Citizen Reader

2012 nonfiction trends: part 1.

In my trolling for forthcoming nonfiction titles I formulated some ideas about what's going to be big in nonfiction this year. These trends are, of course, based on my opinion--I've never really looked at or considered trends before, so I can't speak to my accuracy. All I can really tell you is that I looked at more than 300 forthcoming nonfiction titles, as well as a number of various blog and journal articles, to formulate these ideas.

So what's going to be big, and why?

I have two words that are bound to strike fear into the heart of anyone who never had or has completely lost any interest in politics: Election Year. God help us all, but 2012 is a big election year and correspondingly, political and current events books are going to be big. Not only will candidates be putting out their own books and having books written about them, plenty of authors are getting in on the subject. In addition to current political titles, there's a number of big political historical biographies coming out.

Curious about what the actual politics titles are? Please check the spreadsheet I posted a link to Monday*, or check out a condensed list of forthcoming political titles here.

I can't be objective about these titles; the very idea of reading any of these books makes me want to puke, but I'd like to give an extra special pukey shout-out to Dennis Prager's title Still the Last Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph, which is described at Prager's website as explaining how "Humanity stands at a crossroads, and the only alternatives to the 'American Trinity' of liberty, natural rights, and the melting-pot ideal of national unity are Islamic totalitarianism, European democratic socialism, capitalist dictatorship, or global chaos if we should fail."**

But if you're interested in politics? This is going to be a very good nonfiction year for you.

*A word about the spreadsheet. It's organized by genre, but those are my genre headings. Where I use the heading "name memoir," that means "celebrity memoirs." Also, books tagged with my genre heading "Malcolm Gladwell," are variously known as "Making Sense..." books, "Big Idea" books, "Big Think" books, and many other headings. I tend to call them Malcolm Gladwell books, myself, since his titles (e.g., The Tipping Point) are the best known in the genre.

**Does this sentence even make sense? It's hard for me to tell, I get bored in the middle of it and can't view it as a whole.

Looking at 2012 nonfiction trends.

Somewhere in the middle of my neverending nonfiction reading slump I gave a presentation (for the Outagamie Waupaca Library System continuing education program--thanks again for hiring me!) on nonfiction trends in 2012.

As I told the attendees, it was somewhat hilarious for me to be giving a talk on trends. Me and any kind of "trends" are rarely in the same room together. I've never  particularly cared what the "it" books of each season are (I do, but more out of professional curiosity than out of a burning desire to read them myself) and I'm definitely not up on fashion trends. I put on a "work outfit" to give the presentation--it was given through web meeting software, and no one could see me, but I find it gives a little "oomph" to your presentation to be dressed professionally (or as "professionally" as I can manage)--and the sweater I was wearing was about fifteen years old. Pathetic. But I was happy to be speaking on a new topic--a topic about newness, if you will, so I read what I could and researched what I could to try and suss out some nonfiction trends of the coming year.

While researching the trends, I threw together a quick spreadsheet of nonfiction titles that will be coming out this year. I entered the authors and titles, the month they're coming out, and then assigned some quick-n-dirty genre headings. You can download that spreadsheet yourself; it can be sorted alphabetically by author or title, by genre (which is how it's sorted now), or by release month. All week I'll be talking about what I learned putting that spreadsheet together, so buckle your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy trends ride.

I'm really overthinking storytime.

CRjr and I are just back from a library storytime for one- and two-year-olds. He's taking a short nap, and I feel like I should also. Just to recover.

Now, storytime was just fine. Very nice, in fact. Some songs and singing, clapping and hand motions, a few stories, and then some coloring for those who wanted to. Lots of other little kids and their moms. (Yes, all moms or female nannies.)

So why did the whole scene make me so tired?

Now, I think CRjr enjoyed himself okay. He didn't seem too interested at first, but when the program started he faced forward (sitting on my lap, he wiggled back towards me after starting on a little carpet) and watched carefully. Of course we didn't know some of the songs and hand motions but everyone else seemed to, and we caught up after a while. The stories were good, the librarian kept things moving around nicely, and CRjr definitely enjoyed just looking around.

But my question is this: is it really important that CRjr learn the movements to "The Wheels on the Bus"?* That he learn to follow along with what everyone else is doing? To me it seemed eerily like preparing him for school, which will prepare him for an office job of some sort. To quote something I tell CRjr about unsuitable things to touch: Ucky.

But of course I am overthinking it. It doesn't help that CRjr seems by nature not to be much of a follower. He's hitting his gross and fine motor skill benchmarks, but the boy refuses to play things like patty cake. I should know--I've been trying to play patty cake with him for months now. He laughs and engages while I do the motions, but he seems uninclined to play the game with me. So, like any mother who just wants her kid to fit in with the crowd, I feel a little like we stick out, and it makes me nervous. I know it shouldn't.

I think we'll go next week. CRjr doesn't know enough to look forward to it, and I definitely won't, which seems the wrong attitude to have. But there you have it.

*I know it probably is important. But it's so hard for me to understand why. I was not taken to the library or storytimes (not because Mom didn't love me; it just wasn't something they did) and I learned to read and interact just fine.

Escapism.

It's official: I am Not Myself.

It's now been weeks since I have plowed through any quantities of nonfiction. I did read Gene Weingarten's The Fiddler in the Subway, and have been reading magazines, but for me that's kind of the equivalent of not reading any nonfiction at all. I like to have at least three books going or I feel at sea.

On the other hand, I have been plowing through the Anne of Green Gables series, and have lately been considering getting more mysteries and perhaps some other fiction from the library. Of course I forget the titles now but I have been seeing some fiction titles pop up that at least seem interesting (and I'm very eager to get John Green's new book The Fault in Our Stars, but I'm a ways down the hold list for that one).

This has led me to think of what I need from reading. Over the course of the last ten years or so I have not been an escapist reader. (I've actually been a little disdainful of escapist, particularly genre, reading--just ask Mr. CR, as I pick on his genre bookshelves just for fun.) But just lately I find I have been craving reading from an escapism standpoint. Typically I love current affairs and investigative and history books, but lately every one of them I see just makes me think: Ugh. I do not know why this is. I'm not particularly stressed and actually have enjoyed good health for some time. So why do I need to escape now?

Part of me is wondering if it's just the nature of the beast when you are a girl. Really. That sounds horribly sexist but it's definitely a theory. Perhaps women, tired of juggling thoughts of work, home care, child and other family care, and friendship management, just do not have the strength left over for nonfiction (most of the time). This would partially explain why studies show that women tend to read (and buy) more fiction than men. Which is not to say men don't have concerns--they do. But I think men might be better about not having concerns about one thing (say, home) while they're dealing with another thing (say, work). What think you? Tell me in the comments.

I'm thankful for so many great readers!

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving weekend, and here's hoping your holiday season is not nuts. When it starts to be, sit down and have some eggnog. Yummmm eggnog.

I just wanted to take a moment and thank everyone (heartily) who has already participated in the Great Citizen Reader Survey of 2011. It's been very enlightening and I can't wait to share the results when I get them tabulated (although I can't promise when that will be--I still have to figure out Excel). For now, I just wanted to let you know that I'll be leaving the questions up until December 30; you can answer them by clicking on the link in the top of the sidebar at right, or by clicking here:

The Great Citizen Reader Survey of 2011

Please do remember to send the link on to at least one other person; the more replies we get, the more interesting the results will be. Also, sometime in the new year, I'll be asking YOU what questions we should ask on next year's survey, so get your thinking caps on.*

And, because you are the best blog readers and survey answerers anywhere: thank you!!

*I've always wanted a reason to use this phrase. Awesome.

The Great Citizen Reader Survey of 2011: The Questions

Welcome to the Great Citizen Reader Survey of 2011! If you missed the explanation for what we're doing with this survey, please read it here.

And now, the questions:

1. What is your age (ranges okay) and gender?

2. Please estimate the percentage of both fiction and nonfiction you read, totalling 100% (e.g., "10% fiction and 90% nonfiction," or "100% fiction, 0% nonfiction"). If the only nonfiction books you read are purely reference works like cookbooks and how-tos, please indicate 100% fiction, but add "and reference NF."

3. How many books do you read per month?

4. Name three formats in which you read, from greatest to least (e.g. "print books, audio books, e-books," where the format you read most often is print books).

5. Name the three primary ways, in any order, in which you find reading materials. You may speak broadly ("blogs" or "personal recommendations") or specifically ("Bookslut blog" or "my sister's suggestions").

6. Please list three words that most describe why you read (e.g. "comfort, education, escapism").

7. Do you buy or borrow most of your reading material?

8. Would you say you have less time, more time, or about the same amount of time to read as you have had in the past? If less or more, why (briefly)?

9. Please list your five favorite "genres," (nonfiction included) using whatever names you call them by. Please also list your favorite title in each genre.

10. What was the best book you read in 2011? The worst? (READ in 2011; not necessarily published in 2011.)

And I think we'll stop there. There's so much more I want to ask but I'll wait until next year. Until then, and until the results from this survey are tabulated: THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION! (And: Happy Thanksgiving, all.)

The Great Citizen Reader Survey of 2011

Way back when my first blog, Nonfiction Readers Anonymous, crashed and died, I started Citizen Reader with the idea to still focus on nonfiction, but also to discuss reading. Although we have had some great discussions here, particularly during our Book Menages (another one of which I want to host soon), I feel that I have to some extent failed in my mission to find out more about how readers read.

So what to do?

Well, the only obvious thing to do is to start the Great Citizen Reader Survey of 2011. How's it going to work? I'm going to ask a few questions here, and I'd love it if you'd take the time to answer them. It would also REALLY make my day if you'd ask just one other reader you know (you can ask more if you want!) to fill out the survey as well.* Then, I promise I will collect and share the results here, sometime in 2012. Here's how we'll work it, and why:

1. I know this sample will self-select for people who are already dedicated readers. That's part of the plan; I want to know how real READERS go about their reading business.

2. I would like to use the results of this survey in readers' advisory and library trainings and writing, but I'm really undertaking this primarily out of personal curiosity and for dissemination here. I'm also doing it because I'm hoping it will force me to learn to use Excel or something like that, to tabulate the results. And I would very much like to make some sort of survey an annual event here at Citizen Reader. Currently it's hard to find stats and info about readers--publishers' groups study readers and their buying habits, but they make you pay big bucks for their information. BOO.

3. I am not using Survey Monkey or other online survey software because mainly you have to pay for that stuff, particularly to keep your results. BOO.

4. You can answer these questions completely anonymously. (This is another reason I'm not using any survey software; I don't want a third party service to have your email address or other info either.) I will ask for demographic information because some of that is what really interests me (as it relates to what you read), but you will not have to provide your name, and even if I see your IP address, I am not technologically savvy enough to figure out your name from that, and at this time I have no plans to create an email subscription list or anything like that.

5. I'm going to ask the questions at the blog here, and make that post a permanent page that will be linked to in the right sidebar. You can answer the questions within the comments (just type Anonymous in the name spot, or use whatever alias you want to use), which I will eventually just collect and then delete from online viewing. You could also simply copy and paste the questions into an email, and then submit your answers to me at realstory@tds.net.

Are we ready? Questions tomorrow, and then I'm off for Thanksgiving week. I'll leave the survey page up through the end of December! Thanks so much for doing this with me.

*I originally got the idea for this kind of quantitative survey after reading an article in the book Nonfiction Readers' Advisory (edited by Robert Burgin), titled "Reading Nonfiction for Pleasure: What Motivates Readers?" by Catherine Ross.

I'll take a distraction, please.

We'll take a short break today from our list of 100 Best-ish Nonfiction Titles, while I digress on a book I read last week, and which I emphatically will not be adding to our best list.

In fact, if I was given the choice of either reading Alan Jacobs's book The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction or indulging in a distraction like, say, poking at my eye with a sharp stick,* I think I'd have to choose the stick.

The title of this one was so alluring. And so was the length: 150 pages. I went into it primed to like it.

But I just didn't.

For one thing, there's this:

"Several times a year I get requests from people--usually students, but also friends and acquaintances, and even total strangers who have managed to find my email address--who want reading lists. 'Dear Professor Jacobs, could you please give me your recommendations for what I should read this summer?' Or, 'Dear Professor, in your opinion what are the ten most important books that every educated person should read?" I dislike that second question for reasons that are probably already clear, but the first I can't bring myself to dislike at all, since it's really a compliment in the form of a question.

Nonetheless, I never comply with these requests." (p. 13.)

And this in a part of the chapter labeled as "Whim." Good lord, Professor, how about engaging in a little Whim and just throwing these people a bone in the form of a reading list? Are you or are you not a professor of English? Now, in all fairness, a little bit further down the page he says he doesn't mind suggesting books if people first tell him what they like and then ask for recommendations--but I would point out he can turn reading list questions into that type of request simply by asking those who ask him for lists to describe their reading habits. It's not hard, Professor--librarians do it every day, for a lot less money and fewer sabbaticals.

And then let's talk about how he later digresses about how reading for Whim (with a capital W) differs from reading for whim. And how he was naughty when he was twenty and failed to finish a novel for the first time: William Gaddis's The Recognitions, which he put down after only reading to page...666. Good lord. This man and I are clearly not in the same reading room. I'm ditching this one at page 51, and I'm not going to feel that it's naughty, either. Or if I do, it's deliciously naughty.

I'm sorry I'm not really describing the book all that well, but this is another one of those "pleasures/importance of reading" books that never really seem to get to the point. I think his general idea was that you should read because it's pleasurable, not because it's good for you, although it can be. There. I just saved you 150 pages' worth of reading (pleasurable or otherwise) time.

*Blame my dad for this image. One of his favorite sayings, when something doesn't meet my expectations, is to say "Well, it's better than a sharp stick in the eye."

Fiction bender.

For whatever reason, I have not really been in a nonfiction mood the past few weeks.

This is not to say that I haven't been reading nonfiction. I've got a title in the bathroom and one on my nightstand, and I'm enjoying both of them when I read them. But I can't seem to focus on them exclusively. It is therefore taking me forever to get through them, and that's weird for me.

On the other hand, over the last few weeks I have plowed through every Anne Tyler novel I own: The Accidental Tourist, Saint Maybe, Searching for Caleb, Back When We Were Grownups, and Earthly Possessions. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant--one of my very favorites of hers--has only remained unread because I can't find my copy (I know it's here somewhere). For whatever reasons I find Anne Tyler to be a very interesting novelist. I wouldn't call her comfort reading, though--there's something ever-so-slightly edgy* about her fiction and her characters that both unsettles and settles me. If that makes any sense. And I like the fact that I never really know what Anne Tyler the author is thinking. I remember finishing The Clock Winder and thinking it had a lovely happy ending, and then I read in an interview that she didn't think she'd given it a happy ending at all.

Are there any authors, fiction or non, who do this for you? Soothe but yet provoke?

*It was very hard to read Saint Maybe again, particularly the part where the mother of two young children and a baby is falling to pieces from depression (with reason). Interesting how the scenes describing a baby being in its crib all day with not much attention affect me now, with CRjr around.

Boys will be boys.

Every now and then, because I am a nerd, I read books about reading and how to help others find books they might enjoy. Recently I looked through Michael Sullivan's reference book Serving Boys Through Readers Advisory, and found it to be kind of an interesting little read and handy guide for thinking about how boys read.

I've always been quite interested in gender differences and reading preferences*, to the point where I have actually wandered around Barnes and Noble on a regular basis specifically to see what sections men and women are browsing in, so this book spoke to a longstanding interest in readers and readers' advisory. Also, now that I have a little boy, it's personal.**

The first finding in this book that I found very interesting was Sullivan's citing the finding that "boys read, on average, a year and a half below girls throughout their school years, with a small gap from the first day of school and the widest gap later on." (p. 15.) That's pretty significant, and makes me snort with indignation when I think about "reading levels," "lexile" numbers, and Accelerated Reader programs that make no distinction between boy and girl readers. I also enjoyed the findings that boys read and enjoy nonfiction from an early age, and that they often pick books far ahead of their abilities (including a wide variety of adult books). Sullivan points out that this can actually be just fine--even if the boy doesn't know what five or more words per page mean (a standard distinction for finding whether a book is at a child's level or not, evidently), he can often get what he needs out of the text anyway by just reading and accepting what he DOES understand. I can see, then, why nonfiction appeals--it's easier to skim, and to read in stops and starts.

I also love the section on working with parents and kids--pointing out that a good first question for dads (and, to a lesser extent, mothers and other family members) looking for books for their boys is "what has the boy seen YOU reading?" I have long believed that public libraries in particular are very good about running programs to encourage kids to read, but do not do enough to support adult readers--primarily because I believe that if kids saw their parents reading, they'd be interested in reading too.

The book concludes with chapters of nice sample book talks and booklists for elementary, middle school, and high school age boys; and book lists in a variety of genres, including nonfiction, humor, fantasy, sf, gothic horror, sports, and realistic.

*Much more so than, say, age differences, although I suppose that will change as I age.

**I've been very nervous about and relieved to check off CRjr's various developmental milestones, but the physical skill that made me cry with joy was when he first started flipping the pages of his board books by himself. Oh, and feeding himself. I LOVE watching him feed himself--with both hands, unceasingly, until his food is gone. He's got his mother's appetite.

Graphic Novels: The Challenge, Part 2

As you may or may not know, I started the reading summer out being challenged by Beth to read ten graphic novels. Because I am allergic to being told what to do, I suggested a compromise of me reading two graphic novels. Beth agreed and a mini-challenge was born.

Her first choice for me was Hope Larson's YA graphic novel Mercury; I reviewed that book last week. Another suggestion she made was Hannah Berry's Britten and Brulightly, although she noted it was a bit strange.

Turns out I don't mind strange. This is a completely different novel from Mercury: much different story (crime/mystery/noir), much different art. One of the things that makes it strange (I'm not going to be a spoiler and tell you what it is) didn't really bother me all that much, although I did wonder why Berry used it as a plot point. I thought it would have worked just fine without it. The book opens with Britten describing his career as a private investigator--and his nickname "The Heartbreaker"--earned after telling people what they hired him to find out but which they really don't want to know anyway. I enjoyed that aspect of the story, and the actual mystery he is charged with, very much. Although towards the end I did think the story got both unnecessarily complex (and then was resolved too quickly)*, that's a criticism I have of a lot of modern-day noir and mystery.

But I did love the art of this one. Very dark, with lots of line detail of the city in which the story is set. It reminded me of Paul Madonna's work, which I love, and looked to me the way a graphic novel "should."

So, thanks, Beth. These were both interesting reads and when I passed the graphic novel section of my local library yesterday, I didn't run past it the way I normally do. I slowed down a bit and actually thought about perusing it. (I didn't, but the next time I might! Baby steps.)

*Mr. CR read it too and also thought the ending was too abrupt. Interesting that our reactions to these graphic novels has been quite similar, as we both have quite different reading tastes.

Nonfiction book group titles, spring 2011.

When I gave the talk on nonfiction (memoirs and biographies) last week, I had in mind to mention some nonfiction titles that would be good to read in book groups. There was only one small hitch with this plan: I don't really know what makes a book good for book groups or clubs. As an added complication, library staff trying to plan their book discussions are always limited as to the types of books they can choose: they have to choose titles that aren't too new or hugely popular, because then the waiting lists for patrons to get them will be too long; but they also have to choose widely available books that their library or system owns sufficient copies of so that all the book group members can check the book out from the library at the same time. It's a quandary.

So here are some of the newer or classic memoir and biography titles I thought might make for good discussions. What do you think? Agree or disagree on any of the titles? And what makes a title a good "book group" title anyway?

 Memoir

• Elisabeth Tova Bailey: The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating
• Amy Chua: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
• Helene Hanff: 84, Charing Cross Road (simply because everyone should read it)
• Rhoda Janzen: Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home
• Kristin Kimball: The Dirty Life: A Memoir of Farming, Food, and Love (maybe in a "back to the land" theme group)
• Anything by Jen Lancaster (and please, if your book group does a title by her, please come back and explain to me why she's so popular?)
• Greg Mortenson: Three Cups of Tea (just for fun--then discuss the memoir/truth/charity controversy)
• David Small: Stitches (graphic novel)

Biography

• Edmund Morris: Colonel Roosevelt
• Joan Schenkar: The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith (libraries probably don't own enough copies of this one, but I thought maybe some attendees could read this, and others could read Highsmith's books, and have a "themed" discussion)
• Stacy Schiff: Cleopatra: A Life
• Charles Shields: MockingbirdMockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee (although this one may still be too new)
• Donald Sturrock: Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl (ditto here; even if the library doesn't have enough copies, participants could read either a sampling of his kids' classics or his memoirs like Boy)
• And, because I had the Royal Family on my mind, what about a modern monarchy theme, featuring books like Katie Nicholl's William and Harry: Behind the Palace Walls, Christopher Andersen's After Diana: William, Harry, Charles, and the Royal House of Windsor, Gyles Brandreth's Philip and Elizabeth: Portrait of a Royal Marriage, and even Robert Hardman's beautifully photographed Monarchy: the Royal Family At Work

I should go to a library book group this spring or summer, especially if I can find one that reads nonfiction.

Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch: The re-read.

Sometimes I really like to re-read books. I do that more with fiction, but I always enjoy a second (or third, or fourth...) toodle through favorite nonfiction titles as well.

A case in point? Hollis Gillespie's memoir/essay collection Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch: Tales from a Bad Neighborhood. I have no qualms reporting that I first read this one because I loved the title, and then I kept reading it because I really enjoy Hollis Gillespie. Although it can be taken too far, basically, I like people who swear. And Hollis swears. A lot.

I re-read this title because I was going to be giving a talk on memoirs and biographies to a lovely group of library professionals, and I wanted to have some examples of titles ready that have different "tones." The tone of Gillespie's book is much of what I love about it: feisty, profane, yet strangely gentle. That's hard to pull off. But she does it well:

"When I was seven I had a crush on Satan. Not that I knew who he was, I just based everything on his picture. In the illustrated children's Bible I remember one picture in particular, in which Jesus had just pushed Satan off a cliff, and Satan is sailing down through the air, a trail of red robes billowing behind him. He looked only slightly irritated at the inconvenience. He had hair as black as octopus ink, styled like Lyle Waggoner's, an impeccably groomed beard, and a deep sunburn. 'Course that cloven hoof was kind of a downer, but hey, other than that I thought he was hot.

When my mother came home from work that day I told her I wanted to marry Satan when I grew up. She looked at me gravely, then said, 'Kid, whatever you do, don't get married.'" (p. 274.)

Ha! What was also interesting to me about this book was how much I'd mis-remembered it; I remembered it as much more about her search for and making of a home in Atlanta, when really her home-buying adventures just take up a few chapters toward the end. It's also a bit more repetitive than I thought, and not quite as polished. (On the other hand, I think her collection Trailer Trashed: My Dubious Efforts Toward Upward Mobility is one of the best essay collections ever, that one's feisty AND polished.) But that's okay. It was still a fun re-read. And I even got Mr. CR to partake--I left it in the bathroom, and although at first his opinion of the book's author was not high ("she annoys me"), he eventually admitted that he enjoyed some parts of it.

Summer reading from someone who doesn't pay any attention to summer.

It was an exciting weekend at Chez Citizen Reader: I was honored to be quoted in our local newspaper's story about summer reading. Let's hear it for Kim, over at Sophisticated Dorkiness, who wrote the article: Kim, you did a nice job, and hey, it's always nice for book news to get a little space in the print media.

What was just a tad ironic about my part in the story was that, as I told Kim, I don't have kids and we don't take vacations or anything in the summer, so we hardly ever notice it IS summer, and because of that, I never really think of or read "beach reads."*

But Kim took all that information with good grace and a willingness to provide nonfiction title suggestions as well as fiction ones, and we had a lovely conversation all about the nonfiction we're reading, which was awesome. (Let's also hear it for my librarian friends Jane and Liz, also quoted in the article, who, as per usual, were more eloquent than me.)

All of this made up slightly for the fact that I couldn't find a damn thing I wanted to read this weekend--plenty of books around, but I just didn't enjoy anything I started. I'm hoping to turn that around this week.

And how's about you? Does summer constitute a different reading season for any of you? Got any big plans for reading this summer?

*Add this layer of irony: I hate beaches, as I can't swim and I abhor hot weather. And no, I'm not going to learn to swim. For one thing, I've already learned, and forgotten how; for another, when I could swim, all I did was get water in my mouth, always leading me to think, "why am I making it harder to breathe?" Plus, if I can't swim and don't go to the beach, I never have to buy a swimsuit. This plan has been working out splendidly for at least the last decade and a half of my life, and I don't believe in fixing what isn't broken.

Quickly quotable.

The other night I was looking over Yann Martel's new novel Beatrice and Virgil, and was pleased to find some lovely thoughts on fiction and nonfiction right in the beginning of it. I don't think I'll keep reading it--Martel's a little "literary" for me--but I did enjoy this rumination by his character Henry, an author:

"But fiction and nonfiction are very rarely published in the same book. That was the hitch. Tradition holds that the two must be kept apart. That is how our knowledge and impressions of life are sorted in bookstores and libraries--separate aisles, separate floors--and that is how publishers prepare their books, imagination in one package, reason in another. It's not how writers write. A novel is not an entirely unreasonable creation, nor is an essay devoid of imagination. Nor is it how people live. People don't so rigorously separate the imaginative from the rational in their thinking and in their actions. There are truths and there are lies--these are the transcendent categories, in books as in life. The useful division is between the fiction and nonfiction that speaks the truth and the fiction and nonfiction that utters lies." (pp. 6-7.)

I enjoyed that. I enjoyed that a lot. And, frankly, that's probably the last thing in this novel I'm going to understand, so I'm going to stop reading it there. Sorry, Yann. I do still mean to read Life of Pi, someday. Has anyone read that one? Should I read it? Thanks for any input on this matter, and have a good weekend, all.

Kicking off the summer of Bryson.

When someone asked me about my summer reading plans this summer, I must admit I was stymied. Without kids and with a freelance job that tends to be somewhat constant year-round, and not liking to travel during the summer when everyone else is traveling, I never ever think of summer as its own reading season. I also am not a fan of either a. beaches, or b. beach reads (which seem mainly to be "women's fiction" novels or thrillers, neither of which are my cuppa), so "summer reading" wasn't something I had thought about at all.

But then I did think about it, and thought there might be a couple of goals I could have for the summer. After reading and enjoying Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island, I thought maybe I'd work my way through the rest of his books (or at least the travel ones--he's also written books about the English language, but I don't know if I need to be that dedicated about it). I'm also thinking this should be the summer when I finally, finally read Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry (which is periodically recommended to me by one of my very favorite librarians), or perhaps even Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. I have always wanted to know if Rhett was as dishy, and Scarlett as annoying, as they are in the movie.

But I decided to ease myself into things with Bryson's American travelogue, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America. Now, I just didn't love this one the way I loved Notes from a Small Island or In a Sunburned Country, but I did finish it, and I've got quite a few bookmarks stuck in it, so I at least enjoyed many parts of it. In this travelogue, first published in 1989, Bryson visited his homeland of the United States (he was then living in Great Britain with his wife and family), and drove around most of it, writing about his experiences as he went, and engaging in nostalgia for the road trips of his youth, organized and run with a frugal hand by his father.

I don't know if Bryson has mellowed with age, but I found him a little more abrasive in this narrative, and the tone, to me, seemed a bit uneven: you could never tell whether he was going to love a place or activity, and even when he was enjoying himself it seemed like a grudging "well, that wasn't a bad time, considering how lousy this whole trip has been" way. Because he was in America, of course, a lot of his time was also spent driving and exploring American historical spots (colonial Williamsburg, the Gettysburg battleground, etc.) and since I am completely bored and annoyed by driving (preferring to travel near big urban centers where we can almost exclusively ride trains or other public transportation) and was never all that interested in American history, I fear much of the charm of this volume was lost on me.

But that doesn't mean there weren't moments. I LOVED his description of Franklin Roosevelt's Georgian retreat, Warm Springs:

"I drove out to the Little White House, about two miles outside town. The parking lot was almost empty, except for an old bus from which a load of senior citizens were disembarking. The bus was from the Calvary Baptist Church in some place like Firecracker, Georgia, or Bareassed, Alabama. The old people were noisy and excited, like schoolchildren, and pushed in front of me at the ticket booth, little realizing that I wouldn't hesitate to give an old person a shove, especially a Baptist. Why is it, I wondered, that old people are always so self-centered and excitable? But I just smiled benignly and stood back, comforted by the thought that soon they would be dead." (p. 75.)

Okay, in all fairness, that's a description of old people, not Warm Springs. But HERE is a further description of Warm Springs that I also enjoyed:

"In every room there was a short taped commentary, which explained how Roosevelt worked and underwent therapy at the cottage. What it didn't tell you was that what he really came here for was a bit of rustic bonking with his secretary, Lucy Mercer. Her bedroom was on one side of the living room and his was on the other. The taped recording made nothing of this, but it did point out that Eleanor's bedroom, tucked away at the back and decidedly inferior to the secretary's, was mostly used as a guest room because Eleanor seldom made the trip south." (p. 77.)

Now THAT is American history. If my school textbooks had been a bit more honest about things like that, I might have actually been interested in American history. I look forward to continuing the Summer of Bryson!

Decidedly ambivalent about the Pulitzer Prize winners.

Last week they announced the 2010 Pulitzer Prize winners, and I can't say it was a list that thrilled me. But, I was not surprised, as I am often underwhelmed by the Pulitzer Prize winners. I don't know why.

I was particularly not thrilled about the selection of Liaquat Ahamed's nonfiction book Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, which I read parts of and found dry, even by business subject standards. I couldn't imagine any but the most dedicated of financial history readers really loving it, but perhaps I am wrong. Did anyone else read that one and think I'm dead wrong?

I thought the strongest book on the list, the winner for Biography, was T.J. Stiles's The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. That's another one I only got about a quarter of the way through, but I really enjoyed that quarter, and Mr. CR opined that someday we should get the book back again when we had more time to read the whole thing. We found it a very interesting mix of history and biography, with not too much mind-numbing detail of either. I'm also happy that the fiction winner, Tinkers, was published by a small and independent press, although I'd read that book (it was nice and short) and didn't find that it did anything for me. The history winner, The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy, sounds educational, but the Cold War ranks right up there with World War II and the Civil War as a subject I can never summon much interest in.

Anybody else read any of these winners? Have different thoughts about them? Oh, and this morning I have a question by email from my sister (she just asked me, but I figured, why not harness the power of technology for better answers), asking if I am familiar with and/or have an opinion about Joyce Carol Oates. I don't have an opinion, as it happens. Does anyone? The only book of hers I've read is Zombie, which was a decidedly icky horror novel, but I don't know that it's representative of her usual writing. If one was going to read a couple of Oates books, where should one start?

This man loves biographies.

The other day I was charmed when I visited RickLibrarian's blog site* and found that he had devoted an entire post to the subject of picture sections in biographies. I was enthralled because pictures are sometimes my favorite parts of biographies; no matter what, I'll always flip to the picture section and read all of the captions carefully before reading the book.

Rick is a librarian and the author of the fabulous nonfiction readers' guide Real Lives Revealed: A Guide to Reading Interests in Biography, and he has posted many times before about various topics in biography. I love his attention to the detail and nuances of biographical writing; this is the sort of in-depth studies librarians should be doing of all types of nonfiction, although I know that no one has the time anymore for that sort of thing. (And if you work in a library, you're mainly just too busy trying to keep the printers unjammed, unsavory characters from following children into bathrooms, and explaining to patrons why you are not, in fact, really qualified to do their taxes for them for free.)

Have a good weekend, all, and happy spring.

*I was further charmed this morning when I visited his site and found a positive review for Nancy Pearl's and my new reference volume Now Read This III. Thanks, Rick!

Tuesday housekeeping.

Yes, yes, I know, eventually I should talk about some nonfiction books. I have some all read that are sitting here staring me in the face, but I am just not motivated. So I will take care of some reading housekeeping instead.

In today's news, a new issue of the Reader's Advisor News, published by Libraries Unlimited and sponsored by the Reader's Advisor Online, is available, and it's a particularly good one this time around. There's a great article for librarians about the value of floating collections, and a very practical article on creating a mobile web site for your library. Do consider checking it out; it's an email newsletter that you can also subscribe to (should you so choose).

In other news, Stacy Horn's latest book Unbelievable: Investigations Into Ghosts, Poltergeists, Telepathy, and Other Unseen Phenomena from the Duke Parapsychology Lab, is now out in paperback. Stacy Horn, you'll remember, is the author who so generously shared a lot of insight about the nonfiction book writing process with us (and whose book The Restless Sleep we read for the last Menage). Even if a book about the history of parapsychological research and the search for proof of life after death isn't your cuppa, do consider suggesting that your local library purchase a copy so others can enjoy it. Horn is everything a nonfiction author should be: independent, able to perform stringent research, the writer of thoughtful prose and complete endnotes, and whose books are often indexed. Unlike some nonfiction writers, like, say, Thomas Friedman (who I can't imagine has any use for his ill-gotten buckets of money other than stuffing hundreds into the mattresses in the many bedrooms of his 11,000-square foot home), Horn could actually use a few sales so she can keep writing new books.

I was also going to link to a hilarious interview between Jacquelyn Mitchard and Lorrie Moore, two of my least favorite women writers*, in this month's edition of the UW-Madison alumni magazine On Wisconsin, but the good old alumni association doesn't have their new issue online yet, so I can't. Sorry about that; I'll link someday when it's available. What's particularly funny is that most of Mitchard's questions are longer than Moore's answers. Gotta love an interviewer in love with the sound of her own voice. This is my favorite exchange:

 "Q: Which brings me to another question. If we write in the Common Era, as it were, are fiction writers obliged to give a nod to 9/11, as Bugs Bunny constantly referred back to World War II? (I regret the unfortunate example, but Warner Brothers cartoons were significant in my cultural anthropology.)"

A: Hmmm..."

Scintillating, ladies. And, Jacquelyn Mitchard? Stop using phrases like "cultural anthropology."

*Well, I didn't really mind Moore until I read A Gate at the Stairs, which I'm going to go out on a limb and call the most overrated novel of 2009.

Big exciting book news!

Okay, well, not all that big or exciting. But I am excited! As of today, my new reader's guide, Now Read This III: A Guide to Mainstream Fiction (co-authored with Nancy Pearl), is finally available! It can be had through either Libraries Unlimited (the publisher), or Amazon. I fully realize it's a big chunk of change for any individual to spend, but I would be honored if you would suggest that your local library purchase a copy for their collection. It's been a long time in the making and I'm pretty proud of it, and I hope that it is useful to readers' advisors and readers.

Last week I got asked by some librarians with senses of humor* if I was going to have a big book release party, but the answer to that one is, I've already had it. It consisted of way too many milano cookies and a beer (a strange combination, but it worked for me) when I sent off the manuscript. We each celebrate in our own ways!

If you're wondering what the book looks like inside, I can give you a sampler. Pearl and I considered fiction titles (mainstream, or literary, ones; other guides take care of the genres) from the past 5-10 years and organized them according to what readers might find most appealing about them: their setting, their characters, their story, or the language and writing style of the author. Then we annotated each title and provided "related reads" for it. A sample entry looks like this:

Cleave, Chris.
Little Bee. Simon & Schuster, 2009. 271 pages. ISBN 9781416589631.
Although the jacket copy implores those who have read this novel not to tell their friends the story (because “the magic is in how the story unfolds”), what can be divulged is that it is the story of two women, from different parts of the globe, whose lives collide once, violently, on a beach in Africa, and then come together a second time as a result of that first meeting. The narrative follows the exploits of Little Bee, a young woman from Nigeria, who makes her way to Great Britain, and through no little amount of ingenuity, ends up on the doorstep of Sarah O’Rourke (and her family, although Sarah’s husband Andrew commits suicide—seemingly just days before Little Bee’s arrival).

Subjects: Africa; Book Groups; British Authors; Family Relationships; First Person; Great Britain; Immigrants and Immigration; Marriage; Men Writing as Women; Multicultural; Multiple Viewpoints; Parenting; Quick Reads
Now Try: Cleave has written another novel centering on current political events, Incendiary. Critics have compared this novel to Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner (primarily for its moving characters and plot, which make it a solid book club choice); other novels about moral choices and unforeseeable events might also be offered to these readers, including William Styron’s classic Sophie’s Choice and Anne Tyler’s somewhat lighter but still thoughtful Saint Maybe. Abraham Verghese’s novel Cutting for Stone also follows a character from one continent to another; another formidable female character can be found in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane. Also of interest might be nonfiction titles from Africa, particularly Ishmael Beah’s memoir of his time as a child soldier, A Long Way Gone, or Helene Cooper’s The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood, about her youth in Liberia and how she had to flee the country during its civil war (leaving behind an adopted sister).

The book will also be available for your inspection at the Libraries Unlimited/ABC-CLIO boothat the upcoming Public Library Association conference, held at the end of March, in Portland, Oregon (and I think they usually offer purchase deals there too). Last but not least, Nancy Pearl will be doing a book signing for the book on Thursday, March 25, from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m.!

*My very favorite kind of librarians.