Citizen Reader

Labor Day snuck up on me this year, which is ridiculous, considering that a. Labor Day was at late as it could possibly be this year, and b. Labor Day is my favorite holiday of the year.*

In past years I have been doing some lists of great books about work. This year I thought I'd look over my last year of reading (roughly) and see if any of the books I read had anything to do with work, jobs, labor, etc. Here's what I came up with. Links go to my posts about the books, when available. Must-reads are in bold.

NONFICTION

Catherine Bailey's Black Diamonds: The Downfall of an Aristocratic Dynasty and the Fifty Years that Changed England. About coal mines, the miners, but mostly the people who once got rich off those coal mines.

Michael Gibney's Sous Chef: 24 Hours on the Line

Megan Hustad's More than Conquerors: A Memoir of Lost Arguments Hustad's parents were Christian missionaries.

Sandeep Jauhar's Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician.

Michael Lewis's Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt. Book about finance and flash trading by one of my favorite authors of all time.

Judy Melinek's Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner

Mimi Pond's Over Easy. Graphic novel; waitress/artist memoir.

Ronald Rice's My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read, and Shop

Brigid Schulte's Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time

Gina Sheridan's I Work at a Public Library

Victoria Sweet's God's Hotel. Doctor's memoir.

Lizz Winstead's Lizz Free or Die. Winstead is a comedian and one of the original creators of The Daily Show.

The following titles are about homemaking and parenthood, both of which certainly strike me as work.

Shannon Hayes's Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture

Wednesday Martin's Primates of Park Avenue

Jennifer Senior's All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood

FICTION

Susan Gloss's Vintage. Women's fiction about a woman who owns a vintage clothing shop.

Stuart Rojstaczer's The Mathematician's Shiva. About math, and math professors and theorists. So great. One of my favorite novels of the year.

Julie Schumacher's Dear Committee Members. About academics, written entirely in the form of recommendation letters. A great book; a million times better than I'm making it sound.

Kathryn Stockett's The Help. Oh my God, what a terrible book. Set in the American South during the 1960s; about African American women who worked as "the help" in the homes of white women. I read it when I was reading about civil rights. I was going to say something (at length) about how I thought reading this book actually made me dumber, but I won't. Oops. Just did.

Daphne Uviller's Super in the City. Chick lit set in New York City; about a woman who becomes the super of an apartment building her parents own.

Michelle Wildgen's Bread and Butter. A story of brothers, set in the restaurants they own.

Gabrielle Zevin's The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. I was not a fan.

TERRIBLE MYSTERIES. REALLY, THEY WERE JUST AWFUL.

Cleo Coyle's On What Grounds. Mystery set in a coffee shop.

Chrystal Fiedler's Scent to Kill: A Natural Remedies Mystery. A crime-solving aromatherapist. (Really.) Honestly, I got these two titles just because I love reading about jobs, so I'm always suckered into these mystery series that focus on specific jobs, and they always turn out to be horrible.

HAPPY LABOR DAY!

*No religious ceremonies, no celebration of war, no enforced family gatherings, heralds fall (the best season of the year). The perfect holiday.

Visual Miscellaneum: The Bestselling Classic, Revised and Updated: A Colorful Guide to the World's Most Consequential Trivia
by David McCandless

I very much enjoyed David McCandless's illustrated book The Visual Miscellaneum: A Colorful Guide to the World's Most Consequential Trivia. This surprised me a bit, as I am almost completely an UN-visual person. Looking at credit card reading machines, I can almost never figure out the correct way to run my card just be looking at the little icon. I never know what most graphic signs mean, and I'm completely stymied by pictures-only, no-text instruction sheets.

But this book is fun. It's a book of a variety of charts, pictures, and graphic illustrations of all sorts of trivia: Colors and Culture; Who Actually Runs the World; a Rock Genre-ology; Rising Sea Levels; Hangover Cures from Around the World; and so on. Perhaps my favorite chart was a list of the wives of dictators, listing their occupations, years of marriage, children, political power rating, obsessions, rumors, and reasons for death.

So yesterday in the comments someone said that she gave some Jen Lancaster memoirs to someone going through chemotherapy, and that person really enjoyed them. Which is an excellent thing.

But it got me thinking. Rather than thinking of a list of books you would take with you to a desert island, here's the challenge for today: What book/s would you send with someone going in for some worrying health procedures? Here's the best I can do, on short notice**:

1. (If they are a real reader) 84, Charing Cross Road, by Helene Hanff. Of course.

2. Drew Magary's futuristic novel The Postmortal. Really. The story moved along tickety-boo and it gave you some bigger issues to think about.

3. Jim Gaffigan's Food: A Love Affair. Really, super funny. Also very low on bad language if you're concerned about that sort of thing.

4. Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods. Very transporting, and really quite funny, if I remember correctly.

5. Oh my God, the entire Poldark saga, if the person had any tolerance for historical fiction.

6. Michael Lewis's The Blind Side, for sports readers.

7. CalvinTrillin's novel Tepper Isn't Going Out, which I re-read regularly because I just find it so sweet.

I know I'm missing a ton. So what would you send along with a friend to the hospital?

*I almost titled this "with a friend to read, when they're not wearing underwear." Because doctors always seem to be telling me worrisome things when I'm not wearing underwear, and it makes me nuts. But I didn't want to get all sorts of weird search hits from a headline like that.

**And from experience. I cannot go to the doctor without taking along engrossing reading material. The last time I went my pulse rate was so high (from nerves) that they thought I was going to have a heart attack. They actually had to check my record, where another doctor had noted that my pulse rate at appointments is always ridiculous, so no worries.

You didn't think I'd wrap up my year in reading, 2014, by only talking about fiction titles? I didn't think so.

So, today: Favorite Nonfiction of 2014! (Order reflects reading order, not order of preference; I'm just moving from top to bottom, a.k.a. January to December, in my handy-dandy Excel spreadsheet.) Links are to my reviews of the books, if I did them.

1. Amanda Ripley, The Smartest Kids in the World. A 2013 title, not a 2014 one, but I'm listing it here because I found the writing good and the subject thought-provoking.

2.Jennifer Senior, All Joy and No Fun. This book yielded the research gem that "researchers found that a father in a room by himself was the 'person-space configuration observed most frequently'" in family homes during a specific study. The whole book was interesting, about the modern experience of parenting, but that particular gem was my real takeaway.

3. Michael Lewis, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt. Another fast and interesting read from Lewis. My favorite bit was how one guy mined people's work experiences on LinkedIn to find things they weren't really supposed to be talking about.

4. Sandeep Jauhar, Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician. I don't know how representative of all doctors and their practices this one is (Jauhar is a doctor in Manhattan, and faces living expenses problems that doctors in other areas may not be as squeezed by) but I found this one totally forthright and fascinating. I believe he was telling the truth because, frankly, he sounded a bit like a dick, which is what I am used to my doctors sounding like. A disheartening look at medicine as not only business first, but business only.

5. Gina Sheridan, I Work at a Public Library. Nothing real earth shattering here, just a quick and enjoyable memoir about working at a public library, rich with "interesting" patron stories and many other stories about the job that rang true. 

And huh, that's it. You know? I didn't have a great year for nonfiction, although I still did read quite a bit of it. I did read Roz Chast's graphic nonfiction novel Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant, which showed up on a lot of other "best of" lists, but although I found it interesting, I couldn't really put it on my "best" list. Perhaps because the brutal honesties of caring for elderly parents are still in my future and I'm worried I won't be up to the challenge.

And, to close: a few honorable mentions, for very good nonfiction I read in 2014, that was not published in 2014. Those titles were:

Earle Labor's Jack London: An American Life; Jesmyn Ward's Men We Reaped: A Memoir; Rose George's Ninety Percent of Everything; Sandra Newman's The Western Lit Survival Kit; Helaine Olen's Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry.

I'm never all that interested in end-of-the-year "best book" lists, but I'll admit that I'm a sucker for autumn book lists, and all they herald. Not only new exciting book releases, but crisper weather! Falling leaves! Pumpkin spice lattes! All things I love.

So today you may want to consider a couple of fall book lists I came across, and they're both from USA today:

Booksellers pick potential hits; and 30 Cool Books for Fall.

Anything there you want to read? The first list didn't do anything for me*; I am particularly uninterested in George W. Bush's biography of his dad. A political biography, written by a barely literate former politician? No thank you. On the other hand, I might consider a book off the second list--a biography of Bill Cosby (Cosby: His Life and Times), who I have always thought is a super interesting person. And who can pass up a mystery written in the style of Agatha Christie (Sophie Hannah's The Monogram Murders)?

*Actually, both lists were dull, in my opinion, but it never hurts to keep up with what everyone else considers "the hits" or "the cool books." If Jodi Picoult is cool, though, I'm glad to be uncool.

I love Labor Day. Love it, love it, love it. Summer's on the way out,* it's a day off work,** there's no family gatherings, and we're not celebrating war.

I also love it because I love reading about the subject of work. I love reading about work about a million times more than I enjoy working, but that's another story for another day. I was looking back through old blog posts and found a list I made of work-related readings; I've pasted that at the bottom of this post. But I thought today I'd add a few newer titles to the list (links in this top list go to my reviews of the titles):

1. Michael Lewis's Flash Boys, about high frequency trading, which contains great insights into modern trading and the role of computer programmers in that world.

2. Victoria Sweet's God's Hotel, about being a doctor in San Francisco's Laguna Honda hospital.

3. Rose George's Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry that Puts Clothes On Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate. That title is self-explanatory, but I will say this: Rose George is fantastic, and you should be reading her.

4.Ray Huling's Harvesting the Bay: Fathers, Sons and the Last of the Wild Shellfishermen. Another self-explanatory title, and much more interesting than it sounds.

5. Hidden America: From Coal Miners to Cowboys, an Extraordinary Exploration of the Unseen People Who Make This Country Work, by Jeanne Marie Laskas. A great, page-turning nonfiction read.

6. Gig: Americans Talk about Their Jobs, edited by John Bowe. An oral history about work. And oh, I LOVE John Bowe. See my note about "Nobodies," below.

7. Working in the Shadows: A Year of Doing the Jobs (Most) Americans Won't Do, by Gabriel Thompson. Thompson worked (among other jobs) as a migrant agricultural worker and in a butchering plant. I promise you you'll never look at chicken the same way.

And here's the 2009 list:

1. Gil Reavill's Aftermath, Inc., in which the author joined a group of workers who clean up death scenes and accidents (particularly those which involve any kind of biohazard). Not for the faint of heart, but a good rollicking read nonetheless.

2. Scott Rosenberg's Dreaming in Code. Hands down one of the most interesting and illuminating books I've ever read about computer programming. I still don't understand it but I have a better understanding of what I don't understand.

3. Ted Conover's Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing. Good lord, I hope I'm never convicted of anything. I couldn't handle being a prison guard, much less being IN prison.

4. William Langewiesche, The Outlaw Sea. It is William Langewiesche, writing about modern-day pirates. Ask no questions, just read.

5. Stacy Horn's The Restless Sleep; discussed at length earlier this week but an unbelievable look at those who work around murder victims, particularly cold case investigators.

6. John McPhee's Uncommon Carriers, in which he makes trucking and the profession of trucking fascinating.

7. John Bowe's Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy. Well, it's about work, unfortunately the work isn't really voluntary. I quoted this one to my poor mother again just the other day: I continue to be floored by Bowe's brilliant, and brilliantly simple assertion that (I'm paraphrasing, but this is fairly close) "the system isn't broken--the system is working exactly the way the system was set up to work." Holy Christ. Think on that one for a few minutes.

and

8. The Working Stiff's Manifesto, by Iain Levison. I don't agree with this author's rather casual attitude toward stealing from one's employer (although I'm no innocent--I still have and use the apron I was provided with as a Country Kitchen waitress--and I'm not giving it back!), but it's still a great book.

Happy Labor Day, all. Now go take a load off.

*Whenever the temperature gets above 60 degrees I get testy. Summer is not my season.

**Well, not for me currently, as a freelance schlub, but I have fond memories of gainful M-F employment and legal holidays.

There's a preview list over at Flavorwire (one of my favorite websites of all time, although it can be a massive time suck) of "25 Must-read Books for the Fall." And, heavens to betsy, there's a lot of nonfiction on it!*

So, I just went to peruse it, and was thinking, yeah, okay, some of those books might be good...and then I saw an essay collection by Meghan Daum. I am BEYOND excited. Literally, her book of essays titled My Misspent Youth is on my bedside table right now; I got it back from the library because I'm trying to learn how to write essays and I think she is really, really good at it. YAY!

And actually, that is a pretty interesting list of coming nonfiction titles. Do check it out. And join me in looking forward to autumn! This has actually been a very nice summer, but I start to feel more human when the temperature gets back down to 60 degrees or so.

*Take note, LibraryReads, you not-very-interesting largely nonfictionless monthly book list, you.

I have a complicated relationship with book lists.

On the one hand, who doesn't enjoy a good list of books? (Or should I say a list of good books?) As we continue to lose bricks-and-mortar bookstores*, book lists, which sometimes can make the task of finding and choosing interesting reading easier, will become more important as a way to narrow our reading choices.

So why am I usually more annoyed with book lists than not?

Well, for one thing, I hate book lists that are hazy in purpose. Two cases of such lazy listing are lists of "sure bet" books (books which everyone is sure to like, supposedly) and "nonfiction that reads like fiction." The former annoys me because I firmly believe that every book out there has its hater (which is usually me; the sort of innocuous, blandly positive, pollyanna-ish titles that inevitably show up on such lists are books that I usually hate) and the latter bugs me because it seems to assume that readers will only enjoy nonfiction if it provides the same reading experience as does fiction.

I know. I spend WAY too much time thinking about books and book lists. I am nerdy. We know this. Moving along.

So the latest book list to really chap my hide is the "LibraryReads" list. This new list has been widely touted in library circles--no surprise, as it is compiled by librarians. It's meant to give librarians a chance to become book "tastemakers," and to drive word-of-mouth recommendations for new books. (You can read more about the list, and how it's created, at the LibraryReads website.) So what is my problem?

Well, each month for the last three months, the list has included only one nonfiction title.** And that is not really surprising; the list (according to the site's FAQ) is compiled in a straightforward manner, with librarians nominating their favorite new books and the ten books getting the most nominations being included. And, I may be wrong about this, but I think librarians are known for preferring to read fiction over nonfiction, so it's actually a bit surprising that ANY nonfiction is represented.

And in the end, that's what I find really disappointing about these lists. You know that image that people have of librarians, that they are all middle-aged ladies with a shushing complex and knitting habits who love nothing more than a soothing cup of tea and a nice gentle read? Well, for the most part, these lists look a lot like they were chosen by readers who fit that stereotype. I'm sure they're very nice readers, and even better librarians, but they just haven't come up with anything very noteworthy in the way of book lists.

*The rise of ebooks will make book lists more important too. Browsing actual physical collections of books can be the easiest way to find something to read, but that doesn't really work when searching for ebooks.

 **And, frankly? The fiction recommendations on the list haven't been setting me on fire either.

I have always really enjoyed the Winter Olympics.

Don't ask me why. Perhaps because winter is my second-favorite season, after fall. Perhaps because I really do like watching figure skating. I was particularly excited about the Olympics this year, because CRjr really enjoyed watching a lot of the events in the Summer Olympics, which came along when he was 2 (he was particularly into the swimming races, for whatever reason), and I thought he might enjoy the Winter Olympics too. But, correct me if I'm wrong, it seems like all they're showing this year is snowboarding and this new "slopestyle" skiing and snowboarding stuff. And if there's anything more boring to watch than slopestyle, I challenge you to find it.*

The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games
by Tony Perrottet

So that got me thinking about reading the Olympics. The other day I saw this list, suggesting fiction titles related to the Olympics. I also remembered reading a book called The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games, by Tony Perrotet. This is what I had to say about that book in my reference guide to nonfiction, The Real Story:

 "Perrottet describes the historical details of the original Greek Olympic games in muscular and fast-moving prose**, using such historical documents as a Handbook for a Sports Coach, a third century training manual, and numerous illustrations from drinking vessels and other primary sources to flesh out his account of the events at the original games, training regimes, customs, and spectator involvement.  The details can be quite earthy (such as his description of the thriving prostitution business that grew up around the festivities) and the author’s skill in weaving them into a comprehensive narrative is admirable."

If I remember correctly, I really enjoyed the book. You might too, even if you're bored by the real thing this year. Perhaps I'll re-read it until NBC decides to put a few different events on the air during prime time.

*I was up feeding CR3 at 3 a.m. this morning and actually got to see some luge. It was a real treat.

**Yeah, yeah, "muscular and fast-moving prose," I got carried away a little bit writing some of the annotations for that book. I was a lot younger when I wrote it!

Well, all I can say about this winter is, at least it's February now. It has to end sometime, right?

In the meantime, here's a couple of February reading lists for you: one from Flavorwire, and one from Amazon.

Anything on either list float your boat? Only two nonfiction titles on that Flavorwire list (and lots of story collections, if you like that sort of thing), but one looks kind of interesting. And actually, that list from Amazon's a really interesting one--I want all of those nonfiction titles AND the Robert Harris novel. Goodness. I'm going to need another month of winter to get through some reading, looks like.

I have never been a huge fan of the American Library Association.

Each year this opinion is solidified when I check out their lists of Notable Books. It's always one of the least interesting lists I come across, and this year is no exception. Here are the books they suggest:

FICTION

My blogging software allows me to see what people are searching for when they come to this site, and I looked at it yesterday just out of curiosity. I had to laugh--evidently people were not huge fans of Tina Fey's hosting of the Golden Globe awards? The search phrase "Tina Fey is not funny" was the top search for this site after the awards show aired.

In other nonfiction and book news, it's new book season! If you want to see some of the new and big titles coming out in 2014, head on over to the Reader's Advisor Online and check out our compilation of "2014 Coming Attractions."

Normally I am beyond not excited by the end-of-year best lists. Partially this is because I get my books from the library, and the waiting lists for new books tend to be long (meaning I rarely get books in the year they were published, particularly in the latter half of the year). But primarily it is because I resent reading on anyone else's schedule, and having to read books just because they're new (unless they're by authors I really love) definitely feels like reading on someone else's schedule.* I am actually a very poor "social reader"--meaning I'm not particularly interested in chatting over the latest books with others who have read them. All of this contributes to me really not caring a whole lot about which books are called each year's "best."

But I still like to look over these lists, which is a good thing, because they're tough to avoid right now. One of my favorite lists is always the New York Times 100 Notable Books; usually I peruse it just to see how few books I've read from it. This year I have another pathetic total: One of the fiction titles (The Tenth of December, by George Saunders--although I am currently waiting for library copies of two other titles on the list), and two from the nonfiction list (George Packer's The Unwinding, and Sheri Fink's Five Days at Memorial). In looking over the list just now I put a few titles on hold at the library, but I can honestly say I'm just not interested in most of these books--I won't be reading Peter Baker's Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, for instance, because, frankly, who could stand reliving the Bush regime?

So are there lists out there that I enjoy? Well, yes. I'm enough of an Anglophile to enjoy The Telegraph's List of 100 Best Books for Christmas--I simply MUST have the biography of Penelope Fitzgerald by Hermione Lee. I also typically enjoy the fiction and nonfiction bests lists at the Christian Science Monitor--but that may be just because I LOVE the CSM. Seriously. Are you reading the online version? There's always something interesting there, not just in the news department but also on such topics as money matters and parenting. They even have recipes!

But no, I'm not finding a lot of "best of" lists that light my fire. Are you?

*Mr. CR calls this sort of thing me being "difficult."

Jack London: An American Life
by Earle Labor

After I posted my list for book gift-giving ideas on Monday, I realized I forgot a couple of titles! They are:

Jack London: An American Life by Earle Labor. I'm only about a quarter of the way through this one, but it's been a spanking read so far. London lived a LOT for someone who only lived forty years. This would make a great book for any fan of London's writing, or anyone with an interest in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century American history.

And for those novel readers out there, consider Lexicon by Max Barry. It's a crying shame, I think, that I haven't seen this one showing up on any "best of the year lists. It's a great book, thought-provoking, quickly paced, and not too long. And it would be particularly great for any readers who enjoy dystopian fiction (know any fans of The Hunger Games who are looking for a similar read?), as well as for readers who love thinking about issues of language and culture.

And, I should also mention, Chelsea Green Publishing, a great indie publisher of nonfiction on sustainability issues and DIY topics, is also having a 35% off sale. Check it out!

It's that time of year again: everyone's putting out their Best Books of 2013 lists. Interested to see what lists are available? Check out the Best Books 2013 sidebar at the Reader's Advisor Online, or view the exhaustive compilation of Bests lists at Largehearted Boy.

I'll be offering a few takes on the lists this week (hopefully, if everyone here stays healthy--fingers crossed!), but thought I'd kick things off with a gift-giving guide for the season, highlighting some of my faves from the year that I feel are severely underrepresented on other lists I've seen so far. I'll list the book title (which will link directly to Powell's, from where, full disclosure, I would get a small percentage if you purchase it; likewise, if you use the Amazon link or graphic at the side, I get a small percentage of anything you order there as well), give a small review, and link to my original review of the title. Let's have at it!

Imperfect Harmony: Finding Happiness Singing with Others, by Stacy Horn. Horn describes her experiences singing in a community choir in New York City, and ties her experiences (and the importance of choral singing to individuals who participate in it) to the choir's history and the positive effects of being part of a singing collective. She's a fantastic nonfiction author who takes her dedication to research and fact-checking seriously, and she's also a fabulous and personable prose writer. Readers who are very into music or who enjoy offbeat history subjects might get a kick out of this one.

Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate, by Rose George. British investigative writer George explores the shipping industry, which is largely invisible to most people, and which employs ever fewer workers (and pays them less and works them harder), even though the vast majority of things we eat and use in our daily lives comes to us on container ships. I'm not even done reading this one yet and I'm finding it fascinating. Another solid gift-giving choice from this author is The Big Necessity. Sure, it's about poop. What are the holidays good for if you can't give your nearest and dearest a totally engrossing book about poop? I ask you. Anyone you know with a lot of curiosity about the world would enjoy these books; they also make good read-alikes for fans of such authors as Mary Roach and Malcolm Gladwell.

Someone Could Get Hurt: A Memoir of Twenty-First-Century Parenthood, or The Postmortal, by Drew Magary. Two totally different books: one a memoir on parenting (complete with lots of swear words, which parenting does seem to bring out in some of us) and one a futuristic novel about somebody discovering the cure for aging. Both were a lot of fun to read, and might make great presents for hard-to-shop-for male readers as well, particularly if said readers have a couple of kids.

The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, by George Packer. This one actually did make it on a lot of "Best of..." lists, with good reason. Packer spoke with a variety of people in different socioeconomic classes to provide an unsettling picture of current American culture and lifestyles. Some of his most illuminating interviews were with very well-off people who still, at the end of the day, felt unsettled by their lives and work. This book might appeal to any political or current affairs junkie on your list.

Detroit: An American Autopsy, by Charlie LeDuff. LeDuff, a Detroit native, returns to his hometown to document its continued collapse. Unsettling but highly educational, and LeDuff's the perfect unintimidated narrator (who's still smart enough to know he's in deep shit in various locales and situations across the city).

Last but not least, we have the "books on books" that would be terrific gifts for any of the hardcore book lovers on your list. These are Joe Queenan's One for the Books; Nick Hornby's More Baths Less Talking: Notes from the Reading Life of a Celebrated Author Locked in Battle with Football, Family, and Time Itself, and Read This!: Handpicked Favorites from America's Indie Bookstores. All are fantastic reads (even if they were all from 2012, not 2013), and any real reader worth their salt will finish each of them with a much longer TBR list. And that's what all readers really want--more great books. Oh, and perhaps more time to read them. That's not too much to ask, is it?

Happy reading and gift-giving all, not only during this season but all throughout 2014.

If you're looking for a list of new spring nonfiction titles to consider, you might do worse than the "15 Promising Nonfiction Books for Spring" one they have posted over at the Christian Science Monitor.* I hate the way you have to click through the list page by page, incidentally (come on, CSM, you can't add a "view on one page" button?), but at least there's only fifteen titles to click through.

It's a bit heavy on the serious history titles for my taste, but there's more than a few noteworthy items there. In particular I'd like to draw your attention to George Packer's The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America. Packer's the author of another fabulous book, The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq, that I still remember as being one of the best things I've ever read on Iraq, so I'll definitely be looking into this one.

What do you think? Anything on the list pique your interest?

*Incidentally, I subscribe to the CSM in my Google Reader (for now--fuck you, Google, for taking your Reader service down soon--I hope Google+ fails in a big way even as you try to force everyone onto it), and I always get a lot of interesting headlines and news there, including, weirdly enough, a great assortment of recipes.

This past weekend they held the ALA Midwinter conference in Seattle, and as they typically do at this time, the organization has released their picks for their annual "ALA Notables" (as well as their "Reading List" books, which are notable genre titles).

You can see the entire list over at the Reader's Advisor Online. As per usual (for me, anyway) the list is a combination of books I haven't read (and am not real interested in reading) and books I disliked (I tried to get through Susan Cain's Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking THREE times and failed; Jim Holt's Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story was just beyond me). I'm left wondering what I do like to read, since both their "genre" and their "notable" (read: literary) picks totally bore me. But then, I'll let you in on a little secret: everything the American Library Association does, pretty much, bores me.* The whole organization always smacked of a really long and worthless work meeting to me: lots of commitees, lots of politics and backstabbing, very little of anything concrete or helpful actually getting done.

*Except their Read posters. I'll admit, I'm a sucker for their Read posters. Mainly because I'm shocked that they actually managed to produce something tangible.

Have you seen this list of movies based on books that are opening in 2013?* The entire list pretty much makes me snore,** although I adore Baz Luhrmann (director of Strictly Ballroom and Moulin Rouge) and wouldn't mind seeing his take on The Great Gatsby.

Anything on this list that piques your interest? I must admit I'm not the most highbrow of movie fans; I think the only movie I got to see in the theater last year was the James Bond pic Skyfall, and the only movie I'd really like to see this year is the new Star Trek (particularly because I want to see Benedict Cumberbatch as the villain).

*Thanks to the Reader's Advisor Online for the link.

**Except for the movie Admission, which bugs me. I liked the novel by Jean Hanff Korelitz and I am in love with Paul Rudd. But Tina Fey? TINA FEY? My beautiful Paul Rudd has to act attracted to Tina Fey? I guess we'll see if he's got real acting chops or not.

When I worked in the public library I was frustrated by many things. Mainly, I'll admit, by the rudeness* of the general public, which remains the number-one reason I am still relieved not to be working a public-service desk job right now (although I'm sure I'll have to go back to one sometime, and will just be damn glad if I'm able to get one). But a slightly more esoteric annoyance I had with the system was how librarians are often told (in library school, or in training) that to be good "readers' advisors"--people who help readers find things they might enjoy reading--they must focus solely on what the reader wants. "It's not about you," we librarians are told, "Readers' Advisory is not about pushing your opinions on readers."

Read This!: Handpicked Favorites from America's Indie Bookstores
by Hans Weyandt (edt)

Well, okay. I get it. When you're helping a reader find something to read it is of course vital that you focus on their interests. Likewise, if someone is, say, a Jodi Picoult or Nicholas Sparks reader, it is probably nicest if the librarian doesn't say (although they might be dying to): "So, you like hack authors, huh?"

But at the same time, I think that attitude does everyone a vast misservice. It hurts librarians, who are made to feel they can't speak about any books too enthustiastically--that they cannot "recommend," they must only ever "suggest," and strive never to allow their own opinions a part in the conversation. And I think eventually it hurts readers--who might be looking for, not only some assistance, but also a good book conversation with someone who also loves reading--not someone who is desperately trying not to have any opinions on any books whatsoever during the encounter.

Now, all of that is a very long-winded way to say I loved, absolutely loved, a little book I checked out at the end of last year titled Read This!: Handpicked Favorites from America's Indie Bookstores.** God love independent booksellers. They don't dick around with any "don't bring your own opinions or loves" edicts. This book consists of twenty-five indie bestsellers' lists of their favorite 50 books--each chapter provides some information on the bookstore where the contributor works, the list, some paragraphs about a few of the titles listed more specifically, and a short q-and-a about bookstores and readers with the contributor. And they don't list their 50 best-selling titles, or 50 "sure bets" (a term which always annoys the shit out of me, since I figure my sure bet is bound to be someone else's can't stand)--they list their 50 FAVORITES. It's awesome. Straightforward and very, very pleasing. I read it a chapter at a time last month, always at bedtime, and it was a very satisfying and settling read.

The short interviews with the booksellers were almost my favorite part; and the following is my favorite response to the question "Who is your most trusted source for book recommendations?" (by bookseller Emma Straub): "There are reviewers I trust, and friends I trust, and booksellers I trust. Really, my problem is that I have too many smart people recommending books to me all the time. My backlog is so enormous that often by the time I actually read a book, I've forgotten who told me they loved it or which newspaper gave it a rave. Then it's just up to me and the book to see if we can get along." (p. 16.)

Look at those words: Trust. Recommending. Smart. Love. Now THOSE are the words you should always bring to talking with other readers. So join me in the revolution, librarians: get rid of that wishy-washy word "suggest" once and for all.

*Not to mention general scariness and sometimes flat-out violence.

**If you buy it new the royalties go to the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE).

Many, many thanks to Steve Thomas, who creates the podcast Circulating Ideas ("the librarian interview podcast"). He was nice enough to ask me to participate in his podcast round-up of the best books of 2012 (as well as some sneak previews of 2013 titles), and I had so much fun doing it.

You can find the podcast at his site. In the first installment, he interviewed Liz Burns, Kelly Jensen, Kristi Chadwick, Anna Mickelsen, myself, and Becky Spratford on our "best" picks.

I'll admit I listened to my part first (it starts around the 1 hour 18 minute mark)*, but I went back when I had more time later in the week and listened to the rest and thoroughly enjoyed it. (It was particularly useful for me, as a lot of great fiction and YA titles were discussed.) I particularly enjoyed the fact that many of the lists are presented in a conversational format. And: a second installment is now up as well!

*My apologies: at times I was talking too close to my headset microphone and there's some annoying noises on the hard consonants. I didn't realize that was happening--live and learn!