BookExpo America 2009: Librarians' Book Shout and Share

Panel selects must-have titles for libraries

By Anna Katterjohn -- Library Journal, 6/3/2009 11:33:00 AM

So, what were the must-have titles at BEA? After circling the show floor for two days, eight librarians with collection development or readers' advisory backgrounds presented their picks in ten-minute intervals at BEA's first-ever Librarians' Book Shout and Share. 



Organized by Brooklyn PL's Barbara Genco (standing, above far left), the star-studded group included (l. to r.) Baltimore County PL's Lila Wisotzki, NYPL's Miriam Tuliao, Boston PL's Michael Colford, San Francisco PL's Jason Honig, Columbus Metropolitan (OH) Library's Robin Nesbitt, Kansas City (MO) PL's Kaite Stover, and LJ RA columnist Neal Wyatt (also president of ALA's Reference and User Services Association). Among the dozens of titles the gang of eight gave a shout out to, seven drew multiple raves. A full list of the titles picked by each panelist, with publisher info, pub dates, and ISBNs, is available on EarlyWord. 

Book Club Reads

Tuliao set the scene for book club recommendations, picking Friendly Fire (Harper Perennial) for Alaa Al Aswany's ability to "balance being a storyteller with being a cultural critic," and Going Away Shoes (Algonquin) was deemed "a great book club read" by several panelists. Stover wants you to promote Laura Moriarty's While I'm Falling (Hyperion) for reading groups, especially for anyone who goes for slightly unlikable characters or readers of Jodi Picoult and Jacquelyn Mitchard. Wyatt highilghted the coming-of-age debut A Map of Home (Penguin) by Randa Jarrar for its wit and book club appeal. 

First Novels

Of the hot debut novels, Katherine Howe's The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane (Voice: Hyperion) is definitely worth watching for, not only because Wisotzki likened it to The Historian, but more accessible. Tuliao suggested Girl in a Blue Dress (Crown) for a display on Charles Dickens (whose life inspired the writer, Gaynor Arnold) with Peter Ackroyd's and Jane Smiley's biographies. Also picked by Tuliao and compared to Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Nesbitt, Mathilda Savitch (FSG) by Victor Lodato is a murder mystery of sorts, with "a hell of a twist at the end." Wyatt identified the debut Baking Cakes in Kigali (Delacorte) by Gaile Parkin as a "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" readalike. Christopher Nicholson's The Elephant Keeper (Morrow) should play well among readers of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. Wisotzki called Eugenia Kim's first novel, The Calligrapher's Daughter (Holt), a "cry story," and Wyatt identified Lou Manfredo, whose Rizzo's War (Minotaur) comes in September, as an "everyman's Richard Price." Since libraries are seeing all types of new readers post-economic meltdown, Norb Vonnegut's Top Producer (Minotaur), a "detailed, fast-moving thriller," will be a good one to give to former finance workers who may be exploring the library for the first time in years. 

YA Crossover
 
Nesbitt also sees the economy as a motive for escape and thinks YA titles are a perfect outlet for adults. To get more adult readers, she says, "When handselling to an adult, just don't tell 'em it's for teens." A few fall titles that fit the bill are Suzanne Collins's anticipated sequel, Catching Fire (Scholastic), and Rick Yancey's The Monstrumologist (S. & S.), a horror story she compared to the work of H.P. Lovecraft. Honig jokingly mentioned that teens "may be the only people in America who have money" and picked the graphic novel version of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (Rodale) for them. Colford found a twist on zombies in David Lubar's My Rotten Life (Starscape) and also recommended Joel Shepherd's Sasha (Pyr), a sf/fantasy series title that is self-contained and will appeal to adult readers. Nesbitt picked Libba Bray's Going Bovine (Delacorte), exclaiming, "Oh my god, anybody who uses WTF, your teen's gonna love it." 

Nonfiction: Food & Memoirs
 
For nonfiction readers, memoirs and food-related titles were king. Moderator Genco highlighted Elena Kostioukovitch's narrative history Why Italians Love To Talk About Food (FSG) and called La Cucina: The Regional Cooking of Italy (Rizzoli) "a WPA guide to Italian cooking." Honig picked two food memoirs, Jason Epstein's Eating (Knopf) and Gesine Bullock-Prado's Confections of a Closet Master Baker (Broadway)—the title alone elicited laughs. Mennonite in a Little Black Dress (Holt) by Rhoda Janzen also promises to be hilarious. For other nonculinary memoir standouts, novelists captured the most attention: Michael Chabon's Manhood for Amateurs (Harper) and Jeannette Walls's Half Broke Horses (Scribner) caught eyes. Wisotzki called the graphic novel Stitches (Norton) by David Small "dark and hard and depressing...it tears your heart out," and Stover sees it as a "gateway book to the graphic format."

(A shorter version of this article appeared at LibraryJournal.com, 6/1/2009; For additional coverage of BookExpo America 2009, visit the BookExpo America 2009 page of our sister publication, Publishers Weekly)