Library News, Reviews, and Views
Registration is opening soon for the 2013 LJ Day of Dialog, and you’ll definitely want an alert! This year’s event, which brings together librarians, publishers, vendors, and authors for discussion of issues affecting the book and library world today, takes place on Wednesday, May 29, at the McGraw-Hill Auditorium—the day before the BookExpo America exhibits [...]
Budgets be damned. the number of librarians at BookExpo America (some even paid their own way) attests to the insatiable demand for books in any format and the deep impact librarians, both as library book buyers and recommenders of titles for their patrons, have on the book world. As many panelists at BEA noted, referring to LJ’s Patron Profiles, their influence goes further, since library users, particularly Power Patrons and Power ePatrons, are also avid book buyers in all formats, contrary to what some publishers presume.
Thrillers and first novels. History, in fiction and nonfiction. Serious sociological study and the story of a contentious rooster. All were among the top titles for the forthcoming seasons presented by top editors appearing at Day of Dialog’s ever-popular Editors’ Picks panel. The presentations swung wide, and they swung deep. Here’s a rundown.
“We all love discovering new voices,” said LJ Prepub Alert Editor Barbara Hoffert as she introduced five first-time authors with distinctly different voices at the Day of Dialog’s second morning panel, Who’s on First? Debut Genre Fiction with Buzz. In a lively freewheeling conversation, Karen Engelmann, Max Gladstone, Eleanor Kuhns, Beatriz Williams, and Ariel S. Winter shared their inspirations for their books and the advantages and disadvantages of being a debut writer.
The third panel of the day, “Best Digital Practices” offered concrete advice from librarians who’ve spent time in the ebook trenches. “Unless you are willfully ignorant or dead,” Library Journal Book Review Editor Heather McCormack began, you are aware of the challenges librarians face as new digital collections are built and maintained.
It was not until well into the conversation between New York Times columnist Gail Collins and Library Journal senior editor Margaret Heilbrun that there was any mention of Collins’s absorption with Mitt Romney’s dog, but the audience didn’t want for amusement as Collins discussed her latest book, As Texas Goes: How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda (Norton, 2012).
INFOdocket by Gary Price
