Library & Literary Miscellany

It’s that time of year again. Today begins the second annual Summer Blog Blast where authors and bloggers get together and have a blast (also known as an interview). You can read all about the Summer Blog Blast from Colleen Mondor over at Chasing Ray; she has also posted a day one SBBT round-up.

But just in case you haven’t already seen the week’s schedule and you don’t want to leave this site, then here’s a taste of the “who” and the “where” for you. I’ve also added in some information about the who and where of today in case you’re not familiar with the author’s names and/or works.

Monday (i.e., today)

Adam Rex at A Fuse #8 Production

• Adam Rex is both an author and illustrator. He’s the illustrator of The Dirty Cowboy (2003), Lucy Rose: Here’s the Thing About Me (2004), Ste-e-e-e-eamboat a-Comin’! (2005), Lucy Rose: Big on Plans (2005), Lucy Rose: Busy Like You Can’t Believe (2006), and Small Beauties: The Journey of Darcy Heart O’Hara (2006). He’s the author/illustrator of Tree-Ring Circus (2006), Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich (2006), Pssst! (2007), and The True Meaning of Smekday (2007) not to mention the forthcoming Frankenstein takes the cake (September 01, 2008).
• A Fuse #8 Production is a part of School Library Journal’s website and is written and directed by Elizabeth Bird.

David Almond at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

• David Almond is the author of numerous works including Skellig (1998), Kit’s Wilderness (1999), Heaven Eyes (2000), Secret Heart (2001), The Fire Eaters (2003), Clay (2005), My Dad’s a Birdman (with Polly Dunbar, 2007), and The Savage (with Dave McKean, UK publication April 2008; US publication October 2008)
• Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast is “a blog about books” by Jules and Eisha. With a blog title that that, who can resist?

R.L. Lafevers at Finding Wonderland

• R.L. Lafevers is the author of such works as Werewolf Rising, The Falconmaster, the Lowthar’s Blade series (The Forging of the Blade, The Secrets of Grim Wood, and The True Blade of Power), and Cybils nominee Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos. Also watch for the coming-soon sequel to the latter, Theodosia and the Staff of Osiris (November 01, 2008).
• Finding Wonderland is the Writing YA Weblog by contributors Aquafortis and TadMack. Yet another well-named blog (I’d love to find Wonderland myself).

Dave Schwartz at Shaken & Stirred

• Dave Schwartz‘ first novel Superpowers is set for release in June 2008.
• Shaken & Stirred is written by Gwenda Bond who is herself an aspiring YA author. She has made some of her writing freely available online.

Elizabeth Scott at Bookshelves of Doom

• Elizabeth Scott is the author of Bloom, Perfect You, Stealing Heaven, and Living Dead Girl (September 2008). Her website mentions she has more works planned for 2009.
• Bookshelves of Doom from a “Librarian. Okay, okay. Uber-librarian. Minus the MLS. That might happen. Someday.” She lives in (and loves) Maine. She reads (and loves reading) books.

Laurie Halse Anderson at Writing & Ruminating

• Laurie Halse Anderson is the author of novels such as Fever, 1793 (2002), Catalyst (2003), Prom (2006), Speak (2006), Twisted (2007), and Chains (coming in October 2008).
• Writing & Ruminating is “one children’s writer’s journey”; it’s the fine ruminations of children’s author and poet Kelly Fineman.

Susan Beth Pfeffer at Interactive Reader

• Susan Beth Pfeffer is the author of post-natural disaster survival story Life as We Knew It and its upcoming (and purportedly darker and more horrifying, we’ll soon find out) sequel the dead and the gone (June 01, 2008). She has other, older works too such as Twice Taken, Kid Power, and The Year Without Michael.
• Interactive Reader is written by Jackie Parker, teen librarian. She quips, “hopefully they won’t eat me alive” (the rest of the blog is equally witty).

And that’s just today. What’s coming up for the rest of the week you may ask? We have a variety of authors coupled with a variety of bloggers to create a variety of interview and book options for you. The schedule is as follows:

Tuesday

• Ben Towle at Chasing Ray
• Sean Qualls at Fuse #8 Production
• Susane Colasanti at Bildungsroman
• Robin Brande at HipWriterMama
• Susan Beth Pfeffer at The YA YA YAs
• Debby Garfinkle at A Chair, a Fireplace & a Tea Cozy
• Jennifer Lynn Barnes at Writing & Ruminating

Wednesday

• Delia Sherman at Chasing Ray
• Ingrid Law at Fuse #8 Production
• Polly Dunbar at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
• Tera Lynn Childs at Bildungsroman
• Siena Cherson Siegel at Miss Erin
• Barry Lyga at A Chair, a Fireplace & a Tea Cozy

Thursday

• Elisha Cooper at Chasing Ray
• Dar Williams at Fuse #8 Production
• Jennifer Bradbury at Bildungsroman
• E. Lockhart at The YA YA YAs
• Mary Hooper at Miss Erin
• Charles R. Smith at Writing & Ruminating
• Mary Pearson at A Chair, A Fireplace & a Tea Cozy

Friday

• Varian Johnson at Finding Wonderland
• Jincy Willet at Shaken & Stirred
• John Grandits at Writing & Ruminating
• Meg Burden at Bookshelves of Doom
• Gary D. Schmidt at Miss Erin
• Javaka Steptoe at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

So there’s quite a bit going on this week. And when you’re done reading author interviews, there’s always the option to head to the library to pick up their books (unless, of course, you wait until Memorial Day when many libraries will be closed, but why wait?).

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March has passed and has left in its wake a hearty dose of book-related action; this post briefly mentions just a few pieces of that action–the March Madness Tournament of Books, PLA’s convention and related-handouts, and ALA’s new season of Step Up to the Plate.

Tournament of Books

It’s March Madness, so fans are rooting for their favorite book. Didn’t I mean basketball team? Well, there is that too (and I, for one, am a huge fan of NCAA tournament action), but there’s also a more recently established Tournament of Books. Currently in its fourth installation, the 2008 tourney is winding up. The Tournament of Books is sponsored by Powell’s Books; brackets and standings can be found on the Morning News.

As the Morning News website puts it, “The Morning News Tournament of Books, sponsored by Powell’s Books, is an annual battle royale amongst the top novels in ‘literary fiction’ published throughout the year” (read more about the tournament). As this year’s tournament approaches fruition, Remainder by Tom McCarthy and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz are facing off for the title.

PLA Handouts

In non-tournament related book action, the Public Library Association (PLA) held it’s 12th National Conference in Minneapolis, MN on March 25-29. While it would have been great to attend, what’s even greater is that PLA has made available a great number of handouts and resources from its sessions.

Click here to view the full list of handouts including handouts from sessions such as When the Story Is True: Practicing Nonfiction and Readers’ Advisory Readers’ Advisory Tool Kit III: Market Driven Readers’ Advisory -Three More Skills to Increase Your Effectiveness as an RA Librarian.

ALA’s Step Up to the Plate

Lastly, the American Library Association (ALA) just launched Season three of Step Up to the Plate @ your library. Read the press release or play the trivia game that’s found on the program’s website. Or view the booklist of baseball books which includes books for those in Little League (grades 1-6), Minor League (grades 6-12), and Major League (18 and over) while also including films and reference sources.

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April 2 has been International Children’s Book Day since 1967 (this ties it in with Hans Christian Andersen’s birthday). International Children’s Book Day is “celebrated to inspire a love of reading and to call attention to children’s books.” Each year the day is hosted by a different National Section of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) and each year the day has a different theme.

A list of International Children’s Book Day National Sections and themes from 1995-2008 is available at the IBBY site where you’ll be see that this year’s host National Section is Thailand and the theme is “Books Enlighten: Knowledge Delights.”

And as long as we’re talking about special book-related times and themes, don’t forget to celebrate April as National Poetry Month.

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Poignant, compelling, intriguing, eschew, craft, muse, and lyrical are all showcased in Bob Harris’ article Seven Deadly Words of Book Reviewing over at the New York Times Papercuts Blog (I admit to being guilty of using some of these words…). Readers add many more “deadly words” suggestions in the comments. Speaking of Papercuts, another amusing post this week is Rachel Donadio’s Literary Dealbreaker. She writes about the relationship between reading habits and dating habits (again, don’t miss out on the comments).

On a different track entirely, Wired Magazine just posted Top 10 April Fools’ Pranks for Nerds compiled from readers submissions to the previous year’s April Fools Widget. The Top 10 list contains suggestions such as remapping a co-workers keyboard, changing the language settings in Google, and installing the Blue Screen of Death Screensaver.

And on a track that actually relates to children’s literature, the Washington Post article Question for the Ages: What Books When? provides a look into reading choice, or lack therof for kids these days. From the article:

Some educators and authors say they believe the emphasis on standardized tests in the No Child Left Behind education law has made teachers less willing to experiment with new or unusual books. “Kids are getting less and less choice, and it’s sad,” said author Jon Scieszka, the U.S. National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature

Anybody else run across any interesting articles this week, or have thoughts on the above?

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Some recent book-related links for your perusal:

The Edge of the Forest Volume III, Issue I January 2008 is up with thoughts on resolutions, interviews, and more.

Haven’t heard, read, seen, or otherwise-absorbed enough about last weeks ALA awards?  Find all things awards-related at The January Carnival of Children’s Literature: Book Awards by Wizards Wireless.

We book lovers know the power of books to affect our emotions and, subsequently, our lives.  Read about the rise of bibliotherapy in The Guardian’s The Reading Cure by Blake Morrison.

And finally, for additional reading pleasure, read about reading for pleasure at The Telegraph :

• If children are to become readers for life, they must first love stories (Michael Morpugo)
• 100 books every child should read: The Early Years
• 100 books every child should read: The Middle Years
• 100 books every child should read: Early Teens
• Pick of the children’s audiobook’s (Carol Mansour)
• How shall we tell the children? (Nicolette Jones discusses the challenges of writing children’s books about the Holocaust)

Have a great week!

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Lookybook (beta) operates on the principle that picture books are for looking at. The Lookybook mission:

Our mission is to create a comfortable place where a curious and devoted audience can search, view, talk about, and buy from a diverse and rapidly expanding collection of picture books. We intend to create the greatest opportunity for authors, illustrators and publishers to reach interested consumers and dramatically extend the life of their books.

Lookybook currently features over 200 titles and is growing daily. Our goal, by mid-2008, is to feature over 1000 titles.

Anyone is free to look at as many books at Lookybook as they so choose. You do need to register if you desire to create your own bookshelf. Obviously, Lookybook’s selection is currently limited in quantity as it is a relatively new service, but Lookybook already has some big names and titles available to look at (see the embedded picture book below if you don’t believe me). Plus, Lookybook has set admirable goals to continue expanding its selection. This makes it a site to watch.

As Lookybook continues to grow, it will increase in utility as “test track for picture books.” If a book’s available on Lookybook, picture book purchasers will be able to peruse it in its entirety in order to make more informed purchasing decisions. How useful and what fun!

Bookshelves of others can be viewed so that Lookybook truly becomes a place for “Picture books you can discover, share, and talk about” (see my Lookybook Bookshelf).For another take on Lookybook, see Publisher Weekly’s November 15, 2007 article Lookybook Site to Promote Picture Books. I first heard about Lookybook through Cheryl Rainfield’s great post Fantastic new way to read picture books online, see if you want to buy them.

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I decided that it’s time to join a couple of blogging book challenges. You’ll find my list of “to-be-read-for-the-challenges” books on my Blog Book Challenges page. For now, I have constrained myself to enter just two–the Triple 8 Challenge (to read eight books in eight categories/genres/topics with an allowable eight overlap, also allowing overlap with other challenges) and the Young Adult Fiction Challenge. Since the Triple 8 challenge will likely overlap other challenges, I may enter other challenges at a later date…or not. Guess we’ll have to see how 2008 goes.

For those interested in challenges, here are a couple that might be of interest:

Finishing up in 2007:

50 Book Challenge: read 50 books in a year (pretty self-explanatory; I would imagine there will be a 50 book challenge in 2008 as well)

Book Awards Reading Challenge: read twelve award-winning books (the period for this one is actually July 1, 2007-June 30, 2008)
* I particularly enjoy perusing the site for this challenge, because it provides lists of award winners for just about every book award out there

New York Times Notable Books Challenge: read a self-imposed number of books from the previous year’s (2006) New York Times Notable list

2008 Challenges:

Triple 8 Challenge: choose eight categories and read eight books in each category (eight books may overlaps so that the end total is at least 56 unique books. Also, 56 of these titles may overlap with any other challenge)
*view my selections on my Blog Book Challenge page

Back to History Challenge: read one historical non-fiction, or historical fiction novel a month

Celebrate the Author Challenge: choose one author for each month of the year and read at least one book a month (twelve authors, twelve birthdays, twelve books)

Decades ‘08 Challenge: read (at least) 8 books in 8 consecutive decades in ‘08

Reading Romance Challenge: choose at least 5 novels read them sometime in 2008 and post the link to your review

Series Challenge: this challenge does not set the number of books that must be read; it only specifies that books be chosen in order to be all up-to-date with the series

Themed Reading Challenge: choose at least 4 books that share a theme and write reviews (note: this challenge only spans six months, January 1-June 30, 2008)

Young Adult Challenge (YAC): choose twelve young adult books and read them throughout 2008
*view my selections on my Blog Book Challenge page

Young Reader’s Challenge: read twelve books for the ages 12 and under

Feel free to leave a comment with thoughts about these challenges or with information regarding other challenges you’d like to share with your fellow readers!

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Sharing never used to be so much fun (if you don’t believe me, just ask the two-year-old nearest to you). But some of the new book exchange sites make sharing books a fun, social, tree-saving activity. A couple of my favorites are BookCrossing and BookMooch.

• BookCrossing: At BookCrossing, they recognize that “a book is a terrible thing to waste” and, for this reason, the site exists to “release books into the wild”. Users register any books that they have onto the site and then set the book free to travel the world and to encounter new readers. Books are to be left in public places where other readers will find them, pick them up, read them, and pass them on (site suggestions include park benches, coffee shops, hotels, but it really could be just about anywhere you can think of where someone else might want to pick it up (which pretty much excludes public restrooms)). One of the most fun aspects of BookCrossing is that a book’s journey across the world and across multiple readers can be tracked through the site by means of the BCID (Book Crossing ID) that has been assigned to the book.

• BookMooch operates on the mooch principle. Now “mooch” is not a word with overly positive connotations (witness WordNet: mooch (n)–someone who tries to get something free or mooch (v)–to be a parasite), but at BookMooch, mooching is a positive activity.I mooch a book from you, you mooch a book from me, and so on and so forth. Once you join BookMooch, you can list all of the books that you would be willing to trade. If one of the books that you listed is on another person’s mooch list, then they will be notified and they can request the book. The sender of the book earns credit for sending the book (credit that can be used in mooching other desired books that are listed by others) and the moocher gets the book. It’s a win-win situation. Through BookMooch, wishlists actually come true when users and books and credits match up.

A couple of other notable exchange sites (albeit, slightly less creative and fun, they are equally useful for exchange purposes):

• Bookins: The Bookins tagline is “Find your old books a new home” and “Swap books, we make it easy.” At Bookins, they call their members “budget conscious bibliophiles.” In other words, the idea is that instead of paying full retail price for the books that you want to read, you only pay for the shipping and handling that it costs to mail them to you. Members exchange books of equal value by using the Bookins system that automatically assigned point values (point values being based on aspects such as retail price, popularity). In this way, bibliophiles can help other bibliophiles and books get used instead of sitting on shelves getting dusty.

• Paperbackswap: PaperBackSwap is based on a similar principle to Bookins; as they say, “We are a group of readers who share books with each other (NOT just paperbacks) for nothing more than the cost of postage!”

With just those few sites, your library could become a continuously rotating, continuously evolving organism. And who knows what reading new books and ideas might do to your mind…

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A few days ago, Mashable published a 350+ Social Networking Sites encompassing the categories of Books, Business Networking & Professionals, Family, Friends, Hobbies & Interests, Language, Music, Media, Mobile, Shopping, Social Bookmarking, Students, and Travel & Locales.

The entire list offers myriad hours of fun investigation for the social-networked inclined. Given the nature of this blog, I’m just going to paste the books links here, and, in my next post, I’ll expand a bit on a couple of my favorite social book exchange sites. Mashable’s list of social book sites and their annotations:

Americabookshelf.com - One of the largest book exchange clubs across the US.

BooksConnect - A book sharing community site connecting readers, authors, publishers, librarians and booksellers.

BookCrossing.com - A community of users from over 130 countries who exchange books with each other at public places like cafes, parks etc.

Bookhopper.co.uk - Free community for UK residents to share used books with each other.

Bookins.com - Book sharing website that enables members to exchange used books with each other in real time.

BookMooch.com - An interesting concept where users can exchange books with others through points. Users gain points when they give books to others.

Booksalescout.com - Online community of users allowing them to sell books in the US.

Bookswim.com - Book borrowing service with free shipping for registered website.

ConnectViaBooks - A social networking site connecting book lovers and enabling them to discover other similar interests.

GoodReads - GoodReads is a book reader’s community enabling members to review, share books they have been reading.

PaperBackSwap.com - Users can share books amongst each other and only pay for the delivery charges.

Pazap.com - A book trade engine for students to buy and sell old books.

Read It Swap It - A free service that allows users to exchange books with others.

Revish - Revish is another community for book lovers, letting them review their favorite books, group up, or simply tell the world what they’re currently reading.

Shelfari - Shelfari is a popular social networking service for book lovers.

Socialbib - Book swapping network between students.

And not to be myopically centered just on books, here are just a few of my recommendations from the other categories (mainly focusing on more recently evolving sites, and assuming that you’ve already heard of old, quality standbys such as Flickr and Photobucket (photo sharing) and Digg and del.icio.us (social bookmarking)…and can anyone say YouTube):

Geni: Geni says “everyone’s related” and enables users to create a family tree and stay in touch

Flixster: Flixster is a community for movie lovers

Crowdstorm: Crowdstorm amalgamates the product talk out in the blogosphere to help users decide on purchases. Users can also add favorite products and edit ones already in the databases.

Productwiki.com: ProductWiki is a common place for users to share information about consumer products; as the tagline reads, it’s the place to find “unbiased product reviews and information”

Zoodango: Zoodango enables connecting with other professionals either online or face-to-face at local venues. You can also search for events taking place in your area.

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