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Welcome to Check Your Shelf! This is your guide to help librarians like you up your game when it comes to doing your job (& rocking it).
This is my last newsletter before Book Riot goes on break, so I hope everyone has a safe, happy, and healthy holiday season with lots of reading time!
Collection Development Corner
New & Upcoming Titles
- Ken Follett’s sequel to The Pillars of the Earth will be published in the UK on September 15, 2020.
- Vogue and Entertainment Weekly each have long lists of books to keep an eye out for in 2020.
- 7 SFF novels coming out in spring 2020.
- Promising YA to look forward to in 2020.
- The best fiction written by women in 2020.
Best Books of 2019
- Check out the master list of #LibFaves19 titles!
- Paste has their best books of 2019.
- Kirkus’s 100 best indie books.
- Paste and the New Yorker list their favorite nonfiction of 2019.
- 10 best romance novels of 2019.
- Best LGBTQ books of 2019.
- Best books by Latino & Latin American authors.
- Best historical crime, debut crime fiction, and true crime.
- Best translated books you might have missed.
- Best holiday books.
- Best YA novels of the year from Buzzfeed and Entertainment Weekly.
- New York Public Library and the D.C. Public Library announce their top checkouts of 2019.
- LitHub has a list of all of the award-winning books of 2019.
Best Books of the Decade
- Vox, LitHub, Buzzfeed, and Town & Country all have their lists of the best/most defining books of the decade.
- 80 of the best LGBTQ books. (Great place to start if you want to order more LGBTQ books for your collection, or fill gaps from previous years.)
- Epic Reads picks their favorite YA of the decade.
- Rising stars of international crime fiction in the 2010’s.
- The best books of the decade, as selected by 30 of the decade’s best debut authors.
RA/Genre Resources
- Shortlist for the 2020 Tournament of Books.
- A look at the last decade in YA publishing.
- This was the decade that horror got “elevated.”
- Female novelists replaced the traditional white male author in the 2010’s.
On the Riot
- 10 debut novels to check out in 2020.
- 20 of the best new & upcoming book club picks for 2020.
- 20 queer YA books for 2020.
- 10 upcoming debut novels for 2020.
All Things Comics
- New York Times: Best comics of 2019.
- Is there a DC/Marvel crossover in our future?
- Dark Horse Comics is adapting Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology into a comic series for May 2020.
- 12 most influential indie comics of the decade.
Audiophilia
- Marvel conquered movies. Can it do the same with audiobooks?
- The best true crime audiobooks to learn from.
- Great audiobooks & great readers.
- 12 festive audiobooks to listen to this season.
- 10 SFF audiobooks for holiday traveling.
Book Lists, Book Lists, Book Lists
Children/Teens
- 11 diverse holiday books for kids that go beyond Christmas.
Adults
- 7 super scary sci-fi/horror novels.
- 6 books that predicted our current reality.
- 15 medical thrillers that will have your head spinning.
- 8 cute queer holiday romances to snuggle up with.
On the Riot
- Books by authors who use “they” pronouns.
- Recommendations for Douglas Adams fans.
- 10 romance authors like Nora Roberts.
- YA books under 200 pages.
- Read Harder: a food book about a cuisine you’ve never tried before; a memoir by someone from a religious tradition not your own; a book that takes place in a rural setting; the last book in a series.
- Sports romances not steeped in white supremacy culture.
- 16 mystery book suggestions based on films & TV shows.
- 5 of the best nonfiction books about sexual assault.
Level Up (Library Reads)
Do you take part in LibraryReads, the monthly list of best books selected by librarians only? 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.
All right, everyone! Catch you on the flip side!
Katie McLain Horner, @kt_librarylady on Twitter. Currently reading Magic For Liars by Sarah Gailey.