Welcome to Check Your Shelf! This is your guide to all things book talk worth knowing to help librarians like you up your game when it comes to doing your job (& rocking it).
Check Your Shelf is sponsored by Let’s Go Swimming on Doomsday by Natalie C. Anderson.
Forced to become a child soldier, a sixteen-year-old Somali refugee must confront his painful past in this haunting, thrilling tale of loss and redemption for fans of A Long Way Gone and What is the What.
Libraries & Librarians
- Penguin Random House announces a new eBook lending model for libraries.
- From the Omaha Public Library: Banned Books Week reminds us that the freedom to read is still worth celebrating.
- ALA is seeking feedback on its updated meeting room policy.
- September is National Deaf Awareness Month, and the Association of Specialized, Government, and Cooperative Library Agencies has put together some resources to help create a more welcoming and accessible library environment.
- ALA announced they will be conducting a study to explore public library services for new Americans.
- Neil Gaiman & Chris Riddell: A picture essay on Why We Need Libraries.
- New York Times: To restore civil society, start with the library.
- NPR’s newest podcast, The Keepers, focuses on stories of “activist archivists, rogue librarians, curators, collectors, and historians.”
- Libraries are using mobile kitchens to teach food literacy. This is so cool!
- Should libraries take a stand on 3D printed guns? (Yes.)
- Tips to help you find that book “that has a blue cover and a picture of a dog on it.”
- Libraries as community spaces: An academic and a personal perspective.
Book Adaptations in the News
- The Devil All the Time is being turned into a movie by Donald Ray Pollock starring Chris Evans and Mia Wasikowsa.
- Here’s the first clip from The Hate U Give. And speaking of The Hate U Give, the release date has been bumped up to October 5th!
- Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy is going to be a movie and yes, Dolly Parton is involved!
- Nancy Drew is getting a TV adaptation on the CW.
- Zachary Quinto and Ashleigh Cummings have been cast in the adaptation of NOS4A2 as Charlie Manx and Vic McQueen, respectively. TBH, I never would have pictured Zachary Quinto as Charlie Manx, but oddly enough, it works.
- Oprah is turning Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle into a movie.
- Maggie Gyllenhaal is set to write and direct the adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s novel The Lost Daughter.
Books in the News
- Stormy Daniels is releasing a tell-all memoir on October 2nd of this year called Full Disclosure. Order copies, prepare for holds.
- Daniel Jose Older is working on the third book in the Shadowshaper series!
- Gillian Flynn is working on a new book! What do we know about it?? Absolutely nothing!
- We’re getting a graphic novel adaptation of Jason Reynold’s award-winning YA novel Long Way Down.
- Lauren Beukes has a new novel coming out!! (If you haven’t read The Shining Girls or Broken Monsters yet, they are genre-bending works of trippy horror and suspense, and they’re ah-may-zing).
- Rainbow Rowell is publishing her first graphic novel, Pumpkinheads. Check out the cover here!
By the Numbers
- James Patterson donates $2 million to classroom libraries!
- Fear by Bob Woodward has sold over 750,000 copies in a single day – the first book to do that since Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee.
- Americans are reading more poetry, less fiction.
Award News
- All the juicy behind-the-scenes drama with Man Booker Prize judging.
- All of the longlists for the National Book Award categories have been released!
- Anthony Bourdain posthumously awarded 6 Emmys, including Best Nonfiction Writing.
- The 2018 Anthony Award winners & nominees.
- Haruki Murakami withdraws from consideration from the Alternate Nobel Prize for Literature.
All Things Comics
- First images from the Captain Marvel movie!
- What to know about Captain Marvel before the movie comes out.
- Every superhero movie coming out in 2019. (Which also means you have a year’s worth of displays now!)
Audiophilia
- Alyssa Cole is writing a SFF romance Audible Original novella!
- Royal National Institute of Blind People offers free access to Penguin Random House audiobooks.
- 50 must-read nonfiction audiobooks.
- 10 audiobooks in translation.
Book Lists, Book Lists, Book Lists
- 8 fantasy books like A Game of Thrones.
- 50 must-read m/m romance novels.
- YA author Nova Ren Suma recommends her favorite YA ghost stories.
- YA books about school shootings.
- 23 fantasy series for adults.
- 50 must-read books set in space.
- 11 mysteries that don’t start with a dead girl.
- 24 horror movies based on true stories, and the books they were based on.
- 8 memoirs from former Obama staffers.
- 5 reads for Hispanic Heritage Month.
- 10 engaging novels about World War II.
Bookish Curiosities & Miscellaneous
First the serious pieces:
- A really interesting piece on domestic violence in romance novels, courtesy of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.
- Target has been redacting key words in certain book descriptions published on its website, including “transgender” and “queer.”
- The NYT writes about how kidlit authors are taking a political stand.
- Using YA novels to make sense of #MeToo.
- A must-read article about the attitudes towards black girls who like to read.
- The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections is planning to ban free book donations due to concerns about drug trafficking. Prisoners instead are being pushed to buy into an expensive eBook system.
And now for some lighter news!
- Check out this ah-may-zing Slytherin wedding!
- A romance novelist has been arrested for allegedly murdering her husband. But here’s the kicker: She had previously published an online essay called “How to Murder Your Husband.”
- A UK bookseller decided to take an early retirement and raffled off his store to a lucky customer for £20.
- In other bookseller news, the Ripped Bodice Book Store has signed a deal with Sony TV to develop their own romance projects based on their close relationships with romance readers and authors!
- Famous authors and their cats. On a related note, I once held a cassette case that belonged to Ray Bradbury, which was used to store fur from one of his deceased cats as a memento. I love to tell that story at parties…
- Which banned book should you read next?
- Luxury Harry Potter gifts for adults. My bank account hates me right now.
- Break out of your reading comfort zone!
Level Up (Library Reads)
Do you take part in LibraryReads, the monthly list of best books selected by librarians only? Whether or not you read and nominate titles, we’ll end every newsletter with a few upcoming titles worth reading and sharing (and nominating for LibraryReads, if you so choose!).
We’ve made it easy for you to find eligible diverse titles to nominate. Kelly Jensen created a database of upcoming diverse books that anyone can edit, and Nora Rawlins of Early Word is doing the same, as well as including information about series, vendors, and publisher buzz.
And to make it even easier, I’ve picked a few specific titles that are being released in January 2019. Links direct you to Edelweiss, where you can request a digital advance copy, and nominations are due by November 20th.
- The Far Field – Madhuri Vijay. (January 15, 2019). “An elegant, epic debut nove from an exciting new talent and Pushcart Prize-winner that follows one young woman’s search for a lost figure from her childhood, a journey that takes her from Southern India to Kashmir and to the brink of a devastating political and personal reckoning.”
- The Kingdom of Copper – S.A. Chakraborty (January 22, 2019). “S. A. Chakraborty continues the sweeping adventure begun in The City of Brass, conjuring a world where djinn summon flames with the snap of a finger and waters run deep with old magic; where blood can be dangerous as any spell, and a clever con artist from Cairo will alter the fate of a kingdom.”
- The World According to Fannie Davis – Bridgett M. Davis (January 29, 2019). “Set against the dramatic backdrop of 1960s and 70s Detroit, novelist Bridgett M. Davis’s stirring memoir tells how her ingenious mother used Detroit’s illegal lottery to support her family.”
Thanks for hanging out and we’ll see you again in two weeks!
–Katie McLain, @kt_librarylady on Twitter. Currently reading The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager.