In the Bookroom   

So, did the New York Public Library (NYPL) face pressure not to purchase Michael Gross’s new book Rogues’ Gallery, an unauthorized exposé of the Metropolitan Museum? 

The New York Observer on June 16 questioned whether the absence of the book in the catalog was related to complaints against the book filed by Annette de la Renta, who is a trustee of both the museum and the library.

The book’s editor, Peter Gethers, told the...Read More

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South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's press conference confessions of adultery yesterday afternoon should  prompt new reader interest in Susan Wise Bauer's The Art of the Public Grovel: Sexual Sin and Public Confession in America (Princeton University Press, 2008; see LJ review here).  Bauer assesses public figures, including Grover Cleveland, Aimee Semple McPherson, Ted Kennedy, Jim Bakker, and Bill Clinton, for their relative success in responding to scandal in which they were involved. She shows that the "public grovel," properly undertaken, has been shown to work in many...Read More

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When it comes to romances, I consider myself fairly well read. In fact, of the RUSA Reading List 2009 winners, announced back in January at the American Library Association’s Denver Midwinter Meeting, I had read three of the five titles on the short list. That’s 60 percent. Not bad. What surprised me, though, was that I had not read the winning book, nor the fourth shortlisted title, by that very same author. Sounds like I needed to expand my borders. RUSA president and all-around readers’ advisory guru Neal Wyatt told me I had to read Joanna Bourne’s two books, the winning Spymaster’...Read More

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June, now more than half gone, is LGBT Pride Month (shown here are the mannequins now in the windows of Bloomingdales Soho in Manhattan). 

LGBT Pride received the imprimatur of President Obama via proclamation, but Obama's record on gay rights—what he and his administration do, rather than what they say—is weak at best, and only attained that measure by virtue of the executive memorandum issued on Wednesday, granting some benefits...Read More

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Who was the first U.S. senator elected by the people rather than by the state legislature? Warren G. Harding of Ohio, in 1914.  
Who was the first U.S. president elected after women got the right to join in and cast their votes in U.S. elections?  Warren G. Harding in 1920. 

Let's not jump to any conclusions about voter wisdom here, but readers interested in looking more deeply into the mind of Mr. Harding have ample opportunity this year. 

Phillip Payne's Dead Last: The Public Memory of Warren G. Harding's Scandalous Legacy (Ohio University Press) came out late last year and is now available in paperback. The author, a professor of histo...Read More

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Aside from a few Southern recipes  handed down to me by my Alabama grandmother, I am admittingly a rudimentary cook, but I do love cookbooks and cooking shows (Top Chef is a guilty pleasure). I love the alluring promise they offer inexperienced or unskilled home chefs like me (yes, you too can create this exquisite complicated dish by following these simple steps!). So it was no hardship for me to stroll the aisles at last month's BookExpo in quest of the fall season's hot culinary titles. 

Like the rest of the show, most cookbook publishers were fairly low-key. Gone were the flashy cooking demonstrations by celebrity chefs of previous years. And some major houses d...Read More

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As we have to close the June 15 issue this week, I am slowly sorting through my notes, but here are some of my impressions of this year's BookExpo show at the Javits Center in New York City. 

The glitz and glamor and the extravagant excess of past BEAs were notably absent this year; there were fewer parties, fewer big-name celebrities (Mary Jo Buttafuoco promoting her July memoir Getting It Through My Thick Skull from HCI; Miracle on the Hudson hero pilot Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger signing blads of his ...Read More

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Rona Jaffe’s The Best of Everything was a revelation when I read it back in the 1970s. A book about publishing when I worked in a publishing company. Wow. And how fun to see the name of a sister magazine, Publishers Weekly, mentioned in that very same book. Many years and much reading later, I am thrilled to recommend a novel that describes the writing and publishing process with clarity and vividness and reminds us why we love to read. Wendy Wax’s The Accidental Bestseller (Berkley Pub.) lets us see how books are put together, from the writing and rewriting (even not writing) to the vast...Read More

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Much of my time working on LJ's magazine reviews column is spent researching and requesting new publications—a task that's even harder in these dark days for print. Wooden Horse Publishing has been frequenly updated with new magazine tips for years. I can't speak to the quality of the paid database (which includes contact info, editorial calendars, etc. for over 2000 U.S. and Canadian consumer and trade magazines), but the homepage has tons of free blurbs on new publications of all types. 

Meg Weaver, who founded the company in 1997, says one of her...Read More

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Is it a tough time for formal religion in America?  Perhaps. It depends what source you look to -- and of course libraries are the best spot for finding the range of sources. Readers can look up the 2009 American Religious Identification Survey, or they can follow the articles that the survey has prompted, e.g., by John Meecham in Newsweek last month on "The End of Christian America,"  or in USA Today, reporting on religion's decline, with younger Americans ...Read More

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On this Cinco de Mayo, the New York Times reports on how swine flu fears have raised the ugly specter of anti-Mexican hysteria with Mexican citizens typecast as disease carriers and subjected to humiliating treatment (healthy travelers quarantined in China; Chile refusing to host Mexican soccer teams). While scientists have yet to pinpoint the origins of the virus, which is less lethal than once feared (and some news reports speculate on a connection to U.S. factory farm practices), our neighbor to the south has once again been stigmatized. And tonight, Americans with little knowledge of Mexican history...Read More

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In a plot twist as convoluted as a Harlan Coben novel, Variety reports that Miramax and Focus Features have snagged English-language remake rights to the French thriller Tell No One, which is based on Coben's acclaimed 2001 book. (Coben makes a brief cameo in the movie.)  The film, which swept top awards at the 2008 Cesars (the French equivalent of the Oscars), was a surprise hit with American audiences and grossed $6 million. Given Hollywood's poor track record with remakes, I strongly recommend you instead watch this&n...Read More

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