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 Dream Country by Shannon Gibney.
A story across countries, generations, and time, Dream Country follows one single African-and-American family pursuing an elusive dream of freedom from Liberia to America back. Told in five different sections, Shannon Gibney spins a riveting tale of the nightmarish spiral of death and exile connecting America and Africa, and of how one determined young dreamer tries to break free and gain control of her destiny.
Before we dive in…
If you’re attending ALA in New Orleans next week, hop by the Networking Uncommons Saturday morning, June 23, between 8:30 and 9:00 AM. Kelly will be there and wants your input on how Book Riot can better serve librarians. Bring ideas and suggestions for what we might do to make your work even better and easier.
Libraries & Librarians
- Here’s a wrap-up from Book Expo 2018, if you weren’t able to make it this year.
- Grappling with Dewey’s history of sexual harassment in the era of #MeToo.
- The Library of Congress acquires its largest-ever donation of comic books.
- A librarian’s top 5 tips for creating the ultimate home library. Great suggestions for cramming even more shelves into your home!
- 3 Scotland schools are piloting a staffing model that will use students and volunteers to staff school libraries rather than trained library professionals. Parents, teachers, and librarians are not happy.
- A librarian in Hong Kong was accused of tampering with patron accounts & locating their personal information to expedite the return of books she really wanted to read. Please don’t try this at home.
- These Portuguese libraries are infested with bats, but it’s totally cool because bats eat manuscript-destroying bugs! Also the article refers to bats as “flittermice” and that’s now what I’m going to call bats from now on.
Book Adaptations in the News
- Universal options Catherynne M. Valente’s latest novel, Space Opera, with plans to turn it into a music-themed film.
- Joe Hill’s Locke and Key is coming to Netflix!
- 13 Reasons Why is renewed for its third season.
- Donald Glover playing Willy Wonka? Now there’s an adaptation I’d really want to see!
- HBO orders a Game of Thrones prequel, co-created by George R.R. Martin, who I think is either a) actively looking for reasons not to finish the next book in the GoT series or b) having fun trolling his fans. Either way, more GoT universe coming your way!
- Amazon orders limited series based on Colson Whitehead’s award-winning novel, The Underground Railroad. Barry Jenkins (Moonlight) set to direct all 11 episodes.
- FX adapting Victor LaValle’s creepy novel, The Changeling.
Books in the News
- Rainbow Rowell announces a new book for 2020 on Instagram. Start pre-ordering now! (Just kidding…sort of…)
- In other preordering news, J.K. Rowling says that she’ll write a new children’s book after finishing the screenplay for Fantastic Beasts 3.
- Michael Wolf is writing a follow-up to Fire and Fury.
- Laurie Halse Anderson announces Shout, a new book about her own experiences with sexual assault and the reader reactions to Speak that she’s received over the last 20 years.
- Oprah picks her next book club title: The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton.
By the Numbers
- Poetry readers in the US have nearly doubled in the last five years. And when you consider how long it’s been since you’ve seen a copy of Milk and Honey on the shelf, this isn’t all that surprising…
- James Patterson & Bill Clinton’s novel, The President is Missing, has sold 250,000 copies in its first week.
Award News
- 2018 Best Translated Book winners.
- Kamila Shamsie wins the 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction!
- Lambda Literary Awards announced. This is a great resource for Pride Month, but more importantly, it’s a great checklist of books you should be ordering for for your library.
- 2018 Bisexual Book Award winners.
Pop Cultured
- Stranger Things books are coming this fall and Gwenda Bond is set to write the first one!
- In Other Words, the feminist bookstore made famous by Portlandia’s bookstore Women & Women First, is closing its doors.
All Things Comics
- Never fear, comics newbies – here’s a syllabus to get you (and me) started!
- A librarian talks about the best manga from Shigero Mizuki.
- Recent comics about refugee experiences.
Audiophilia
- 5 YA audiobooks with multiple narrators.
- Or how about some award-winning YA audiobooks?
- This will keep your avid listeners (and you!) busy: 50 nonfiction audiobooks under 10 hours.
- And because we don’t want to leave anyone out, here are 50 fiction audiobooks under 10 hours. These two lists would make for a fun display!
- The best mystery audiobooks for road trips.
Book Lists, Book Lists, Book Lists
- It’s not too late to put up a Pride display for your YA readers! Here’s a list of 100 LGBTQIA YA novels to get you started.
- 7 must-read YA novels about coming out.
- YA novels with asexual protagonists.
- 50 must-read books about LGBTQ+ history.
- For your romance-reading patrons: 50 military romance novels.
- 10 great books about weddings, just in time for wedding season!
- 13 soccer books for your favorite young World Cup viewers.
- 10 of the best YA feminist fantasy novels of 2018.
- The summer’s best foreign novels, as chosen by Vanity Fair.
- The ultimate summer book preview from LitHub! Which books are being featured on the most lists?
- Upcoming releases by authors of color, as seen at BEA.
Bookish Curiosities & Miscellaneous
- Simon & Schuster created a voice-activated app to help you figure out which Stephen King novels you’re most likely to enjoy.
- Weird literary relics that people spent beaucoup bucks on.
- #cockygate drama continues, and I can’t believe that’s a real sentence I just typed.
- The health benefits of reading just keep stacking up – now they think reading may actually prevent dementia.
- How to set up book news alerts. Librarians, if you need to up your newsfeed game, here’s a great way to do it!
- Why you should always read the acknowledgements.
- No, your book is not a “guilty pleasure” just because you’re a woman.
Level Up
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!). inks here will direct to Edelweiss digital review copies. These books hit shelves in September, giving you plenty of time to read and nominate by July 20th.
And to help librarians find more diverse titles for Library Reads, Kelly put together this awesome database & reference guide with a list of upcoming diverse books. No more excuses, fellow librarians. Time to diversify our reading suggestions.
- Always Another Country by Sisonke Msimang. “An intimate story of exile and homecoming by the South African author whose TED Talk touched millions.”
- I Should Have Honor: A Memoir of Hope and Pride in Pakistan by Khalida Brohi. “A fearless memoir about tribal life in Pakistan—and the act of violence that inspired one ambitious young woman to pursue a life of activism and female empowerment.”
- Washington Black by Esi Edugyan. “From the author of the award-winning international best seller Half-Blood Blues comes a dazzling new novel, about a boy who rises from the ashes of slavery to become a free man of the world.”
Thanks for hanging out! We’ll see you back here in two weeks with another edition of Check Your Shelf.
–Katie McLain, @kt_librarylady on Twitter
Currently reading The Witch Elm by Tana French.