandman, and new Spenser novels will be written by journalist/writer Ace Atkins.
16 – J.D. Robb: a pseudonym for Nora Roberts, her “In Death” series gets more and more popular.
15 – Sue Grafton: do you also wonder what she’ll do when she finished the alphabet?
14 – Debbie Macomber: with more than 150 novels under her belt, it’s not hard to see why readers love her!
13 – Sandra Brown: another prolific author, she was recently awarded the Romance Writers of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
12 – Stuart Woods: his newest title, Unnatural Acts, is coming out this April. Look for it in the library’s catalogue in the next week or two.
11 – Nicholas Sparks: seven of his novels have been adapted to film, including Message in a Bottle, A Walk to Remember, The Notebook, Nights in Rodanthe, Dear John, The Last Song and The Lucky One.
10 – Iris Johansen: her latest novel, What Doesn’t Kill You, should be arriving in early April. Get your holds on now!
9 – Lee Child: a pseudonym for Jim Grant, each of his novels follows the adventures of former American military policeman Jack Reacher.
8 – Michael Connelly: best know for his crime novels featuring LAPD Detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch and criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller.
7 – John Sandford: another author with a book coming out this May. Check out catalogue in the next few weeks to get your name down for Stolen Prey.
6 – John Grisham: do I need to even write something about him?
5 – David Baldacci: look for Innocent coming out this April.
4 – Danielle Steel: I don’t know how she does it, but thankfully she keeps spinning out yarns everyone wants to read. Her latest, Friends Forever, will be out this July.
3 – Nora Roberts: as of 2011, her novels had spent a combined 861 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List, including 176 weeks in the number-one spot. Phew!
2 – Janet Evanovich: how high will she go?
And the most popular author is (drum roll, please)….
1 – James Patterson: no big surprise, really. He’s the master of collaboration, having worked with Maxine Paetro, Andrew Gross, Peter de Jonge, Michael Ledwidge, Howard Roughan, Marshall Karp, and Liza Marklund.

 

- Barbara

Shop, Shop ’til You Drop

Star Trek characters never go shopping.
-Doug Coupland

While no one knows the exact moment that someone exchanged a form of currency for an item, it’s been going on for a very long time. Love it or loath it, shopping is one of those tasks we all do from time to time. The exchange of money for goods has been going on for centuries. The variety of goods and opportunities to shop has never been greater, and shows no signs of slowing down. Whether you’re a hang the expense type, a super saver shopper, a reduce and re-suer, or a do it under duress customer everyone has to shop sometime.

The psychology behind the urge to shop is a fascinating topic. In Unthinking: the Surprising Forces Behind Why We Buy, marketing experts such as Harry Beckwith discuss the unexpected, underlying impulses that inspire us to shop.

Gone to the Shops: Shopping in Victorian England is a charming glimpse into the past, when shopping became a part of the daily routine, as more ready made goods became available, and socially acceptable.

For many of us, shopping is as unconscious as breathing. But have you ever tried not shopping? It’s hard to imagine, but Judith Levine did just that, for an entire year. Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping is her account of disconnecting from the consumer world.

Shopping, especially for clothes, is generally viewed as something frivolous and self-indulgent, and in some ways that’s true. But does that also mean that it’s unnecessary? Linda Grant tells us why shopping is a part of living well in The Thoughtful Dresser: The Art of Adornment, the Pleasures of Shopping, and Why Clothes Matter.

Shopping in the 21st century got you confused? Not sure what to buy, or where to buy it? Take a look at The Complete Idiot’s Guide to eBay, or The Rough Guide to Shopping with a Conscience.

Everybody loves a bargain, but what’s the best way to get one? Stephanie Nelson, author of The Coupon Mom’s Guide to Cutting Your Grocery Bills in Half and Sam Pocker, who wrote Retail Anarchy: a Radical Shopper’s Adventures in Consumption will teach you how to shop smarter, not harder.

Shopping, as with any activity, is dangerous when carried to an extreme. Check out Spent: Memoirs of a Shopping Addict, or Hot (Broke) Messes to see the dark side of shopping.

There’s even a genre of fiction devoted to shopping, headlined by the classic Shopaholic series by Sophie Kinsella. Plowed through all of those already? Try Something From Tiffany’s by Melissa Hill or Late Night Shopping by Carmen Reid.

Shop on!

-Lori

Hello, my name is Sophie and I am an audiobooks snob.

If you’ve never met an audiobooks snob, then you should probably count yourself lucky.  We’re kind of like wine snobs, except way nerdier: we’ll talk your ear off about things that no one should really care about, and spend way too much time bemoaning the fact that 90% of the thing that we love is absolute dreck. 

Bartimaeus Trilogy

When the Library first launched its eLibraries Manitoba digital audiobook service, I went from CD audiobook tolerator to obsessed downloader pretty much overnight.  The moment of truth for me was the day I was refinishing my floors — audiobook player in pocket, sound-cancelling headphones in ear — and got to the end of Book 2 in a series of three and realized I could download Book 3, immediately, without even leaving the house. This was a *very* good thing, because I was covered head to toe in sawdust and only had so many hours left on my Home Depot floor sander rental.

I’m fiercely committed to audiobooks.  I might have REAL books and ebooks falling off my shelves waiting to be read, but if I’m getting to the end of my latest audiobook and don’t have a new one lined up, I go into panic mode.  Part of the lure is their fierce multitasking power: audiobooks allow me to devote time to books that would otherwise just be lost.  Take the morning commute, for example.  While I see other people reading ebooks and print books on the bus, I can’t do it because I’m paranoid about missing my bus stop, and looking down at a printed page (while it makes the bus ride fly by) puts you in this alterna-universe where you forget to notice ordinary things like “where you are” and “why it’s a good idea to occasionally look up.” 

Pathfinder

Audiobooks, though, are completely MADE for the bus. You get to read the book AND pay attention to the world around you.  And when you get off the bus, you don’t have to stop reading.  Extra time that can be harvested for reading?  GOLD.  Strangely, I find that looking around at the scenery actually helps me pay attention to the narrator; when I’m just sitting and listening and not also doing some other task, my mind wanders and can’t focus on the story.  That’s why audiobooks are also perfect for repetitive tasks like gardening and housework; the task keeps your mind on the book, and the book keeps your mind off the task. As an added bonus, you end up with a catalogue of associative memories tied to specific places/actions — the pit I just dug in my backyard brings up the bank scene in Orson Scott Card’s Pathfinder, and rereading The Book Thief takes me back to walking the bike path between the Forks and Osborne Village — strange, vivid sense memories that are burned into my mind by the combined enjoyment of both place and story.

So I love audiobooks, but yet I will also refuse to listen to the vast majority of them. I’m RIDICULOUSLY picky. A book that’s good on paper is not necessarily a good audiobook, and vice versa.  Award-winning?  Doesn’t matter. What I crave is that elusive audiobook experience that improves on the book, brings the characters to life in ways my own brain couldn’t imagine, makes me dread the last disc because it means it will all be over soon.

The Book Thief

Really, what it all comes down to is the narrator.  There’s a limit to how long I’ll spend listening to a voice that I don’t like, even if I’m just a tiny bit bothered by it.  Some audiobooks are 10 to 20 hours long, and that’s a pretty big commitment for someone who has a patronizing attitude, or who puts inflection on the wrong sentences, or leaves inflection out entirely, or reads EVERYTHING like it’s a fire alarm announcement, with Giant. Dramatic. Pauses between each sentence.  If the narrator is reading the book “wrong,” I give it the old heave-ho, delete, next! treatment so fast it spins.  It’s hard to explain how something can be “read wrong,” because everyone reads the way they read, right?  Wrong. Good audiobook narrating is not about reading, it’s about acting. Audiobook readers just say the words on the page, whereas audiobook actors rehearse, think about the character, build their backstory in their minds and say the characters’ lines deliberately with all of the characters traits, flaws, habits in mind.  I ONLY tolerate audiobooks narrated by people who get that difference.  And I’ll rarely pick up an audiobook with a full cast of voices, because the likelihood that they’ll ALL be good narrators is slim. Boy, does that ever limit my choices.

So, like all snobs, I’m hamstrung by my own refusal to accept the mundane.  And even though one of the top lessons I’ve learned in my years as a snob is to NEVER take advice about what to listen to (because how could anyone live up to impossible standards?), I’ll leave you with a list of my recent favorites:

His Majesty's Dragon

- Ender’s Shadow (and also Pathfinder, as mentioned above) by Orson Scott Card. There’s just something about Card’s books that translates well to the dramatic medium of audio.
- His Majesty’s Dragon and others in the Temeraire Series, by Naomi Novik. Brilliant series, even MORE brilliant in narration.  Simon Vance’s Temeraire voice is genius and has totally made it impossible for me to read this series on paper.
- Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary “Jacky” Faber, Ship’s Boy by L. A. Meyer. A hilariously campy and contrived historical fiction series which is narrated BRILLIANTLY by Katherine Kellgren.
- The Ruby In the Smoke and others in the Sally Lockhart Mystery Series by Philip Pullman. The whole series is great–something about those British accents… 
- The Dead and the Gone, The Last Survivors Series, Book 2, by Susan Beth Pfeffer. Book one was terrible on audio; book two shook me to the core.

And of course my all-time favorites, a triumvirate of audio bliss:

- The Book Thief (again, as mentioned above) by Markus Zusak. I’ve listened to it twice now and both times had me weeping like a baby in public.
- The Amulet of Samarkand (Bartimaeus trilogy) by Jonathan Stroud.
- The Tale of Despereaux, by Kate DiCamillo. Three times so far.  And will probably listen again.

Sophie

On your mark… get set… GO!

I hope most of you are enjoying the summer. I certainly am. The sun is shining most days, the mosquitoes aren’t that bad (yet), flowers are blooming everywhere, and the smell of barbeque permeates the evening air. What a great time! I doubt many of you are thinking ahead to the fall, when the leaves will turn golden or brown or red, start to fall, signalling the colder weather to come. Some of us have to. It’s my job; I order the library’s fiction books four to six months in the future. While you probably don’t want to think about raking leaves, harvesting our gardens, and pulling out the warmer coats and gloves, at least there’s comfort to be found in the great titles coming out this fall. Have you got your library cards ready? It’s time to start placing some holds. On your mark, get set, go!

The usual suspects will be releasing titles this fall, including James Patterson, who along with various co-authors, has four new titles this fall – Guilty Wives; Private: #1 Suspect; Kill Alex Cross; and, Christmas Wedding. How does he do it? I swear he must live at his keyboard! Clive Cussler has also been a busy bee, giving us two new titles: Devil’s Gate and The Race. Sue Grafton continues her Kinsey Millhone alphabet mysteries with V is for Vengeance. Other noteworthy bestsellers include: Only Time Will Tell by Jeffrey Archer, Zero Day by David Baldacci, Accident by Linwood Barclay, Lethal by Sandra Brown, Death of Kings by Bernard Cornwell, The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman, Bonnie by Iris Johansen, 1225 Christmas Tree Lane by Debbie Macomber,  A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny, Forgotten Affairs of Youth by Alexander McCall Smith, and 11/22/63 by Stephen King. I could go on and on, but I don’t think our blog editors would appreciate that!

There are a number of titles I’m quite anxious to read myself. Some of them will undoubtedly be bestsellers, while others will be quietly enjoyed by a smaller audience. Either way, I think this list has a little something for everyone:

Guillermo Del Toro’s Night Eternal is the third and final book in his Strain trilogy about a vampire invasion, following The Fall. Nuclear Winter blankets the land, darkening the Earth for 23 hours a day. Vampires control the planet; the defeated humans have been interred in vast camps and are harvested for the sustenance of the Master Race. But not all have been contained. A ragtag network of humans roams free, continuing the desperate resistance. As the final battle dawns, the group’s only hope is the intervention of an unexpected race of beings – avenging “angels.”

Out of Oz, by Gregory Macguire, concludes the extraordinary series The Wicked Years, following Lion Among Men. The marvellous land of Oz is knotted with social unrest – the Emerald Cityis mounting an invasion of Munchkinland, Glinda is under house arrest, and the Cowardly Lion is on the run from the law. And here comes Dorothy. Amid all this chaos, Elphaba’s tiny green baby born at the close of Son of a Witch has come of age. Now, Rain will take up her broom in an Oz wracked by war. 

Ami McKay’s Virgin Cure has been much anticipated, and it won’t disappoint. Set in Victorian New York in the year 1871, as a crowded, sweltering summer of riots and poverty comes to a close, 12-year-old Moth’s journey is just beginning. Sold away by her mother, Moth becomes a pickpocket on the streets of the Lower East Sideand becomes involved in a world of danger and violence. The Virgin Cure is a tale of secrets and truths, of dark myths and magic of the heart – of one woman’s fight to be heard, and one girl’s desire to be loved. 

A Bitter Truth, by Charles Todd, is the third novel in the Bess Crawford series, following An Impartial Witness. When battlefield nurse Bess returns from Francefor a well-earned Christmas leave, she finds a bruised and shivering woman huddled in the doorway of her London flat. The woman reveals that she has fled her abusive husband – an officer on leave. When Bess accompanies the woman back to her small village, she gets caught in the centre of the hunt for a killer when a wounded soldier is murdered in the woman’s home. 

Arnaldur Indridason’s Outrage is sure to be a hit. In a flat near Reykjavikcity centre, a young man lies dead in a pool of blood although there are no signs of a break-in or any struggle. A woman’s purple shawl, found under the bed, gives off a strong and unusual aroma. A vial of narcotics found in the victim’s pocket among other clues soon lead Erlendur’s colleagues down a trail of hidden violence and psychological brutality, and of wrongs that will never be fully righted. 

Domestic Violets, by Michael Norman, is a darkly comic family drama about love, loss, and ambition. Tom Violet has failed, once again, to have sex with his wife. And that’s not the worst of it. There’s the 9-5 office job that’s slowly crushing his spirit, his lovelorn stepfather who’s in constant need of counsel, and the strange realization that his boozy stepmother is sort of stalking him. Then there’s the inappropriate crush he has on a 23-year-old colleague. Too young to have these kinds of problems, but too old to see anyway out, Tom finds himself mired in hopeless inaction. 

Lee Bermejo’s Batman: Noel, inspired by Charles Dickens’ immortal classic A Christmas Carol, features different interpretations of The Dark Knight, along with his enemies and allies, in different eras. Along the way, Batman must come to terms with his past, present and future as he battles villains from the campy 1960s to dark and brooding menaces of today, while exploring what it means to be the hero that he is. Members of Batman’s supporting cast enact roles analogous to those from A Christmas Carol, with Robin, Catwoman, Superman, The Joker and more playing roles that will be familiar to anyone who knows Dickens’ original holiday tale. 

Finally, Terry Pratchett returns to his wildly popular Discworld in Snuff, featuring my favourite character, Sam Vimes. According to the writer of the bestselling crime novel ever to have been published in the city of Ankh-Morpork, it is a truth universally known that a policeman taking a holiday would barely have time to open his suitcase before he finds his first corpse. Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is on holiday in the pleasant and innocent countryside, but not for him a mere body in the wardrobe – there are many, many bodies and an ancient crime more terrible than murder. He is out of his jurisdiction, out of his depth, and out of his mind, but never out of guile. Where there is a crime there must be a finding, there must be a chase and there must be a punishment.

- Barbara

Eleven for Eleven

Contrary to popular opinion, librarians do not get paid to read all day. We, like all working stiffs, must carve out precious minutes to read on the bus, in the lunch room or in bed at the end of a hectic day. One of my simple pleasures is looking forward to a good book. I have loaded up the maximum 35 requests on my library card and when I get that email that tells me I have a book waiting, I have my own moment of “awesome!” (I am referencing Neil Pasricha’s The Book of Awesome which catalogues the small pleasures and delights that provide that singular hit of joy in the midst of the mundane.
This is my favourite time of year when the professional journals and popular press publish their “Best of 2010″ from which I construct my own “must read” list. Some of these titles appear on several lists so I know that they are a sure bet. I have not included the publishing phenomena of the year, Steig Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, which was on everyone’s radar.

Here are my “picks of the litter” from various 2010 lists:

1. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

A “virtuosic rock `n’ roll novel about a cynical record producer and the people who intersect his world” – New York Times Book Review

2. Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

“what happens to boys and men when they realize life isn’t the sparkly planetarium they had hoped for” – Entertainment Weekly

3. Life by Keith Richards

“a slurry romp” (Keef once said: “I would have been a librarian if I wasn’t a rock star.”) -The New Yorker

4. Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

“raunchy dystopian satire set in near future New York achieves heft with a May-December romance that is super sad and feels true” -Maclean’s

5. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Author of the lauded The Corrections passes “his all-seeing eye through another American decade”  -Time

6. Room by Emma Donoghue

Life through the eyes of “a five year old boy raised by his captive mother in a cell-like chamber” -Quill and Quire

7. How to Live: or a life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer by Sarah Bakewell 

“encounter this 16^th century Frenchman who, in essaying to write about himself, wrote about us all” -Library Journal

8. The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

“a magnificent paean to that increasingly endangered species: the printed newspaper” -Publishers Weekly

9 . The New Yorker Stories by Ann Beattie

48 stories by “the defining voice of her post-1960s generation” -The Globe and Mail

10. The Ask by Sam Lipsyte “seriously funny in the manner of Dave Eggers” -Booklist

11. And finally my own “You’ve got to read this book” pick:

Winnipeg Love Hate: Selected Photographs by Bryan Scott

“all that is great and beautiful, and all that is tragic and repulsive” about our city

-Jane