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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).
If it helps anyone, here’s a photo of my cat Gilbert with a giant spit bubble. May we all learn to be as relaxed and contented as he is.
Libraries & Librarians
News Updates
- Here’s a collection of news links about libraries that are altering their services due to COVID-19.
- How libraries can address COVID-19 with facts and outreach.
- Signs indicate that Macmillan may be rethinking its library eBook embargo. They’ve suggested three potential models as alternative solutions.
- (TW: racist imagery, threats) Hillsdale (MI) Community Library found a noose hanging from a bookshelf.
Cool Library Updates
- This Indiana public libraries bill makes it easier for foster children to access the library.
- This mobile library serves refugees in Greece.
- Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is going to be the focus of a new documentary.
Worth Reading
- How libraries can assuage census anxieties, plus what libraries can actually do with all that census data.
- If you’re able (or required) to work from home, here are 20 tips to help you stay focused and organized.
- Environmentally friendly children’s programming.
- Can libraries help solve climate change?
Book Adaptations in the News
- Netflix and the Obamas’ production company are adapting Exit West by Mohsin Hamid.
- Snoop Dogg’s production company is executive producing a series based on Joe Ide’s IQ series, which I’m super stoked about!
- American Rust by Philipp Meyer is set for Showtime.
- George Clooney signs on to direct The Boys in the Boat.
- Taika Waititi is making two animated Netflix shows based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
- Rebecca Roanhorse’s short story “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience” is being made into a film.
- Netflix plans to adapt Call Your Daughter Home by Deb Spera into a series.
- Trailer for The Undoing, based on You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz.
Books & Authors in the News
- Mystery author Barbara Neely has passed away at age 78.
- Hachette decided not to publish Woody Allen’s upcoming memoir after Ronan Farrow cut ties with Hachette and nearly 100 staff walked out on Thursday in protest.
- Stephen King once again put his foot in his mouth, saying that Hachette’s decision to not publish Woody Allen’s memoir made him uneasy.
- Allen’s French publisher also said that they still plan to publish his book.
- Oprah’s book club selects, and then abruptly drops, My Dark Vanessa as a book club selection, suggesting that the book’s controversy might overwhelm discussion about the actual story. Her book club is still standing by American Dirt, however.
- Oprah hosted a two-part edition of her book club show about American Dirt. More details and coverage from USA Today, LA Times, and The Guardian here.
- On a related note, Oprah and Macmillan have promised to do better to amplify Latinx voices, but #DiginidadLiteraria leaders say that these promises aren’t enough.
- Ludlow (MA) Middle School parents are protesting the book Sex is a Funny Word being on school library shelves.
- Acclaimed millennial authors who are changing the fantasy genre with more diverse and politically charged narratives.
- Rumor has it that the ghost of Agatha Christie is haunting the Torquay Museum and knocking her books (only her books!) off the shelves.
Numbers & Trends
- New survey shows little improvement in diversity in romance publishing.
- Publishers say they’re seeing a spike in books about fictional epidemics.
Award News
- The National Book Critics Circle postponed its award ceremony till the fall due to coronavirus concerns, although the winners will still be announced this week.
- 2020 Lambda Literary Award finalists announced.
- 2020 Romantic Novel Awards are announced.
- This international Booker prize nominated novel poses a difficult question in distinguishing between appropriation and plagiarism.
Pop Cultured
- Film expert, actor, and author James Lipton has died at 93.
- Time unveils its 100 Women of the Year project, which will go back and spotlight women who have been overlooked over the last century.
- Chris Matthews retires from Hardball. (And I’ve already fielded a patron question about this, so you can probably expect a couple questions to come up at your library too.)
- The upcoming James Bond movie, No Time to Die, has been pushed back until November amid coronavirus concerns.
Bookish Curiosities & Miscellaneous
- Shel Silverstein’s houseboat is for sale, so if you have nearly $800,000 laying around, this might be a good buy!
- An open letter to Oxford University Press requests changes to some of its dictionaries’ sexist definitions and synonyms of the word “woman.” (Some of these examples are astonishingly bad, and then when you look at some of the definitions of the word “man,” it’s enough to make your head explode.)
- Why are hardcover books published before paperbacks?
- Literary insults to keep in your back pocket.
On the Riot
- How well do you know the Dewey Decimal system?
- Why aren’t there more librarians in pop culture?
- Children’s book tattoos to make you feel nostalgic.
- The multi-generational book club.
- Why did reading become competitive?
- How to start your own reading journal.
Hang tight, friends. Catch you all next week.
Katie McLain Horner, @kt_librarylady on Twitter. Currently reading The Only Girl in the World by Maude Julien.