PLA 2010 Conference: Virtual Session on Books-The Top 5 of the Top 5

Public Library Assocation - PLA 2010 - Annual Conference - Portland

By Anna Katterjohn -- Library Journal, 03/26/2010

• Participants learning ways of virtual sessions
• Panelists discuss authors, trends in popular genres
• Horror, fantasy, women's fiction, crime fiction, humor

Midsession, 113 domains (which can each accommodate one to 15 people) were logged into the PLA Virtual Conference session "Books: The Top 5 of the Top 5," which was broadcast live today at 1 p.m. PDT. (The same program took place at 10:30 a.m. at the Oregon Convention Center, and the panelists certainly seemed well versed during the virtual session.) By now participants seem to have figured out that the one-by-one presentations don’t allow for questions, and so many instead used the live comments box to greet one another and the panelists.

Aiming to help librarians find “quick answers for patrons who want ‘a good book,’” Rebecca Vnuk (Read on…Women’s Fiction; ShelfRenewal), Kaite Mediatore Stover (Kansas City P.L.), Barry Trott (Williamsburg Regional Lib.), Neil Hollands (Williamsburg Regional Lib.), and David Wright (Seattle P.L.) spoke on women’s fiction, horror, mystery/crime fiction, fantasy, and humor, respectively. Each panelist identified five up-and-coming authors and noted five genre trends.

Extensive book lists and the program slides will be available Monday on ShelfRenewal.

Horror
Stover, known for her short mash-up, pop-culture-inflected book summations, called Chelsea Cain’s villain the “love child of Carrie and Hannibal Lecter” and explained the creation of the main “character” of Christopher Ransom’s The Birthing House thusly: “If Stephen King had been the architect, Joe Hill the realtor, and Octomom the decorator.” 

She pointed to trends like comic horror—“just add ‘zombie,’ and it’s funnier and scarier”—women as evil protagonists, which all started with Fatal Attraction, and “your environment is trying to kill you” horror, hosting evil cell phones, radios, or infectious disease.

Fantasy
Hollands, saying that fantasy is in a golden age right now with more great writers currently publishing than every before, made the potentially controversial proclamation that Brandon Sanderson, “fast on his way to becoming a household name,” will probably finish the “Wheel of Time” series more strongly than Robert Jordan would have. Hollands also praised Gail Carriger (Soulless) for her wonderful heroine, a “delightful fish out of water in Victorian society,” and sex scenes that are both lusty and hilarious. 

He cited the cross-genre/interstitial trend (e.g., Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Audrey Niffenegger) as an opportunity to serve a diverse group of readers despite the shelving and findability difficulties these titles can introduce.

Women’s fiction
Vnuk recommended Katherine Center (The Bright Side of Disaster) for those who like Jennifer Weiner’s smart, funny women’s fiction, and Laura Moriarty (The Rest of Her Life), a hot new author in issue-driven women’s fiction, for Barbara Delinsky fans. Considering trends, she called Jodi Picoult the “reigning queen” of issue-driven books and Barbara Delinsky a “lighter lady in waiting.” 

She considers ensemble fiction—books dealing, for example, with reading groups, coworkers, or a quilting circle—especially appealing because the large cast of characters allows readers easily to find others with whom they can identify, a big part of appeal of women’s fiction.

Crime fiction/mystery
Trott, explaining that mystery may be so popular because it “brings order in a chaotic world,” suggested Ariana Franklin (Mistress of the Art of Death) for her strong female lead character and for delving into detail without being pedantic. Louise Penny’s (Still Life) police procedurals, like golden-age mysteries, have secondary characters that are an essential part of the story and “good puzzles for readers who like to figure out the solution to the crime.” Jason Goodwin (The Janissary Tree) presents stories with interesting connections with the current state of Islam and explores foodways—“you can almost cook a meal from the descriptions.” 

Trends include speculative crime fiction, contemporary cozies with a little more violence and sex than their golden-age counterparts, and police procedurals that have expanded beyond murder squads (e.g., C.J. Box’s game warden main character, Joe Pickett).

Humor
Wright readily admitted that “humor really isn’t a genre or a subject. It’s all over the library, all over the Dewey Decimal run,” which makes even more important having a stock of titles in your brain. He called Sarah Silverman (The Bedwetter) “the most consistently and delightfully inappropriate comic working today,” and Sam Lipsyte’s The Ask “the funniest book of 2010.” Steve Hely’s How I Became a Famous Novelist is great for Nicholas Sparks haters and book nerds. 

Wright noted that books can be difficult to recommend because humor is subjective, so anthologies like Humor Me: An Anthology of Funny Contemporary Writing are good options. He identified trends like blogs as books, saying “Most funny blogs make pretty bad books,” but F My Life is an exception—“a gold mine of crap and embarrassment.”